Apple’s now shared ‘the most hyped tablet since The Ten Commandments’, and here are our initial likes and dislikes.

The likes:

• The price: $499 is a good starting point that should get the device into a lot of hands.
• Reworked versions of Apple’s iWork apps – Pages, Keynote, and Numbers – are awesome for the Apple iPad (they can be purchased from the App Store for $9.99 apiece).  They’re just as elegant as their Mac OS X counterparts, even including things like a number keypad keyboard for Numbers.
• Beautiful if not anticlimactic industrial design: the casing looks like Apple lopped off the bottom of one of their current MacBook Pro’s – not at all unsurprising to those who’ve kept up with Apple’s design evolution.
• Successful integration of the PA Semi chip technology they bought two years ago: the fluidness and speed of the iPad’s screen transitions and interface reveal the first of many great mobile processors built and sold by Apple.
• iBooks, Apple’s new book app, presents itself just like a bookshelf.  If you like Delicious Library this thing looks like a complete lift of that design.
• Email and calendar apps look fantastic: Apple’s integrated layouts and visual touches that make both seem like fitting replacements for paper organizers and snail mail.  Let’s hope that’s one design that makes its way to Mac OS X and iPhones.
• Great third party apps will once again set the tone for what’s possible: Need For Speed, Brush, and MLB.com all look fantastic.  We were particularly blown away by Major League Baseball’s live games with highly sophisticated overlays and Brush’s ability to turn the Apple iPad into an instant traveling canvas.  So will this thing revolutionize art and media? Quite possibly.
• A dock: the one thing holding some folks back would have been the lack of a true keyboard for hardcore typing.  This is the killer peripheral, because it’ll vault the Apple iPad into corporate territory. It’s the answer to the mobility question for knowledge workers.

The dislikes:

• Non-standard aspect ratio: if you were expecting a cool 16:9 display, you’ll be disappointed.  The form factor looks much closer to old school 4:3 than the current aspect ratio used for digital television and many movies.  This means the iPad’s 9.6″ screen won’t feel as immersive as you’d hoped unless you zoom on in video content.  However, you’ll likely find it well-suited for checking email or your calendar, since both apps are included and look fantastic.
• AT&T Wireless is your only cell service provider: come on, Apple.  I hope this is only due to some preexisting contract and we see it open up.  Not only that, most of us are a little miffed that we’re going to have to feed ATTWS once again after handing them 200 bucks a month already.   Where does this end?  More importantly, when does this end?
• Old apps often look downright stupid in their iPhone format: we were hoping Apple would allow the interface to show multiple iPhone apps at once, but that isn’t the case.  Instead you’ll get a choice to either blow them up to full screen – which looks a tad odd with apps like Facebook – or run them barrenly at normal size with nothing more than a giant black bacground covering the rest of the screen.  That’s right: no ability to run multiple apps onscreen at once.
• Where’s the video camera?  In other words, where’s one of the coolest things Macs do smoothly, and that’s teleconference?  Is it an issue of positioning the device?

After we’ve gotten a chance to spend more time with the new Apple iPad, we’ll be back to report more.