This is gonna be a really long post but hopefully it will point out some things to people that are bashing the features on the iPad, I am not a crazy troll or fanboy just wasting your time praising apple for everything but I feel like some of you are missing the point of the device, so if you can, please read the whole thing
I saw the iPad yesterday and while I won't buy one because I don't have a need for it other than it would be cool to play with one, most regular consumers will like it.
Just the fact that we are all posting on an Apple forum shows that we are an exception, a small fraction of the people in the world. We are, for the most part, computer nerds. The iPad wasn't necessary designed for us. Sure some of us like it and may get it but it was designed for people who don't know much about computers and just want it to work.
I'm an IT major on my way to having a job in the IT field next year and I have tons of friends that are not computer savvy at all and they don't care or even understand most of the complaints that everyone online is talking about. Let me go over some of the points from the Gizmodo post "8 things that suck about the iPad" and talk about them from the viewpoint of a standard average computer user, which is by far the majority of people in the world.
http://gizmodo.com/5458382/8-things-that-suck-about-the-ipad.
Big, Ugly Bezel
Well this is clearly not going to be a main issue with most people because quite frankly people aren't going to care. They even said in their article that it's made this way so you can hold your thumbs there without touching the actual screen. So this is really a moot point. I think people would be more upset if you couldn't comfortably hold the iPad without touching icons accidentally.
No Multitasking
Of course for people like you and me, we would love to be able to run tons of apps and multitask like there's no tomorrow but most people don't. I have explained and asked some of my friends that have iPhones about this and none of them really even understood because when you leave notes to go into the email app, once you go back to notes, it's still right where you left off. Most people wouldn't even know that it wasn't multitasking because it saves where you were.
Push notifications solve the problem (granted I wish there was a better way of organizing the notifications such as the Palm Pre, but I'm sure they will add that on in 4.0.) of wanting an AIM or Twitter app open while you are doing other things because honestly, if you had them both open, AIM would just pop up with a growl like notification in the top corner like on OS X and then you would switch over to your AIM app and type to them and then come back to the browser or whatever else you were doing.
The biggest thing people would want to know is if they can listen to their iPod app while doing other things, which you can. I understand that there are some other apps like Pandora that personally I would love to run while doing other things but realistically most people don't use Pandora. The iPhone OS has sold over 75+ million units. I looked up some stats on Pandora and the most recent thing I could find was around 2 million accounts registered on the OS. That's almost 1/40 people that even know what it is and made an account, I'm sure far less actually use it all the time and consider it a deal breaker.
For the average user, multitasking just makes the device more prone to failure / slowdowns and the like which would possible compromise the entire "it just works" mentality that is drawing people to it in the first place. Normal consumers don't want to have to think about the computer, and maintaining it and understanding it, they just want to go online and have it work and for the most part Apple is accomplishing that, by controlling everything that happens. Lets face it, if consumers are allowed to run rampant people would end up complaining it crashes and its slow and the like. They need to be controlled. I have to fix peoples computers all the time because they didn't know what they were doing and either installed a virus or just bloated up their computer so much because they just clicked OK on everything. The iPhone OS doesn't let that happen.
No Cameras
Yes this would be nice to have (however I NEVER use mine on my mac) and it's sure to come to the next model. It's just a business strategy to make you buy the next one too. Yeah it sucks but you can't blame em for that, it's just business. If they added every feature everyone wanted in 1.0 no one would ever buy 2.0.
Touch Keyboard
If the keyboard is at least as fast to use as the iPhone then it will be fine. I can type almost 30-40 words per minute on my iPhone. Most people aren't speed demons at typing and can't type super fast anyways. For most general web surfing, it doesn't require a large amount of typing. Once you need to bust out the iWork to type a paper or something, either learn to be really good with the virtual keyboard which I bet will happen. I know tons of people that originally complained about the keyboard on the iPhone and eventually learned how to be fast on it. But if you don't like that option, get the keyboard dock for the hardcore typing, or use a bluetooth apple keyboard.
