I think of the iPad as a Nintendo DS but with better graphics, internet device that lets me run the iPhone apps that I love, and an ebook reader. As the eBook market grows Apple has raised the bar between ebook reader makers. They have the success of iTunes that they will easily become the dominant brand in the ebook reader market.

I am not an apple fanboy. So, I am not going to run out and get it in 60 days. But, it will grow on me since I was already looking at an ebook reader.

What apple has done is forced people to feel that current ebook readers are outdated since they use black and gray screens. They have No ability to surf the internet or enjoy a video podcast.

I suspect when the iPad 3.0 comes out. That will be the time I will get one. Becuase it took 3 upgrades for the iPhone to get MMS, Copy, and Paste.

The two features that would get me to go out and buy one now would be a front facing camera and the abilty to add the iPad to my iPhone as a headset.

Picture your self sitting on your couch and reading a book. You decide to call someone via skype and now you can via your wifi connection. Then you decide to call your mom. You initiate a call via bluetooth to your phone and use the iPad as a speaker phone or with the headphones.

#my2cents

But, I do find it interesting that the iPad will come unlock as Steve briefly mentioned.

1.) Camera – Of course I only meant front-facing. Trying to take a picture with this device, like you, said, would look ridiculous. But, let's consider Apple's marketing video for a second: http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/4862/screens…

Does that not look like the perfect poise for video conferencing?

After seeing the camera call in the SDK yesterday, it makes me wonder if we will indeed see a camera on this device before it ships. Adding features after the announcement – sort of like with the iPhone back in 2007.

2.) HDMI Out – The have an iPod AV cable, right? And actually, Phil Schiller said yesterday that you'll be able to connect keynote to a projector, which means some form of video out is in the works. Whether or not that's HD out, we will have to wait and see.

3.) Flash – I get that Flash is horrible. I hate flash myself. That's not my complaint. My complaint is Apple limiting customer choice and experience solely because of its hatred towards the plugin. Not necessarily a bad thing, of course, to push standards, but in the meantime, customers have been begging for Flash support. The iPhone and iPod Touch probably can't handle it, but I doubt the A4 would have any issues running Flash, sandboxed, for a reasonable amount of time. Give your customers what they want and what they ask for. Don't make them change their workflow or limit their experience.

4.) Handwriting Recognition – I've used several tablets from companies like Lenovo, and I must say, the handwriting recognition has always bee quite *good*. Not quite bad. And when you're in the classroom, I don't know about you, but I certainly don't type my notes. It takes far too long to correct typos, and organizational structure is easier to accomplish by hand. If Apple's marketing this as an eReader, and especially for students with the textbook offerings, why on earth can I not take notes on top of my book? This also brings me to my multitasking complaint. I can't have the Notes app, or a third party note taking app open at the same time as my book? Scenario – Professor says take out your book. You click. Now the professor tells you to read and take notes on pages 40-45. You now have to close the book before you can begin taking notes. That's not practical. Hopefully iPhone OS 4.0 will bring multi-tasking to this device.

Also, finally, the marketing for this thing is absolutely absurd. In the video Jonny Ive says, “When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works…” Really, Jonny? Seems pretty simple to me. Rather than make a hybrid iPhone/Mac OS X OS you decided to just take iPhone OS and blow it up on a large device. Nothing too difficult to understand there. Also, “Our most advanced technology in a magical device at an unbelievable price” is marketing talk for “It's hard to believe it took us this long to inflate our iPod Touch and raise the price.”

Do I like it? Yes. Do I think it could do so much more? Yes. Do I think Steve bashing netbooks and then offering a device as a replacement that does less than half of what a netbook can do was a poor decision on his part? Yes.

1) Camera(s):

Let's think about this logically for a moment. Look around you and find a ~10 inch rectangular object and hold it up in front of your face, pretending it has a camera. This is completely the wrong form factor for taking photos, it's way too large to be a comfortable camera to use, you'd look ridiculous doing it (see http://bit.ly/9iS0sl for an example).

