Yesterday’s “reveal” of the iPad was predictably anti-climactic. With the hype that had built up, anything short of a mind-reading, teleporting device had to be a bit of a letdown. But we are now likely to enter the phase of underestimating the iPad. People are already obsessing about such flaws as the omission of a camera. Or the lack of support for Flash. Or the absence of multi-tasking. These critiques mostly miss a couple of crucial points. First, this is of course extremely similar to the history of the iPhone - what, no Cut-and-Paste? Apple very quickly came out with significant product improvements for the iPhone. I expect that it will be no different for the iPad. Second, while Apple wants you to have a great web experience, they want you to have an even better experience for certain categories (games, videos) through native apps for which Apple takes a cut. If they get enough devices out quickly that will succeed. Third, out of the gate the iPad meets four of my five personal requirements, which I had set out here http://continuations.com/post/321509690/slates-my-personal-requirements . It is much cheaper than had been rumored, making it possible to get more than one for the house. It looks like it would survive a coffee spill and 10 hrs of battery life would be an entire week of occasional usage around the house. Because it doesn’t have multi-tasking it is much simpler to operate. There is a Wifi only option. The only thing that seems to be missing out of the gate are user profiles that would make it easy to share. Bottomline, this is very much the device that I anticipated and I believe that it would be a mistake to dismiss it as an XXL iPod Touch.
