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This tablet disappoints

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mark blake

Underwhelming. For me, this is the word that describes iPad, Apple’s latest gadget. And it’s not just because the hype was unprecedented — some had called it the second coming of tablet, the first being ‘the tablet’ of Ten Commandments, brought down by Moses when he descended from the mountain. Typical of any Apple product, iPad is a sleek, shiny gadget with slick interface and, for a change, has been priced somewhat decently. But it’s not the revolutionary product which we came to expect ever since we heard that Steve Jobs was personally supervising development of “mythical tablet” and was giving it everything he could.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Apple is too good a company to make any blunders and iPad is not a bad gadget. But boy, does it fall short on what it could have been. “All of us use laptops and smartphones… is there room for something in the middle. We’ve wondered for years as well in order to create that category, they have to be far better at doing some key tasks (websurfing, watching videos, enjoying music. playing games). Better than the laptop, better than the smartphone,” said Jobs on Wednesday as he held an iPad in his hand. “Now some people thought that was a netbook… (but) the problem is that netbooks aren’t better than anything!”
So far so good, and I believe that fundamental problems with netbooks held back Apple from jumping on the bandwagon. In that respect, I expected iPad to be a little more than an iPhone on steroids that it resembles. Jobs does not like netbooks, but unfortunately, in no way does iPad turn out to be a netbook killer.
The problems (we will talk about good things later) with iPad are few, but fundamental. First of all, it’s just another mobile computing device with touch-screen. Take the iPhone, stretch it from the sides, add a few snippets from iPod touch, perfect the Kindle idea, throw in a slimmed down iWorks, and there, you have it! Unlike iPhone, which I will say is the gadget of the decade, iPad is simply an evolutionary step. It neither shakes things from the perspective of user experience, nor brings with it any cutting-edge technology.
Jobs says iPad is exceptional at websurfing. Yet, it lacks support for flash, which is omnipresent on the web and is critical to multimedia content. Lack of support for multitasking is another big letdown. In fact, it is a deal breaker for a product that is taking a shot at netbooks. Video capabilities too are limited. Technology exists for driving 1080p video on mobile devices but iPad is extending its reach to just 720p. This resolution is definitely more than enough for its 9.7” screen with 1024×768, but the fact that it just supports some low-resolution formats while outputting video to an external display is a disappointment. Then there is the case of missing features. A web cam would have been ideal on iPad (think of web conferencing or chatting) and a few USB ports would have added a tons of convenience while managing files and content between devices.

 

 

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