Since Steve is all chatty these days, Craig Hockenberry has written an open letter about the way the iPad is used in group settings:

Predictably, people’s initial reaction was “Wow, that’s the new iPad!” But that quickly faded as I opened the Photos app and passed the device around. My family was more interested in sharing the photos than talking about the new technology.

I was particularly interested in how my mother, the quintessential technophobe, would react to the device. She picked up on things quickly and was flipping through photos in no time. It astonished me how the interface disappeared for her: at one point she subconsciously licked her finger before “flipping” to the next photo.

As interesting as it was to see someone non-technical use the device, the real eye opener was how several people could interact with the iPad at once. Much of my mother’s fear of computers was overcome because she was looking at the pictures alongside my sister-in-law who helped her out when she got stuck. Learning was organic.

This is what I’ve seen too. Whatever app is running quickly becomes the iPad. You’re not using a Google Maps program on a tablet computer, you’re holding an amazing digital, zoomable, worldwide map. Safari is also an amazing experience where it really feels like the entire World Wide Web is in your hands. The experience is also made communal by allowing more people to sit around it and use it simultaneously. A slight tilt in any direction orients it to that person’s view, but many apps (such as Maps) don’t require a particular orientation. With a desktop or laptop computer, there must always be one exclusive “driver” sitting in front of it controlling it primarily.

The iPad was naturally passed around amongst the partygoers. Many people interacted with it during the evening, and I lost track of who had it at any given time. And therein lies a fundamental problem.

My iPad has a lot of personal information on it: email, business documents, and financial data. When you pass it around, you’re giving everyone who touches it the opportunity to mess with your private life, whether intentionally or not. That makes me uneasy.

I don’t have an iPad yet, but my friend does, and even though it’s his information, not mine, it makes me instinctively anxious when people pass it around to experiment with it.