No, not the waistline.

Feeding Americans’ gluttony with supersized portions is nothing new. Three patty hamburgers, gallon sized drinks of sugared water, jumbo fries and so on. All readily visible in the waistlines of the world’s most obese nation.

But a supersized iPad is not a bad idea. Now I realize this is a bit premature given that the iPad does not hit the stores until April 3, but my thoughts along the lines of a much larger touch screen device were sharpened by my eight year old this weekend.

You see, Winston is now tall enough to ride in the front seat of the car and on the way back from the San Francisco Zoo his natural delight in pushing buttons meant that the interior of the car went through several cycles of Death Valley heat to Alaskan winter over the space of the journey, a smile of pure delight playing on his face as he pushed every button in sight. Like all kids’, his is a tactile world. And being a typical device designed by left brain guys for left brain guys, there are more buttons in the wretched car than you can shake a stick at. Sort of like modern home theater systems. In other words, an ergonomic nightmare.

But it’s no secret that kids love buttons. They have yet to unlearn that the simplest user interface is the one which requires least effort and which is most fun. A button meets those dictates. Later they are forced to use ridiculous keyboards and even dumber devices like the mouse, and the charm of the simple is obfuscated by decades-old designs which should never have seen the light of day. Once upon a time computer keyboards came with trackballs which allowed movement of the cursor without totally removing your hands from the keyboard but, for some reason, the separate mouse prevailed.

I look at the way I use Lightroom and it’s almost all mouse-based. The cursor is used to drag adjustment sliders, to rotate and crop, to apply localized adjustments and so on. About the only time I resort to the keyboard is when adding new keywords or exporting pictures. So a touch device would lend itself well to tailored software that replaces the mouse with the finger.

Those who think of a slate computer as an output device (to read, to watch, etc.) only just don’t get it. They are mired in the left brained world of keyboards and sequential thinking. That’s not how artists and photographers work. The ability to change things by touching and dragging controls is the way we see the world.

So a giant sized iPad – say 20″ diagonal – resting at a 15 degree angle on your desk may just be the ideal input tool for a creative thinker. Sure, man has been using vertical input devices from Cromagnon to Titian and later, but do you fancy holding out your hand to apply a tool to a vertical touchscreen all day?

Here’s wishing for a jumbo iPad in our future. Microsoft demonstrated the concept with its boringly named ‘Surface‘; the site is just comically awful, as you might expect from a company with no class. And who on earth is naming products at MSFT? Procter & Gamble detergent marketers? It’s a thrilling product from the ultimate in left brained companies but like all Microsoft concepts it has no chance of coming to the market at an affordable price for the right brained among us. Shame.

JumboPad, I’m waiting for you.

P.S. I’m delighted to add that Winston is left handed, like most right brained creative types.

Eminently fair.

If my experience with the Mk. 1 version of the iPhone is any guide, the like technology in the iPad will prove reliable, with the most likely cause of failure being the battery. In that light, Apple’s announcement regarding battery replacement seems eminently fair:

While you have to back everything up before taking it in, you get a new or refurbished iPad for some $110 or so. It’s a win-win. Apple fixes your original and resells it in the refurb store at 10-15% less than a new one with a full warranty. You get a new device with two more years – or whatever it is – of battery life far faster than if you had to wait for your original to be repaired. Apple probably earns less on the resale than on the sale of a new one (they have to ship it back to China and then back to the online store as well as pay for repair parts) but this does suggest they are confident in the longevity of the other components in the device. After all, absent a couple of small switches, there are no moving parts in the iPad. So for your money you get a new device. There’s no indication of what the policy will be with regard to obsolescence. After all, in two years Mk. 1 iPad will almost certainly be obsolete, but this is great support from a company with whose hardware I have had generally very poor experiences.

Making it work with your DSLR.

One of the nicer features of my hacked netbook is its ability to read the SDHC card from my Panasonic G1 using its built in card reader slot as well as its ability to run Lightroom and Photoshop, if at a rather poky speed, meaning what I was used to on the old G4 iMac.

