by Our two iPad Airs arrived via FedEx Air this morning — straight up at 10:00am — and I haven’t been able to put down either of them ever since they landed in my hands.
Yes, the iPads Airs are incredibly thin and light. I thought a mistake had been made and we were instead sent the new retina iPad Minis — I can’t imagine I’d want an iPad that was any smaller than the Air. It’s just the perfect size, filled with magic and mysticism from the first touch out of the box.
Replacing our old iPad 3s with our new iPad Airs in my Verizon Wireless online account was dead simple. Enter the new IMEIs. Enter the SIM card numbers. Boom! Done. Running. We have 4G LTE liftoff! I want all my iPads to be on Verizon LTE. Hurricane Sandy taught me that hard lesson against WiFi-only devices. Stay safe. Stay ultra-connected via many tethers back to the real world.
The first thing I did after updating my iPad via my iCloud backup account — talk about ease and transparency, thy name is iCloud — was to set up my iPad as a hotspot and run my MacBook Air through the connection for internet service.
Here’s the Xfinity report card: 13.8 MB down and 0.30 up. Down is excellent and up is awful — is that news? — but it’s all workable and doable together for the way 99% of us will use these sorts of short-life hotspots.
This morning — @DavidBoles — Tweeted this first screenshot of the iPad Air on Verizon Wireless’ LTE backbone in Jersey City, 18 MB down and almost 3 MB up is quite excellent and more than acceptable:
The whole experience of using the iPad Air is one of instantaneous gratification. You touch and the Air responds with a similar quickness.
The rubbery vinyl covers are also nice. We bought two Red and two Black: The Wear and the Spare. We love the red because we support the (RED) campaign whenever possible, and the Black just looks right against the Space Grey.
We also purchased a couple of extra chargers and a few 2m lightning cables. One rule of iPad use you quickly learn in the field is there no such thing as a piece of cord that is ever long enough.
The iPad Air isn’t an update to the Apple iPad line — it’s a complete evisceration of everything that has come before — and in that defiant act of luxury of use and sophistication of design comes a total lack of a suffering aesthetic and a grand violation of the Jedermann ideal that things must always remain the same to maintain the upper road of inhuman imagination.
I use my iPad so much more than my iPhone. I don’t know what I’d do without mine. No jokes please about me dropping it again! The iPad Air feels like a razor in my hand. Thin and delicate and lots of danger to do tons of damage.
Oh, where’s the fun in not making an iPad-dropping joke? SMILE!
It really is a wild experience to pull these Airs out of the box — and it’s like you’re holding nothing but a few sheets of paper.
I carry my iPad around all day in my bag and in my hand. I’m going to be much less tired at the end of the day because I’m losing so much iPad heft to lug around everywhere and plus the whole thing is faster from every angle makes it all so good.
You’ve always been the bigger iPad fan. I’ve liked mine for browsing, but not getting stuff done because it’s too heavy to hold. This new Air changes it all, though. Wowser. So light and speedy.
Too bad Infinity Blade 3 barfs on it, though. Won’t even load!