I’ve been wanting to write about my iPad for some time now but I’ve obviously been busy. I have a week long special for you people: All iPad, all this week. It’s like ratings sweeps here at Dead Robot Heavy Industries!

Why iPad? After selling close to a hundred of them at my summer stint at Apple, I can honestly say that tablet/touch computing is the future, if not here to stay for a long while. Obviously not as Apple has it now with it’s closed, unmodifiable operating system, but in time, we will all be hauling around one of these to occupy our day. You should get to know this device, or maybe the competitor’s offerings, because mobile computing is changing.

Wait... no need for a pen?

Today: Gene Roddenberry got it right.
Or How I stopped mashing keyes and learned to love my virtual keyboard

The initial worry iPad had when it came out nearly a year ago was how people were going to type on it. Yes, it is awkward to type on it. Get a Bluetooth keyboard. Or a case/stand for it that props the iPad up on an angle. See, you’re going to find ways to comfortably type on it because it’s design lends to exploration and usage. Thing is, humans have been known to adapt to good design. You just have to look at the history of Apple’s mice design to see that it’s evolved, doing away with buttons entirely to its current version of touch sensitivity, much like all their mobile products. Apple is trying to break down the walls between computer and human and we will get use to the keyboard due to the simplicity of the design of the pad itself.

I can say that after using one for a month, I’ve adapted to long-form typing on the iPad. I do still run into problems with the adaptive typing, finding words changed in my text when not watching the scream. I mean screen. As for mouse-like manipulations, where I use my finger instead of mouse, to draw or move things around, will take some getting use to. Your hand does block a major portion of the screen as you move things around in the upper quadrants, but coupled with the ability to pinch-zoom and twirl, you can shuffle things around on your screen a lot like a real desktop. It’s not that huge of a deal – I would like to say this is a generational tweak that the youth of today will get use to, but that remains to be seen.

So to recap: Get use to it.

Today’s App of the Day: Weather HD. Apple left out the weather app on the iPad and this $0.99 purchase makes up for it. I wish Apple would let developers submit video for their store pages because Weather HD uses atmospheric animations to display how the weather will be now, in three hours or in three days. It actually makes me want to check the weather. When you think about it, someone telling you the weather could do it in seconds (or you could stick your head out the window). Weather HD makes it gorgeous.