Apple will make card reader and camera connectors available with the launch of the iPad on April 3:

The left one connects to your camera, a connection which I have found to be molasses slow in the past. The other allows you to simply insert the SDHC card into the connector for download.

While Apple should be chastised for not integrating a card reader into the body of the iPad, at least this means you can get your snaps from the camera for preview on a decent sized screen, the small LCD screen in the camera being pretty much useless for those of us with 50+ years old eyes.

What is unclear is whether Panasonic G1 RAW will be supported by the iPad’s native photo processing application, iPhoto. And as you can be sure that it will take the slowpokes at Adobe half a generation to port Lightroom to the iPad, iPhoto is what you will likely have to use. Still, that’s not all bad. iPhoto is fine for preview and light processing and you can still take your snaps for subsequent upload to the home machine with Lightroom at a later date. I’m not sure how one goes about using the iPad as a RAW file storage device but am confident this will be possible, in much the same way the device stores JPGs and MP3 tunes. Maybe one can use MobileMe as conduit storage when on the road, though uploading 10mB RAW files using wireless is not my idea of fun.

As regards Panny RAW support, this page confirms that Aperture v3 supports G1/GH1/GF1 RAW (that only took Apple 18 months from the introduction of the camera) but I cannot find out whether iPhoto in the iPad will. I’m using iPhoto ’09 (v 8.1.1) on my desktop and it does not import G1 RAW files showing only a JPG preview then refusing to import anything. One workaround would be to shoot JPG+RAW, I suppose, which will at least allow preview of your images, but until a proper RAW reader application is available that strikes me as a weak option.

I suspect that the demand from photographers and videographers for a broad range of import and preview formats will see the iPad gestate into a very useful traveling device for preview and illustrative use.

There’s also a handy iPad to VGA adapter, in addition to Component and Composite (ugh!) variants:

This will make it easy to plug in your iPad to the big screen TV for picture and movie viewing. Pictures can then be moved to the desktop machine by performing a sync, much as with the iPhone.

To cut a long story short, I have reserved a 32gB (non-3G) iPad and will check it out on April 3. I am avoiding the 3G model as AT&T’s already overloaded network will only get worse when the iPad ramps up bandwidth demand and with free wi-fi broadly available there is little need for yet another usage fee.

I opted for the middle of the road 32gB version, figuring it as follows:

• OS etc. uses 2gB
• Our eight year old’s iPhone games, to be ported to the iPad, consume another 4gB. The boy has his needs, after all.
• iTunes will be another 2gB or so.
• Leaving 24gB which is equal to 3 8gB SDHC cards’ worth or 1,800 RAW originals. That’s a lot, especially after the cull.

Which means that my travel outfit is the diminutive G1 with two lenses (kit and 45-200mm zooms) and a 1.5lb iPad + a few ounces for its charger.

That little lot represents firepower and competence we could only have dreamt of a mere 5 years ago. The main lie in the iPad’s specs will, I’m sure, prove to be the battery life. Jobs’s “up to 10 hours” spin will probably translate into something closer to 5-6 hours, but that is still more than adequate for moderately heavy use.

One more unusual use for me will be as a device to display cooking recipes. I enjoy cooking and the keyboard-free surface should resist splatters well. We will see. Somehow I don’t see greedy little piggie Mr. Jobs giving me a free replacement should I drop the original in the frying pan ….

Let’s hope this device proves as reliable as the iPhone, not like the other awfully unreliable Apple hardware I have had to contend with over the ages. Apple is smart to use a reservation system as it will allow them to allocate the skimpy first batch of 200,000 iPads to stores with the highest demand. For example, there’s unlikely to be any such demand in the deep South. The iPad may be a touchscreen device usable even by those with hamburger fingers, but a modicum of reading skills is a prerequisite to use. That means higher allocations for those of us living in civilization.

