On Saturday night, after seeing a friend’s play (which we thoroughly enjoyed), my compatriot Trey Nichols and I headed to the Apple Store down the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica to check out the new iPad, which debuted that day.

Some photos documenting that historic occasion:

That’s me, considering all the cool things I’ll be able to do with it when I get one (second — or third — generation).  By the way, these photos are taken with my iPhone (third generation; see the pattern?) by iMyself or iFriend. The only thing not i in these images is the clutch of i-worshipers in the background, and they’re pretty i-dolatrous themselves. Side note to good friends Terence Anthony and Steve Lozier:  Please note which site I’m checking out. No, the image wasn’t blurry — that was Trey’s hands shaking in anticipation of getting to touch the iPad.

And here’s Trey, actual iPad in hand. But now he looks, well, somewhat… skeptical.

This is before we visited a cigar shop around the corner where the UCLA student working the counter rhapsodized about the iPad and how eagerly he was awaiting his own. While we didn’t plunk down the 600 bucks for the latest buzzy techno device, we did each plunk down six bucks for a Punch cigar.

Even though both of us are still sentimentally attached to paper and the things that come on it (books, magazines, newspapers, comic books), we were also drawn to the novelty of the unit and enjoyed its sleek interface. We also noted its limitations — no camera, no 3G/4G.  In the meantime, Amazon, in an attempt at a marketing pushback, sent out an email today to various and sundry announcing that Kindle books are readable on — the iPhone. So I downloaded the Kindle app and am now reading three books on the iPhone (starting with a short story collection by the ever-reliably good Mr. Anton Chekhov, and Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir, and a compendium of 19th century American fiction) — all of them free, just as the app was. One sort of calculus would have it that I just got the e-reader and saved $600.

But here’s one question Trey and I didn’t think to wonder about the iPad:

Will it blend?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 10:28 pm and is filed under On reading, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.