A quick take on the iPad

Well after months (years?) of intense speculation Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs introduced their new tablet device called the iPad.

Apple seems to be positioning the iPad to replace netbooks and or laptop in some situations as well as making E-books and other media even easier to obtain and use. It certainly is an amazing device and when it ships in March, Apple will sell quite a few of them, however there are some things that are missing that would make the iPad a must have device.

No Multitasking

One thing the Android and Palm Pre phones have is the ability to run several apps at once. Once the iPhone it’s not that big of a deal but from time to time I do considering it a nuisance. I could see with the iPad replacing the netbook that this would become an issue much more often.

No Camera

Depending on how you look at it very surprising, I don’t think an inclusion of a camera would have raised the cost that much.

No Flash Plugin

There is no flash plugin for the iPhone version of the Safari Web browser. This seems to be the same with the iPad version. On the iPhone it’s not that big a deal, but with the larger screen of the iPad this will become very annoying, very quickly.

There are many good features about the iPad as well; the ability to read newspapers and magazines in a more traditional format will make it very appealing for some people. For most folks who already have a laptop / netbook or smart phone, I can’t see the need for it, particularly at its’s $499 base price.

This may change in version 2 of the iPad.