Now that we have unboxed and taken a first critical look at the ipad in our first post in this series, lets take a step back and cover the basics very briefly.  If you are already familiar with the ipad, or even the itouch/iphone, you may want to skip this one.

The ipad is basically a big iphone.  Guess what, sometimes bigger technology is better. After an intense decade of competition in the emerging smartphone space, where miniaturization was the rule of thumb, we are starting to see a push for ‘bigger.’ This is of course driven by the screen. The iphone screen is beautiful, but you can bet that virtually everyone who first turned on their iphone and started gesturing at the surface said to themselves, ‘wow, it would be great if this thing was 6 times the size!’

In reality, the original protoype that led to the iphone was in fact the surface tablet that eventually became the ipad, only well after the iphone enjoyed its amazing release.

The ipad is a surface computing device.  That just means that it is a computer that employs a special graphical user interface, or GUI. That interface, for the ipad and other surface devices like it, is the screen itself.  Since surface computing and the iphone both already exist, how can anyone call the ipad a revolutionary device?

Well, do you remember when the rubiks cube rolled out?  Big deal, another multicolor plastic puzzle with moving pieces.  Wrong…  the cube just ‘got it right.’  A 2 year old could immediately pick it up and start working the cube.  It was intuitive, but it also challenged you. It felt good, it looked good, and it swept the world. In the process, it absolutely changed the way that we looked at a few things.

Enter the ipad.  Yes, just a slate tablet.  Yes, just a surface device.  Yes, just a reinvention of the pda.  But oh my.

This is what Apple does so well.  Take established concepts and technologies, and create the ‘perfect’ version of them.

So what do you get for your money?

Well the ipad comes in white or black, in 16, 32, and 64 gigabyte models.  For reference, the 16 gb model could hold about 10-12 high full length movies like Avatar (no perceptible difference from the dvd), and still have room for lots of apps and a bit of user data (stored app sessions, pictures, etc).  The 64 gb version can easily hold 45 such movies and still have a lot of space to grow.

Beyond that, there are now 3g variants of these models.  That basically just means that you can now get the device with a cellular card installed, pretty much like the iphone.  It is not meant to make calls (though i am sure there is an app for that), but rather for data access.  Browsing on the go – access to mobile MLS, email, mapping, etc.  As I noted in the first post, for many agents the data access on the fly is a must, but you may want to strongly consider a Verizon or Sprint mifi card for basically the same cost.  This mobile hot spot will practically fit in your wallet, and offers as good or better data access, with more flexibility.  Of course, if you leave it at home…

For many of us, the 3g option is not needed, as we are constantly in a wifi hotspot.

As discussed in the first review post, the box also comes with a power adapter and cable.  Beyond that, you will almost certainly want a protective case, bag, or something to accessorize your ipad and protect it from damage (including a film overlay to protect the screen)

Beyond the hardware, you get an:

• amazing listing presentation tool. The screen is just so pleasing to look at, the gesture based interface so appealing, that listing presentations, and listing review with buyers, are obvious ways to take advantage of the device.   Whether you are reviewing a powerpoint type presentation, a series of images, or websites (or all of the above), the ipad is a great way to get your message across when sitting with a client.
  
• a powerful mobile productivity tool.  Example: with a $10 app or two you could rapidly create a visually stunning listing presentation on the fly at the home in question, not that you want to.  The ability to be truly productive on the ipad, compared with sitting at a desktop pc with an suite of office software, etc. , will depend on the apps.  As more and more apps are built and perfected for the ipad experience, things might get interesting.
• a potent tool for bonding; bonding with clients, with family and with friends will be a natural result of using the device.  Unlike a laptop, passing the pad back and forth between users is very comfortable. Tthe ipad has an xfactor that is also shared by the Nintendo wii systems here… Put a 73 year old technophobe across the ipad from a 3 year old child, and they will both have a phenomenal experience. It is the simplicity of the gestures and the intuitive interface that makes the tool appealing to just about anyone.
• a sublime gaming platform for certain types of games

So while we have touched on it, we haven’t really focused yet on what makes the ipad, and its smaller cousins the ipod touch and iphone so ‘cool.’  In a nutshell, they are simple, but sophisticated.  I am repeatedly amazed at how many intuitive functions there are.

