The iPad was unveiled today and as I was anxiously anticipating details of the eReader functionality my excitement quickly turned to disappointment when I realized they went for a “Book” looking UI. I personally don’t understand why they felt the need to use the turning page graphic and the remaining side of the book pages for the iBook app. I mean that’s nifty and all but I know I’m not holding a real book it’s not making it a better user experience for me. In fact I might rather that space to the right (where you can see the remaining pages) be used for the controls, where I can adjust brightness text size and maybe even flip the page with the flick of my thumb. Although as I stated before I could do with out the the turning page graphic. Maybe I’m being a little hard on this on aspect of the iPad but this [eReader] is the part I’ve been anticipating most and I was prepared to have my mind blown with the genius of Apple. All said, I still plan on getting one. Maybe using one “in my hands” will change my mind.

Check out the Mag+ concept below. Yes I understand it’s called “Mag” and not Book+ but it’s extremely inovative and honestly gets me super geeked about hand held reader / eReader formats.

Tom Watson also discusses “A New Canvas“