Got a 16GB white ipad2 for the mother in law, since she was using the media center PC to send emails (by sitting right up in front of a 50 inch screen).

The thing is impossibly buttery. It’s a little weird to get used to, and my mother in law, having never used a touch device before, is still getting the hang of how to “tap”.

It’s also surprising that there aren’t better controls to makes text generally larger and buttons easier to hit.

Watching someone use a tablet for the first time is fascinating. Random things I noticed:

• Some things are still way too complicated: like the mail app. Threads. Different mailboxes. all that stuff. Also it was annoying that connecting to gmail didn’t make address auto completion work.
• A lot of the icons are still too abstract.. what does a box with an arrow pointing out of it mean?
• Multi tasking is not very useful to someone who barely uses a computer
• Chinese input on the ipad leaves something to be desired
• Gestures are easier to remember than buttons or sequences of actions.
• No haptic feedback on tapping requires the user to trust that something has happened or something will happen. Even many of the ipad/iphone ui interactions are not good at indicating input was received.