A number of readers sent me a link this morning to an MSNBC/LiveScience.com article describing 13 glaring iPad shortcomings. What's amazing is that I mentioned many of these exact complaints in my own quickie first impressions (which some Apple fanatics mistook as a "review," having not actually read the site). It shouldn't be amazing. The iPad's problems are so obvious, you'd think that the tier-A reviews that came out last week would have mentioned all of these as well. The problem is, no one is really honestly assessing the iPad because they're too busy tripping over each to give Apple free publicity in return for continued access to the company. And those that are honest about the iPad (or any Apple product) are shouted down. So I'm guessing that the poor saps who wrote this article have their share of hate-mail this morning. And it's too bad, because when you look over this list of shortcomings, many are dead-on and should have been corrected before this thing shipped to the public. These include:
It's awkward
It's heavy
It's slippery
The screen has too much glare
Forget reading in the sun (which is the same as the previous shortcoming, really)
Fingerprints are annoying
iPhone-only apps look horrible
There's no USB port (or, I'd add, SD slot. Or expansion of any kind)
That said, I don't agree with all the shortcomings listed here. For example:
It does not multitask - Has not proven to be an issue. You don't watch two TV shows at once either.
The browser is limited - I think it's surprisingly nice, actually.
The virtual keyboard stinks - You're not going to write anything on this device; it's a consumption machine. It's better than any other virtual keyboard I've ever used.
Also, they forgot the biggest complaints:
It's too expensive for what you get: 16 GB of storage is not acceptable in a $500 machine.
It needs dual cameras
Obviously, Apple will fix these issues in a Rev. 2 machine, they always do. But that is itself a complaint: These things are so obvious, it's unclear why they're not there. And why is it OK for Apple to deliberately obsolete a new machine like this? Software upgrades are wonderful, but can't address these issues.