No HDMI Out
I doubt many people will use this feature anyways but either way, there is an adapter to hook it up to projectors, TV's and such. True it's not HDMI, which sucks for people like us that want the best quality 1080P Bluerays on HDMI but I bet if you said to the general people like Dad that wants to hook it up to watch a movie or show family pictures you can hook it up but it's not HDMI it's Component instead, he's not gonna care as long as a picture shows up on the screen.
The Name iPad
Sure, pretty crappy name but honestly, a reason not to get one? Who cares...everyone will forget it after a while anyways and no one will end up caring.
No Flash
Now I will give it to you, this is a pretty big deal to normal users, even if they don't know it. However I will point out a few things that make this less of a big deal, especially in the upcoming months and years.
All the major websites a general web surfing non geek are probably gonna be fine, lets go through a few of em. Youtube, has an app that's better than the site anyways, either way it's going HTML 5 anyways so even if there wasn't an app it would still be ok. (HTML 5, by the way, is up and coming tech and you can be sure that web developers are just itching to use it and dump flash. As time goes on this will eventually become a non issue. I don't need to point out how bad flash is, but if you want to see for yourself read
this article.) But regardless, there's a youtube app, so that's covered and that's a big percentage of the flash usage by people right there.
News sites, ok there is flash video on news sites but most major news sites are gonna have an app or already do that lets you watch the videos there in a better way anyways.
Video sites like hulu, true, it does suck that you can't watch hulu but I imagine eventually they (and other like them) will make an app. Apple is starting to loosen up on the app store process, made evident by the fact that they let in VOIP apps over 3G just the other day. Streaming apps can't be far behind.
So yes, it sorta does suck that flash isn't on their but in the end it would cause more problems than it would be worth. Its the number one reason for crashes on Mac OS X. Do you think people want their "it just works" iPad crashing all the time just like a "normal complicated computer"? No, and like I said between the apps and HTML 5, it should be a non issue soon. At least most of the popular sites.
Adapters, Adapters, Adapters
Sure they could have thrown in a USB port or an SD slot but I guarentee you they are waiting for 2.0. Just like I said earlier, they can't add all the features right now. In the meantime it's not that big a deal. The adapter to hook up to a tv or projector doesn't matter cause even if it had a HDMI port or Mini Display Port you would still have to carry around a cable.
The camera / USB picture importer...yeah an SD slot would be nice but most people are used to just keeping their USB cable in their camera bag for whenever they wanna sync it anyways so I really doubt it will be much of a deal breaker. A little inconvenient, yeah but not a big deal, and it will surely be fixed in the next generation.
Cameras are probably the most used USB or SD item that any general consumer would use anyways so it's not that big a deal to not include any other USB support. If they want to give their friend a picture or iWork document, for the meantime they can always just email it no big deal. It won't make much of a difference for the normal consumer.
It's Not Widescreen
Sure 16:9 would be nice, but I promise you most people don't even know what aspect ratio is, and therefore probably won't care. They are used to letterboxes on their TV's so they probably won't really mind. It's only a horrible big deal to people like us.
Doesn't Support T-Mobile 3G
Not really that much of an issue, I bet the amount of people that it would benefit isn't a huge percentage. I know everyone hates AT&T so maybe I'm off a bit but still, it's already unlocked and the data plan for it is really a deal and a pretty cool implementation if you ask me. Did anyone even expect it to be unlocked and compatible with tons of carriers?
A Closed App Ecosystem
No one thats not computer savey knows what this even means. They just know there are already 140,000 apps and counting, quick. And tons of them are AMAZING. I promise you your mom or even one of my friends that doesn't know much about computers isn't going "man I wish apple was more open source because there aren't enough apps that let me do what I really want with my phone!". Bet you none of them even know what google voice is.
In conclusion, if anyones still reading by now, I just feel like everyone missing the point of this device. This would be perfect for my friends that just like to go online and listen to itunes, perfect for my mom who doesn't know anything about computers and doesn't want to bother with them, just wants to read emails and do online banking occasionally. Lets just put it this way, if there's ever a computer that my grandma could use or even think about getting, it would be an iPad. I know it's supposed to be used as a secondary device that syncs with a computer but honestly, if my mom had one she wouldn't need computer to sync it with cause mostly she would just be surfing the internet, reading books and uploading pictures to it from her camera and at 499 it's a pretty good price for everything it does.
