Everyone and their mother has an opinion about Apple's latest creation and therefore so can I. Not the most unique blog post I'm sure but hey, what the heck?

So... after months and months of hype, Apple revealed the 'iPad'. I was honestly quite underwhelmed. Sure it's a sexy looking device but the big question is: what am I gonna do with this? I haven't quite figured that out. Let's start with a bunch of things that I consider serious flaws or at least areas in which I think the device is lacking.

Hitler too was underwhelmed

1. Awkward screen aspect ratio: Apparently it's something between 4:3 and 16:9. What? Why? What is wrong with 16:9? You tell me.
2. No USB and no card slots: We have to do awkward things to get pics / movies from our cameras onto this device. Meh. If the internal SSD is full we're screwed. Meh.^*
3. No replaceable battery: I'm sick of the battery hype. They all worsen over time and I'm sure this one will too. My Macbook Pro now runs for 5 minutes on a charged battery. At least I can get a new one for this machine!
4. No camera: No snapping pics, no videoblogging on the road, no Skyping with my family and no augmented reality. Kinda crappy if you ask me.
5. Locked down OS: Nothing is open here. Apple and only Apple decides what we run on this thing. I would much rather have had Mac OS X on this thing.

This book thing...

On a lot of blogs I see the iPad being heralded as 'Kindle Killer'. I think this is an absolute nonsense statement.

The iPad is probably going to be great for old media such as newspapers and magazines. It may even breathe a lot of new life into these dusty old fellows. I can see a lively market emerge for electronic magazine subscriptions. Full color magazines, even with embedded videos. Nice! Books however? Not really. For this nothing compares to E-Ink displays as featured by all dedicated E-reader devices including the Kindle. I'm sure fanboys will insist that it's awesome to read a book on a backlit screen but most serious book readers will most likely disagree. Until someone develops a fast-refreshing full color E-ink screen and Apple implements it in the iPad 2.0 or 3.0 I really don't think any E-reader manufacturer including Amazon will have a lot to be afraid of here.

Viable alternatives

I keep asking myself... what would I do with this thing besides surfing and magazine reading? I honestly don't know. It just doesn't seem to add a lot to what one can do with a subnotebook or a netbook. In fact, it takes stuff away compared to those devices. I also realized that for the price of a mid-range iPad you can buy a used MacBook Air. They go for around 600-800 dollars on Craigs List. With this you get Mac OS X, a keyboard, more storage, a camera, USB connectivity and more in a package only slightly larger than the iPad. Secondly there's of course the option of a netbook. Even though Steve doesn't like it, a lot of us run Mac OS X on these as well. Again, a hell of a lot more functionality for the same (or less) money. And I almost forgot, you can actually type properly on all these devices. Not entirely unimportant if you ask me.

So here it is... The iPad looks like a pretty little gadgets for people with too much money to burn in their pockets. As said, I have no idea what I would do with this thing besides the before mentioned magazine reading and surfing. It's useless to me for everything else due to the lack of a keyboard. The completely locked down selection of software, tightly controlled by Apple doesn't particularly appeal to me either.^**. I wanted the iPad to be awesome, I really did. I wanted to be this thing I couldn't resist buying, even if I wouldn't have the money. Unfortunately it really didn't come out that way for me. Oh well, maybe the iPad 2.0 will live up to the original Apple Tablet hype. Or, God forbid, maybe the Microsoft Courier will?

* You can buy an awkward dongle to connect USB devices. I personally tend to lose trinkets like that within weeks. Doesn't quite do it for me. Besides I think it's ridiculous to pay more money for a feature I expect to be built in to begin with.

** Yes I know, a keyboard dock is available. However first of all: More money to pay and secondly: more crap to haul around in my backpack.