Why the Ipad Fails as a Tablet
Now that they have been out over on this side of the pond for a few weeks, and I am hearing too many people saying " I'm getting one of those ipads". I thought I'd just have a rant about how disappointed I am with it.
Now before I start the reason I am moaning about is not because I am jealous and can't afford one because if it was any good there would be one sitting on my desk now, I don't have one because in its current form it serves no purpose. Firstly in its current form - It doesn't multitask. That means that if I wanted to browse the web and open the Gmail app or play a game, I first have to close Safari I can't switch between the two. I have a Palm Pre that can do this!. Secondly No flash support for the web. I absolutely hate flash for a format, its slow, buggy and full of security flaws, but in order to get the full web experience you need it, as many websites are completely built upon flash. I have a Palm Pre that will do Flash August onwards.
itunes - I hate it. Its the worst piece of music library software ever - there is too much worry about piracy and not what the user wants and in order put music on the ipad you need itunes. But even so I could get over that.
You may have noticed my references to my beloved phone above and there is good reason for it, my phone does everything that the ipad does and more, minus the app store. It just has a smaller screen, therefore I cannot justify buying a device that I am going to struggle to find a use for. The ipad though appears to have excited the tablet market slightly and so we'll see what the others have to bring to table later this year.
While I am here though the iphone 4 looks outstanding and is already starting to address one of the issues I have above.
Anyway for now it looks like its either phone or netbook for the internet on the move, lets hope that changes soon!
