In 10 years of reviewing tech products for The New York Times, I’ve  never seen a product as polarizing as 
Apple’s 
iPad,  which arrives in stores on Saturday.  
“This device is laughably absurd,” goes a typical remark on a tech  blog’s comments board. “How can they expect anyone to get serious  computer work done without a mouse?”  
“This truly is a magical revolution,” goes another. “I can’t imagine why  anyone will want to go back to using a mouse and keyboard once they’ve  experienced Apple’s visionary user interface!”  
Those are some pretty confident critiques of the iPad — considering that  their authors have never even tried it.  
In any case, there’s a pattern to these assessments.  
The haters tend to be techies; the fans tend to be regular people.  
Therefore, no single write-up can serve both readerships adequately.  There’s but one solution: Write separate reviews for these two  audiences.
Read the first one if you’re a techie. (How do you know? Take this  simple test. Do you use BitTorrent? Do you run Linux? Do you have more  e-mail addresses than pants? You’re a techie.)  
Read the second review if you’re anyone else.  
Review for Techies  
The Apple iPad is basically a gigantic 
iPod Touch.  
It’s a half-inch-thick slab, all glass on top, aluminum on the back.  Hardly any buttons at all — just a big Home button below the screen. It  takes you to the Home screen full of apps, just as on an 
iPhone.  
One model gets online only in Wi-Fi hot spots ($500 to $700, for storage  capacities from 16 to 64 gigabytes). The other model can get online  either using Wi-Fi or, when you’re out and about, using 
AT&T’s  cellular network; that feature adds $130 to each price.  
You operate the iPad by tapping and dragging on the glass with your  fingers, just as on the iPhone. When the very glossy 9.7-inch screen is  off, every fingerprint is grossly apparent.  
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.  
When the iPad is upright, typing on the on-screen keyboard is a horrible  experience; when the iPad is turned 90 degrees, the keyboard is just  barely usable (because it’s bigger). A $70 keyboard dock will be  available in April, but then you’re carting around two pieces.  
At least Apple had the decency to give the iPad a really fast processor.  Things open fast, scroll fast, load fast. Surfing the Web is a heck of a  lot better than on the tiny iPhone screen — first, because it’s so  fast, and second, because you don’t have to do nearly as much zooming  and panning.  
But as any 
Slashdot.org  reader can tell you, the iPad can’t play Flash video. Apple has this  thing against Flash, the Web’s most popular video format; says it’s  buggy,  it’s  not secure and depletes the battery. Well, fine, but  meanwhile, thousands of Web sites show up with empty white squares on  the iPad — places where videos or animations are supposed to play.  
YouTube, Vimeo,  TED.com, 
CBS.com and some other  sites are converting their videos to iPad/iPhone/Touch-compatible  formats. But all the news sites and game sites still use Flash. It will  probably be years before the rest of the Web’s videos become  iPad-viewable.  
There’s no multitasking, either. It’s one app at a time, just like on  the iPhone. Plus  no U.S.B. jacks  and no camera. Bye-bye, 
Skype  video chats. You know Apple is just leaving stuff out for next year’s  model.  
The bottom line is that you can get a laptop for much less money — with a  full keyboard, DVD drive, U.S.B. jacks, camera-card slot, camera, the  works. Besides: If you’ve already got a laptop and a smartphone, who’s  going to carry around a third machine?  
Review for Everyone Else  
The Apple iPad is basically a gigantic iPod Touch.  
The simple act of making the multitouch screen bigger changes the whole  experience. Maps become real maps, like the paper ones. Scrabble shows  the whole board, without your having to zoom in and out. You see your  e-mail inbox and the open message simultaneously. Driving simulators  fill more of your field of view, closer to a windshield than a keyhole.   
The new iBooks e-reader app is filled with endearing grace notes. For  example, when you turn a page, the animated page edge actually follows  your finger’s position and speed as it curls,   just like a paper page.  Font, size and brightness controls appear when you tap. Tap a word to  get a dictionary definition, bookmark your spot or look it up on 
Google  or 
Wikipedia.  There’s even a rotation-lock switch on the edge of the iPad so you can  read in bed on your side without fear that the image will rotate.  
If you have the cellular  model, you can buy AT&T service so you can  get online anywhere. (Cellular iPads aren’t available until next month;  I tested a Wi-Fi-only model.)  
But how’s this for a rare deal from a cell company: there’s no contract.  By tapping a button in Settings, you can order up a month of unlimited  cellular Internet service for $30. Or pay $15 for 250 megabytes of  Internet data; when it runs out, you can either buy another 250 megs, or  just upgrade to the unlimited plan for the month. Either way, you can  cancel and rejoin as often as you want — just March, July and November,  for example — without penalty. The other carriers are probably cursing  AT&T’s name for setting this precedent.