I received one of the first batch of Apple iPads on Saturday, and played with it most of the weekend. I only got this for app development and will be giving it away in a few weeks, so it’s not mine to keep, but I intend to give it some real-world testing in the meantime. Here are my reactions so far:

+ Viewing my photo library is marvelous. I expected this … I’d love to take this to a family reunion and pass it around when talking about my last vacation, house projects, etc.

+ Browsing the web is better than I expected. The iPhone version of Safari really works well here, scaling websites to fit the window in either orientation, and scrolling and zooming with the touch interface.

+ And reading e-books … I had never considered doing this, but the book reader is really cool and Project Gutenberg (30,000 classic books for free) is amazing. I immediately downloaded two books I’ve been meaning to read and I can’t wait to try this.

- No Flash for video. I don’t visit many sites that use Flash intros or animated menus, but I do watch a lot of streaming video and virtually all of that is in Flash. When I got up early Sunday to stream a European bike race, I grabbed my laptop because I knew I wouldn’t be able to use the iPad. HTML 5 is the next standard for web video, but I expect it will take 1-2 years to become prevalent enough to avoid this problem. (Regarding major motion pictures, I did stream a 90-minute movie through the Netflix app without a single hiccup.)

- Doesn’t replace an iPod. The iPad is much nicer than my iPod touch for viewing pictures and video, but I can’t put it in my back pocket to listen to music while I’m working outside, or slip it onto a dashboard mount to connect to the car stereo.

- Doesn’t work as a standalone computer. I would strongly recommend this to friends and relatives who need a zero-maintenance web and email computer — it’s the closest thing to a functional “web appliance” that I’ve used. But you still need a main computer to operate it. It wouldn’t even show the home screen without syncing to iTunes first.

One thing I haven’t tested much is the keyboard. My accuracy has been excellent for entering web URLs, but I haven’t tried writing email with it yet. I usually don’t even bother writing on my iPod touch, so I’m wondering how much more usable the iPad will be. If it doesn’t hamper writing messages, this could replace a laptop for many trips.

My personal bottom line is that the iPad is too expensive to add as a third device between my laptop and iPod, since it doesn’t do anything those devices can’t do. But for people who don’t already have those devices — or don’t need the production capabilities of a laptop or the ultra-portability of an iPod — this is a brilliant device for reading email and websites and viewing photos and movies.

Update, 5/12/10: I’ve spent more time with the iPad now. Typing is, well, easier than on an iPhone and harder than on a laptop. Apps take on a whole new potential in this larger format, and reading e-books is quite nice. One surprise is that holding the device or laying it on a table to read or watch videos gets uncomfortable, so Apple’s easel/case is an important accessory. But my bottom line is the same: it’s not distinct enough to fit between an iPhone/iPod and a laptop. I’ve given mine away as I had planned to do, and I’m enjoying getting re-acquainted with my iPod touch, which is almost as good for most of the things and better at a few of the things that I do with these devices.

The article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is a year and a half old, but I keep running into it:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

The premise is that because we now have instant access to a wealth of reference information online, we’re losing our ability to read long passages, concentrate and think. I disagree; here’s why.

Regarding access to reference information, I think that’s a quantitative rather than qualitative difference from the pre-Internet days. When I was reading books in school, I was always encouraged to look up a word in the dictionary if I didn’t know it. I never did it much, but I do it a lot more now that I can access a dictionary online with a few clicks. If that was good advice with a book, how could it be bad advice with a computer? Now I can not only look up vocabulary words, but local wildlife, art history and world politics as I run across them in my daily life. I would conclude that this makes me more intellectually curious — because it rewards my curiosity with new knowledge — not less intelligent.

As for reading long passages, I use the web as much as anyone, and (compared to other people I’ve browsed with) I’m quite good at seeing how the information is organized on a web page and jumping from one link to another. I also do a lot of skimming, as the author describes. But this is when I’m looking for something in particular, like a street address or a bit of programming code or a song lyric. I did the same thing in college when I was researching a paper at the library. Reading for enjoyment is a different skill, and I haven’t lost it. When J.D. Salinger died last week and I decided to revisit The Catcher in the Rye, I read it in two, three-hour sittings.

Perhaps a lack of concentration is the author’s real problem, but I don’t think that comes from using the web. Like a book, that goes at our pace and doesn’t interrupt our train of thought. That’s not the case with other technologies like television, telephones and instant messaging. I tend to use those as little as possible when I’m working, but if they were talking, beeping and flashing at me all day, I’d probably feel like the author does.

I guess my motto would be, tune out, turn off, log on!

One interesting aspect of working with the Internet is watching the technology evolve faster than the vocabulary used to describe it. We’ve all seen new terms like “blog” and “podcast” become instantly popular, but what about technology that hasn’t even been named yet? I’m not creative enough to come up with the names, but I’ll start a list of the concepts that need naming:

• When you perform a Google search, and the answer is visible on the search results page, so you don’t even have to click one of the results.
• Variation: When you perform a Google search using your browser toolbar, and the answer is visible in the search shortcuts that appear while you type.
• Blogs that consist solely of funny pictures related to a theme (e.g., icanhascheezburger.com, cuteoverload.com and failblog.org). As my wife can tell you, there are hundreds of these!

Can you suggest a catchy name? And what other new Internet terms should I add to this list?