iPad, rock or flop?

Well for everyone who may not know because you live under a rock or are a hard core (and likely depressed) windows fanboy who will not listen to anything by Apple, today was the big press event unveiling the long awaited Apple Tablet named iPad.

Having watched today's events and seeing some breakdowns on the device from a couple of very good sources (gizmodo, engadget, and more) i have come to an opinion on the device. I will reveal my feelings at the end but for now i will just bore you with the technical stuff so that you can form your own opinion before hearing mine. I will try to make this review as unbiased as possible.

Hardware:

• Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
• Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
• Depth:0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
• Weight: 1.5 pounds (.68 kg) Wi-Fi model;

   1.6 pounds (.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

Connection:

• Wi-Fi 802.11n
• Bluetooth 2.1
• Optional 3G with a plan

Price:

Size:

• 16GB
• 32GB
• 64GB

Features:

The iPad has a built in Accelerometer, 3.5-m stereo headphone jack, microphone, compass, and SIM card tray for microSIM on the WI-Fi + 3G model only.

Okay now for some things that you should know before going out to buy one when they an available.

The Good:

• 10 hours of battery and over a month of standby
• Huge Screen
• Blazing Fast
• Multi-touch display with very cool graphics
• eBooks, and the possibility of school text books being available in eBook form
• On Screen Keyboard
• Physical Volume and Mute Buttons on the side of the device

The Bad:

• No Flash, while this was manageable on the iPod Touch and iPhone, it is a major problem on the iPad since it limits watching videos online to YouTube, sorry Hulu :(
• No Multitasking, this means only one app at a time can be running which seems like a waste with all this power and speed to not be able to run things like Pandora in the background while working on something else.
• No Camera, i cannot get over this puzzling decision why would they not though in a front facing camera, but its missing which mean video conferencing will be too, this makes it more like a giant iPod Touch then a supercharged iPhone.

The Ugly:

• No ability to connect other devices to it without the use of extra adapters. There is only one port on this device and it is the proprietary 30-pin port used by Apple, meaning only Apple products would work with it.
• Only App Store apps will work on the iPad, meaning you will not be able to download programs from the internet like Google Chrome or other commonly used apps. Also anything not approved by the App Store cannot be used which includes the popular Google Voice App.
• Rigid Apple limitations on individuality and customization of the actual operating system, it appears to follow the strict rules of the iPhone using the 4 column snap to grid and non-movable dock.
• Naming the device iPad, thus beings the wave of Female Hygiene product jokes.

So here is my final opinion, i feel that while it is a very cool device and it is something that hardcore Apple fans will want, the iPad as it stands not may not do well. It is clear that they are trying to market this device towards business people and college students with the addition of the iBook Store and Brushes. The problem is that these are people who are going to want to be able to use their mobile devices for things other then what might be found in the app store. Also being unable to add a USB device to it, and lacking a camera, there is going to be some major drawbacks for people who use the internet to communicate with video. One of the most annoying things to plague the iPad though will be the large glossy blank boxes on web pages where a nice flash video would be, on a small screen it is easy to ignore, but if able want to make this device a standard in every house then they are going to need to add Flash.

I am not going to be getting one right now, but that is subject to change depending on later hardware upgrades.

For anyone interested in reading more about the iPad feel free to check out the hands on reviews and videos over at gizmodo, and engadget. Also the video of today’s conference is available online from Apple with Quicktime.