I’m not an Apple fanatic. I’ve owned an Ipod as have my kids and wife, but nothing else. I even had the option of an iPhone at work but opted for a Blackberry because I type on it so much I can type without even looking which I didn’t think would be the case with a touchscreen iPhone (or touchscreen BB). I went to our local Apple store yesterday afternoon in Northern NJ. When I walked in, they said they still had units if I wanted one which I was surprised to hear. I went to one of the tables where they had 40 or so total setup in the store and played with one for a while. My thoughts with spending about 20 mins with it are the following:

1) Holding and typing was not easy nor productive. It seems too big to productively type and hold the unit.

2) On the small pedestal they had on the table for each unit and with the unit in landscape mode, I could type pretty quickly. In fact, one of the Apple employees noticed me typing and called another employee over to watch. I was typing quickly with my 2 index fingers. I wasn’t touch typing. Maybe it’s from a decade or so on a Blackberry but I was quick enough to get a small crowd (2 Apple employees). Some of the punctuation seemed a bit awkward as bringing up numbers slows things down too. But, it was very acceptable when not being held, as long as you are ok with looking at your fingers when you type.

3) It was fast/responsive. Must faster then I expected. Browsing the internet was snappy as was moving between applications.

4) The price, though low for Apple, is still relatively expensive compared to a full featured Windows notebook/netbook. If you need to run anything beyond an iPad/iTouch application, a more traditional notebook can provide that.

5) It’s lacking some things in the first release which make me hesitate getting one – camera/web cam and GPS are two of the more obvious features. With the 3G unit you’ll get assisted GPS.

6) Commuting on a train for 2 hours a day, a 3G unit might be preferred, but I hear nothing but horror stories from all the iPhone folks in my office. Will Verizon ever get a chance to have a unit on their network?

7) It’s Gen 1 of the unit. There have been some reports that charging via traditional USB power isn’t always sufficient. We’ll have to see if anything else crops up as the units start to age a little.

I think it’s definitely a winner but I’d be interested how sitting on the couch and typing out a few emails would go? Reading – no problem at all. Writing – to be seen.

Yes, it was all of 20 or so minutes with the device, but it was enough to make the above observations.

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