The iPad is something you'd need to carry around in a bag of some sorts as it's simply too big to put in a pocket. If you're carrying around a bag then there's absolutely no reason not to take a normal, compact, lightweight and cheaper digital camera too, there's plenty of room in that bag you're carrying. That camera will take orders of magnitude higher quality pictures, won't make you look like an arse while using it. You also most likely have a phone with you in your pocket that'll take the same crappy quality photos that the mythical camera in the iPad would have taken.

And a front facing camera for video conferencing? Again… wrong form factor. If you're holding this thing in the air or not resting it on a surface then there's a good chance you'll be moving around all over the place, especially if you're trying to do something else at the same time. You know how annoying shaky-cam and wobbly video is to watch? Very.

So, you sit down and put the iPad on a table, the shaking has stopped but now the camera is pointing a the ceiling; are you planning to stand over it, looking straight down, much like trying to see your reflection in a lake? No, of course not.

So, instead you prop it up in your lap. A quick refresher… light travels in straight lines, so… unless you have the camera perpendicular to your face, the person at the other end of the video conference will either be enjoying a close up of your stomach, chest, or, again, the ceiling over your head.

You'd have to sit perfectly still to avoid both camera shake and to keep it pointed where you wanted. Way to ruin the easy, casual 'it just works' vision of communications technology like iChat.

2) HDMI Out:

Again, think about it. You'd have your iPad next to your TV, plugged in, and you're sat back on your sofa some distance away. What happens when you want to change what's playing? That's right. You have to get up and walk over to it, change the thing you wanted to change then go and sit back down again. Just like TVs before remote controls were invented. Sounds like a good idea to me.

3) Flash:

OK, so lets put a browser plugin that routinely crashes and takes up tons of CPU cycles onto a mobile device; say goodbye to anywhere near 10 hours of battery life and to a responsive web browser.

The reason Apple likes H.264 video–either as a standalone file or embedded in a webpage using HTML5's video tag–is that there are dedicated hardware components designed to decode and play H.264 content, vastly improving battery life and freeing up the CPU for other tasks. Yes, Flash offers some hardware acceleration on Windows but Adobe isn't making any major efforts to port it over to the Mac version, I doubt they'd bother to do so with the iPhone OS version.

Then there's the political aspect to it, Gruber suggested recently (http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_f…) that one of the reasons there's no Flash in iPhone OS is because Apple wants complete access to all source code for this OS so they can do whatever they want with it, whether that's optimisation or porting to a new platform, making it work on custom silicon, or any number of other reasons.

What's Flash used for online? Four things come to mind:

- Video: Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr and other sites are all providing H.264 versions of their content to people already, therefore Flash isn't needed. Sites that don't offer it currently will probably soon start to when their users as why they can't see their video.

- Games: Yes, Flash's absence does become apparent and possibly painful.

- Website UI elements or whole sites: In the huge huge majority of cases anyone who builds a 100% Flash website with no comparable HTML version deserves to shot in the face. And as for a website relying on Flash for a critical and essential UI element such as their navigation bar…

- Ads: Yeah…

4) Handwriting Recognition:

Hasn't almost every implementation of machine handwriting recognition sucked? There's a keyboard on this thing. It'll be WAY faster to use than writing something by hand. Try it. As for sketching and drawing… get yourself one of those $30 capacitive styluses and an app from the App Store.

“Hey you, wanna see/touch my pad?”
“EWW! What?!?”

Then 10 minutes later the cops show up, haha.

 Slate,  Tablet, iCanvas, or  Canvas would have been ideal I think.

I agree the OS looks really weird. The Tiny icons just don't look right at all, and if anything it just shows itself as a big iPhone as a result.

Flash is no big deal, the App Store sorts that out (mostly), and along with HTML 5 showing up there may be little need.

No USB is a shame, but I'm not entirely sure there'd be a great deal of use for it. SD cards, USB drives yes. Anything else? Probably not.

I'm pretty sure if Apple could get handwriting recognition to work, they would have done. I usually find it to be rather poor anyway; perhaps in future (once they iron out the issues, we know what Apple is like, it's gotta be perfect else its a no-go).

I'm not fussed on the name, I reckon it'll grow over time.

Just my two pennies.