It may seem anti-climactic, after all the hoopla preceding its announcement back in January, but the iPad arrives in stores on Saturday.

Many have predicted it will be “the Kindle killer,” but in the NYT today, David Pogue’s review indicates otherwise,

There’s an e-book reader app, but it’s not going to rescue the newspaper and book industries (sorry, media pundits). The selection is puny (60,000 titles for now). You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile (the Kindle is 10 ounces). And you can’t read books from the Apple bookstore on any other machine — not even a Mac or iPhone.

In USA Today, tech columnist, Edward C. Baig, likes how books appear on the iPad,

Judged solely from a sizzle standpoint: There’s no contest. Titles on the iPad such as Winnie the Pooh (which comes preloaded on the iPad) boast colorful illustrations. The 6-inch Kindle screen is grayscale.

But, like Pogue, he objects to the weight of the device, “Curling up in bed was more comfortable with a 10.2-ounce Kindle than with the weightier iPad,” and the backlit screen, which may prove tiring when reading a long book. He also points out that the Kindle is much cheaper (he suggests that they will need to drop the price even further) and has longer battery life.

The following video from USA Today demonstrates the device (ironically, this video cannot be viewed on an iPad; it doesn’t play Flash).

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 8:54 am and is filed under New Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.