I stopped by Steve Job’s place in Palo Alto … to check out the iPad, in person.

• much more impressive hands-on than in the videos
• screen is very responsive
• sound surprisingly good
• many apps don’t rotate the screen from the inferior page view to the superior horizontal view
• it’s heavy (1.5lbs) … needs to be about .75lbs, ideally

As everyone should have known all along, this thing will be a huge hit. Perhaps 7 million sales in the first year. Better devices will have problems competing. (As the Zune has problems competing with the iPod.)

I’ll never buy one myself, but it’s perfect for millions and millions of casual users, worldwide. Much better than a phone, by comparison.