With much fanfare and hoopla Apple announced their newest creation – the iPad. And what a disappointment it was. Turns out that this massive secret product that Apple had been working on is a giant iPod Touch. That’s the best that Apple can do?
Here’s what I think this device is worth – nothing. Other than the big screen what does the iPad have that an iPod Touch 
or iPhone does not? In fact the device has some shortcomings that might prove to be its Achilles heel.
First and foremost, the iPad is supposed to “revolutionize” the way people consume digital media including videos, movies, audio, the whole shebang. And to make that happen Apple omits support for Adobe Flash in the browser!!! What the…..? Almost a majority of videos on the web run on Flash. Now that’s a crippling blow.
The entry level device offers 16 GB of space – enough to hold around 4 movies. Big deal. The iPod Classic can hold up to 200 hrs of video at almost half the price. Maybe that’s not that important.
The absence of a webcam means no video chat – another big blow to the usefulness of this expensive device. The cheapest of netbooks manage to cram one in, but Apple could not. Or maybe they thought people don’t need it.
No USB connectors essentially indicate that photos from digital cameras cannot be transferred directly to the device. Also pen drives cannot be used to transfer data to and from the device. The lack of a CDROM is another major shortcoming.
The device runs the iPhone OS and not the Mac OSX which is yet another major letdown. A full blown OS would have probably increased the appeal of this device manifold. Instead Apple chose to stick to the super restrictive App Store model where people would have to download a set of mini applications in order to do something that is otherwise available as a suite. Case in point Microsoft Office. The fact that the iPad does not run MS Office takes it out of reckoning for most business users. Sure Apple is working on a version of iWorks for the iPad but it won’t be a replacement for MS Office.
The iPhone OS also means that only one application will run at a time - a severe limitation to a lot of people. While it was ok on the mobile phone, on the iPad it is a deal breaker, at least for me.
Tethering the device to the App Store and forcing people to use only Apple approved apps is another major flaw in the whole strategy. This model worked well for the iPhone since it was a subsidized device. So people did not really mind the restriction that much. But the iPad costs $499 for the starter model and you pay that money to own this device and not lease it. So the buyer should have complete independence to install what he likes from where he wants.
As for being an e-book reader, that’s a joke. The whole reason behind the current slew of e-books in the market is to provide the user with an electronic alternative to reading books while trying to make the experience easy on the eyes . That’s one of the reasons almost all the e-books sport a display that by itself does not emit light (e-Ink). The iPad has an LCD screen albeit a very good one. So in other words reading books on this device would be as tiring on the eyes as it is on a computer screen. Some casual reading might be okay, but nothing serious.
The dominant e-book reader in the market today, the Kindle, weighs less than the iPad. The Kindle’s design makes it easy to move back and forth between pages since the Prev and Next buttons are on the same side of the device. thus making one-handed operation easy. The iPad’s iBook application, a direct ripoff on the Classic application, needs the user to touch on opposite ends of the screen to move back and forth between pages. In other words you cannot navigate around a book with a just one hand. Quite a limitation as an e-reader.
Overall, the iPad has underwhelmed everybody. While there is a possibility that it will be made into a success for Apple by the fanboys, it’s not a game changer. The only device that the iPad is probably going to kill is the Joo Joo, previously known as the CrunchPad.
