Apple iPad: The bad

A cou­ple of prob­lems with the iPad

So the Apple iPad has just been announced and I couldn’t help but notice a few bad points. It looks awe­some and promis­ing and it will prob­a­bly do well but there are some short com­ings, as expected.

1. No flash sup­port. As a device for the ‘ulti­mate web expe­ri­ence’, this comes as a bit of a sur­prise. I thought Apple would up the game and come up with a flash enabled browser. Given that they do not allow 3rd party browsers, this is how it’s going to be for a long time. Maybe they’ll release the iPad Flash in 2011?

2. No mul­ti­task­ing. Very dis­ap­point­ing as well, even more than flash. Sym­bian phones have been doing it for years and they are not nearly as pow­er­ful as the iPad. Why Apple, why? Maybe it has to do with per­for­mance? iPhone apps rarely stut­ter or crash and they prob­a­bly want users to expe­ri­ence the best of which ever app they’re using on the iPad as well. Bummer.

3. No camera/webcam. Maybe I’m being picky here but this is very restrict­ing. A web­cam or cam­era of some sort would have opened a whole new dimen­sion and given greater rea­son to get this device. Cou­pled with its 3G capa­bil­i­ties, it would have become a more use­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion device. Even the new iPod nano has a cam­era for cry­ing out loud! It turns out that the iPad SDK thinks it has a cam­era as cov­ered by Crunch Gear. Two pos­si­bil­i­ties; either it’s com­ing soon or they for got to strip it out from th iPhone soft­ware. I cer­tainly hope it’s com­ing before the launch in 60 days.

Will the iPad change the world like I thought? Prob­a­bly it will and that’s really excit­ing despite these drawbacks.

So those are my thoughts. Not a lot of prob­lems really, and they are not really deal break­ers. There are other minor gripes though; I wish it had a sty­lus of some sort or some new input method at least. But no qualms. I like it, Apple did an extra­or­di­nary job with this. Here’s hop­ing it will be released in NZ promptly. Now on video!