I flew down to New York yesterday and picked up my new 64GB iPad from Apple to give readers an early look at it. I had used the iPad after the launch in January and wondered if my initial thoughts would hold true. They did. First off, let me say this: The iPad is not just a bigger version of the iPod touch. I’ve seen that around the Web and can’t believe that people are so short sighted or would even describe it that way.

The iPad is most definitely a new category of devices that didn’t exist before Apple introduced it. So, who is the iPad’s competition? They really don’t have any yet.

Netbooks under deliver, notebooks offer completely different functionality, as does the iPhone.

The one place that I really believe the iPad shines is in productivity — the ability to actually get things done in a small form factor that’s easy to use. I’ve done a write-up on that for CNET that will be posted this afternoon, so I won’t get into that here.

The iPad offers more than productivity though. It’s obviously going to be a lot of fun for people to use with its music and video, but most especially the third-party apps.

Developers have really taken the gloves off and delivered some some amazing apps for the iPad.

Take Scrabble as an example. You can use your iPhone or iPod touch to connect to the iPad and then hide your letters from other players on those devices. When it’s your turn just flick the letters from your iPhone onto the iPad’s game board. That’s a brilliant use of technology.

What impresses me the most about the iPad developers so far is the way they use the extra screen real estate and processing power to make the apps better. These aren’t just ports of existing apps — in many cases, they are brand new.

The amount of gestures that can be used on the iPad is phenomenal. I tell people switching to the Mac all the time that all you have to do is think of the easiest way to do something and chances are that’s how Apple does it. The iPad is just like that.

For instance, to view the individual photos in a stack, just pinch and expand your fingers. All of the photos are instantly available. It’s that attention to detail that no other company seems to be able to match.

The iPad is not really a 1.0 device. Rather its the culmination of a decades worth of work from Apple. From the multitouch to the integration of iTunes, Apple has been working on these technologies for many years.

And it shows.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them and I’ll try to answer them as quickly as possible.