Of course, if I don’t like the gadget when I test it in the Apple Store, I’ll buy it anyway and flip it for a quick 20% gain on the way out the door, as only pre-ordered unit quantities are being shipped to stores. So if you think you can get one on a walk-in basis, you are going to have to deal with the arbitrageur types like me!

iPhoto update: Reader Craig Johnson (see Comments, below) has pointed out that there was an update to iPhoto for compatibility with the G1. I downloaded it just now – it still shows iPhoto as v 8.1.1 but a new ‘RAW compatibility update’ was applied – and I can confirm that RAW files from my Panasonic G1 now load in iPhoto and can be processed. As Craig points out it’s unclear whether the iPad version of iPhoto will support G1 RAW out of the box, but I am confident that Apple will get there eventually owing to the popularity of that camera. Thank you, Craig!

Blah.

I put my predictions on the line yesterday and blew it in two major respects – the price (I reckoned on $1,000) and the lack of Blutetooth (iPad has it).

Having watched today’s presentation and read the tech specs of Apple’s new touch screen tablet computer, here are my first reactions:

The Good:
• Great entry price at $499+tax
• 802.11n high speed wifi
• I make the full diagonal to be 12.13″ so the 9.7″ claimed for the display area is likely true – that’s a good size
• IPS screen technology will be great for accurate color photograph display if it can be profiled properly
• 1.5lb light weight – but no mention of how much the charger weighs – I assume it takes forever to charge through a low current USB cable connection
• Claimed 10 hour battery life – though I have difficulty believing that
• Integrated with iTunes store for books, magazines, movies, music
• If you have an iPhone/Touch you already know how to use it
• Lots of apps already available though most will have to be rewritten to take advantage of the full definition
• Bluetooth – let’s hope it works with existing wireless keyboards
• No need to pay twice for tunes and apps if I read that right – the iPhone version can also be loaded on the iPad at no extra cost
• Nice looking iBook application
• iWork and iLife upgraded for touchscreen use
• Components of iWork may be separately purchased
• iPhone OS – lean, mean and hopefully fast
• Claimed ‘instant on’
• Monthly 3G telco plan available – no long term contract

  The Bad:

• Glossy screen
• No iChat camera
• Poor storage capacity (16gB in base model – that’s only 1,600 RAW files – not much for an extended trip) but maybe the USB port is not crippled and will allow use of external HDDs
• Uses AT&T not Verizon in the 3G (add $130) versions
• No indication whether you can upload Lightroom or similar apps and whether the custom CPU can handle it
• If it doesn’t run Excel and Word say goodbye to any corporate sales. Like it or not, these are the standard
• No touch screen feedback when keys are activated
• No indication whether the telco chip will support Verizon technology
• No SDHC/SDXC card slot – bad oversight – more things to forget for your next trip
• 4:3 screen not 16:9 – who makes movies on 4:3 any more?

  The Ugly:

• Dumb as a brick name – “Honey, where’s the iPod?” said with an American accent reminds me of this
• Ugly broad black bezel
• Lower margin in an attempt to grab netbook market share – bad for the stock?
• Probably fragile – a big expanse of bendable glass and lots of fingerprints to contend with on that glossy screen, not to mention your own reflection when in use
• No support for Adobe Flash – whether you like it or not, that’s the default application for much video on the web

I would like to have seen more emphasis in today’s weak, self congratulatory presentation on other uses, like universal remote functionality, ability to host a business projection, photography, etc.

However, at that price, if the virtual keyboard works reasonably well and if the dockable external keyboard is well priced, this will be a significant challenger to low margin netbooks made by the competition unless the system is so locked that you cannot use applications of choice. Who in their right mind, for example, prefers iWork Numbers to Microsoft Excel for serious number crunching or Pages to Word for heavy duty word processing? My sense is that the old “never buy v1.0 of anything” rule applies strongly here and that my $400 netbook with its 500gB HDD, 802.11n and an SDHC reader, not to mention a real keyboard, just got a new lease on life. Even if it weighs one pound more – worth it for the matte screen alone.

Disclosure: No AAPL positions.