I have to confess being disappointed about the Apple iPad. I love Apple stuff (Jan and I have MacBook Pros and iPhones, and I would LOVE to have an “iNetBook”), but the iPad doesn’t do much for me. To be honest, when I saw the first pictures of it, I had an image of some giant holding this thing up and talking on it like an iPhone.

Not surprisingly, comparisons are being made between the iPad and the Amazon Kindle for reading eBooks. I can see that some folks would prefer the iPad to the Kindle, especially since (presumably) you don’t necessarily have to go the iBooks route, but could just download the Kindle app through iTunes and keep merrily reading Kindle books (or do both). For me personally, however, I find the eInk very easy on my eyes, and I’m not all that wild about reading from a backlit display any more than I have to, which is usually about 12 hrs a day, on average. Apple’s displays are great – and sure, they can show color – but just for reading the latest novel, my eyeballs still prefer my Kindle.

The real problem with the iPad, in my humble opinion, is that Apple only went halfway. While I’m sure they had constraints on both the engineering and cost modeling aspects, here’s what I would’ve liked to see (and if they’d put these features on, I’d already have my pre-order in!):

Voice capability. If you’re going to have wi-fi *and* cellular (depending on the model), it doesn’t make sense to me not to have telephony functionality. If I’m going to carry this thing around, why should I have to carry my iPhone along, too? Set it up with a standard jack and Bluetooth capability to link up with a headset and be done with it.

Memory. The base model has 16 GB. Come on, guys! That would be gross overkill for an ebook-specific device like the Kindle (since the text-based files used by the Kindle are comparatively small), but for a multi-purpose platform the absolute minimum should be 32. Even that’s pretty tight, considering the multimedia applications that the iPad is clearly designed for. 64 GB base, plus a smart card slot for additional memory, would have been nice.

Integrated keyboard. This is my biggest “missing item.” I wish Apple would have done something similar to what Lenovo is doing for their hybrid coming out later this year (see the pic at right). Call me a dinosaur, but a lot of the keyboard activity I do involves looking at split windows or multiple windows/tabs, and it looks to me like the iPad’s screen real estate is going to be really cramped with its touch keyboard active (this is one of the big annoyances I have with the iPhone in landscape mode: you can only see one or two lines of text). Further, having a hinged display/keyboard combination is a lot more ergonomic in many ways than just a flat panel: you can set it down and adjust it to many different positions to suit your situation. If I’m on a plane and want to watch a movie, I don’t want to have to hold the thing the whole time – I’d much rather be able to open it up to a convenient viewing angle and sit back to enjoy the show. Yes, I do like the idea of being able to just have the pad itself for a lot of applications where you don’t need the keyboard, but to me, the keyboard is still a necessity as part of the overall package. I know you can get an accessory keyboard, but it’s not the same as having an integrated unit (again, like Lenovo’s hybrid).

Webcam/microphone. This goes along with the telephony, in a way: if you’re aiming for this level of convergence, just do it!

Support for Flash. I just don’t get this: Flash is one of the most common multimedia technologies on the web, and it boggles my mind that neither the iPhone nor the iPad browsers have support for it. Apple, I love you guys, I really do, but this is an incredibly silly oversight that needs to be fixed.

Anyway, I fully plan to stand in line at the local Apple store to play with an iPad, but it’ll have to really capture my attention. Otherwise I’ll just stick with my Acer Aspire One and hold out for Apple’s next gadget.

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