For example, if you scribble something on your screen, but don’t like the results, just shake your device gently, and it will erase (a 4 year old actually showed this to me)…  just like the etch-a-sketch many of us grew up with.  Looking at a photo?  Want to see the next one?  Just swipe your finger.  This is called ‘inertial scrolling’ and is a big part of what makes the devices so useful.  When you take a phone call and hold the iphone to your ear, the screen automatically dims to conserve battery…  pull it away from your ear a few inches to look at the screen, and it automatically lights the screen.

How is that possible?  Well, the idevices are all leveraging accelerometer technology.  That just means that the device can tell when you are tipping it, rotating it, and shaking it… and it can tell how fast.

Also, obviously, the devices are taking advantage of ‘multi-touch surface computing.’  That just means that you can touch the screen to do things, drag them, etc…  but you can do so with multiple fingers.  So if there is a bit of text that you want to grab, you can just ‘pinch’ the screen at both ends of the text blob, and it instantly highlights just that portion.  This screen technology (which again Apple certainly did not invent, but definitely has ‘perfected’) is now sophisticated enough that well made apps are now using ‘wrist protection’ to ignore your wrist resting comfortably on the surface while giving ‘focus’ to your finger doing the drawing.

Finally, the speed of the system makes it ‘cool.’  Granted, this is a bit of a ploy.  The idevices do not allow genuine multitasking.  So, while I can watch a movie on our recent rebareastbay.com event on my laptop in one corner of my screen, have three or four browser windows open, and still be typing on this post all at once, I cannot do this on the ipad.  The ipad runs one app at a time, and does so very effectively.  The ploy is that it is not that hard to run one app at a time.  But in practical use, the ability to be working in about 2 seconds after picking up the ipad, and the ability to  switch between apps in that same 2 seconds and be working in the new app, make multitasking somewhat irrelevant.  We all do too much multitasking these days anyways.  I do not feel limited by the one app at a time approach, I feel like I focus more on what I am doing, and have a better experience over all as a result.

So enough about what it is and why it is cool.   Lets take a first look at what you can do right out of the box with an ipad, and some of the tools that CCAR puts at your disposal for free!

Some immediate, practical examples.

The CCAR mobile portal

• mobile MLS access
• mobile HOT access
• mobile ccar contacts
• mobile find a realtor
• mobile reverse MLS lookup (find a REALTOR® by their property, etc)
• much more that we will demonstrate visually in the next post

CCAR HOT – HomesOpenToday.com – while you can access HOT through the mobile portal, since HOT is simply a website, you can also of course browse there from the built in browser.

CCAR Single property websites – CCAR creates a few different views of your listing as soon as the listing is entered into the MLS.  These are essentially single property websites that you can frame onto your website, link to from any number of venues where you might want to share listing information, etc.

CCAR Cooliris galleries – CCAR also creates some flash driven ‘cooliris’ listing galleries – for your agent inventory, your office inventory, and for all upcoming open homes.  But wait, you say.  If these engaging galleries are flash driven, how can you take advantage of them on the ipad which does not support flash?

Well, there is of course an app for that!  Cooliris recently put out an app that works well on both the iphone and the ipad.  I suspect that the next revision will improve the quality of the images, which do seem more geared to the smaller screen of the iphone.  We will demonstrate this app visually in our next post, as well as most of the tools we reference here, and beyond.

One of the really interesting and fun things you can do for free with the ipad is display its interface on your pc.  So, for example, I can project an image on a screen from my laptop.  We have all seen this a thousand times in presentations.  Well, add one little step, which is a piece of free client software on my pc, and a corresponding app running on the ipad, and I am now able to be holding the tablet in my hand, driving that wonderful interface, and watching the results on my laptop screen (and/or a projector).  See a printscreen below.  Now that we have that bit of functionality, we will be recording some demonstrations for future reviews.

This concludes part 2 of our series of reviews on the ipad.  We could go on and on describing uses for the ipad using CCAR and third party tools, but it will be much more effective to show you rather than tell you.
Now that the unboxing, and the basics are behind us, we can focus on advanced practical uses in future posts, including video demonstrations of the device in action.