Last night I spent far too much time perusing the iPad app store on my iPad, as it was finally made available in the UK recently. It took me until now to get round to using the killer application for my new toy.

Two things struck me, they are obvious:

1. The apps are much more expensive than the iPhone predecessors. This is to be expected and is a good sign that developers are getting real about the amount of time, effort and expense that goes into creating good software. (I am not an Objective-C developer, but I have written lots of software for my daily bread).
2. There is a much healthier crop of ‘business’ and ‘productivity’ apps than I expected. I was really encouraged by what developers had come up with.

My current dilemma is that I have a long business trip coming up. Do I risk it and just take my iPad and bluetooth keyboard or do I take my trusty MacBook Pro?

In the end I didn’t buy any apps, although I did download a bunch of free ones. Having really only used the built in apps to date, I feel I need to use the free ones for a while to work out what I am going to need and what features are nice-but-not-needed. I was also a little non-plussed by the lack of choice. Apps for the iPhone are far more numerous and therefore much more varied. The top 10 highest grossing apps for iPad were mainly games — not what I’m interested in.

The biggest takeaway for me though was that what we are seeing now is very much what Google would call ‘labs’ and anybody else would call ‘beta’.

My conclusion was to stick with my MacBook Pro and my iPhone, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on this, it feels like the future.

… but Apple, please can you enable the iPad store for those of us who dragged ourselves over to the USA to buy one early?

(I know I could set up another iTunes account, but I want it to just work)

As a techy I find this hilarious. As a pragmatist, I find this scary.

Perhaps this is why I felt so immediately uncomfortable when the iPad was first unveiled. Perhaps this is the beginning of the future.

A man who doesn’t usually pull his punches now waxing lyrical about the iPad, having played with it. Mr Gruber has commented that the speed of the iPad is the overwhelming impression of the user experience.

Had Apple been any smaller, I think pundits might have been saying that they had bet the company on the success of this device by selling it at that price. In fact they may well have bet a significant part of their cash pile on it, but if it flops Apple will probably still survive.

I was hoping for something revolutionary. Instead we have something evolutionary. Apple have taken the iPhone business model, followed the “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” instructions and come up with a product about which the only outstanding feature is the marketing.

I will wait until I have got my hands on one before I pass further judgement, but I don’t think I will be buying one for myself. I do not see the argument that this device fits between a laptop and a smartphone - at least not if you own both. If you have a desktop and a smartphone, or a regular phone and a computer (portable or not), then it might fit your needs, but I don’t see it taking over in the living room, which is where it seems to be pitched.

Time will tell.