Well I thought Apple was always creative, with the name too. Apple Mac, iPhone, iPod Nano etc. are some cool names, but where did the creativity go during the release of the new gadget, the tablet device when naming it the Apple iPad. There were better names guessed – iSlate, iTablet etc.

Anyways its not just the name but many other things about the iPad that won’t impress an Apple fan too –

Design, copying its own product eh??

iPhone, pulled from all sides, and retaining the same interface and design. Except the sides and edges becoming sharper, I loved the curved edges of iPhone more than the ones in iPad. I thought the slim and bigger device would look better, but a bit disappointed on Apple for this.

Unprotected screen!

The 9.7” screen is without a screen guard, a cover or anything. Utmost care is needed, which I won’t like to concentrate much on. It should be rough enough to handle scratching. You might hit your thumb on some icon and open the app accidentally when carrying the iPad.

No multi-tasking.

Such a device with possibility of running just a single app, with nothing in the background, SUCKS. That means, when I would be browsing the web, I should seriously do that with no music in the background, no 3rd party twitter app. How could we call this a tablet device at all? It’s just an enlarged mobile phone. At least Symbian devices allow multitasking.

No flash support

What we complain about the iPhone, is the same here. No flash support, no flash based apps or websites can be opened or run well on the iPad.

Where’s the camera?

Apple iPhone had a good camera. The tablet device doesn’t. No front or back camera, no photo clicking, no video-conferencing. Another big fail. We would be happy with a VGA camera at-least, if it could help with video chats, but NO, Apple didn’t care to add any.

Apps and the app system

Similar to the iPhone OS, and the apps there, the iPad also fails to have an open-source app system to help developers play more and help people experience a better app network within. It’s the same App store, where you get to buy those 3rd party apps, and get limited with their functionality.

Storage limitation, pricing depend on them

Buy the basic device at $499, but get a limited 16GB storage capacity. There is no extra slot that can allow the expansion of the space later. Once you got the 16GB device in your hands, you got no option to increase the storage. Either spend more on buying a higher-storage device initially or else suffer later after your bought the low-storage device.

USB Slots, where are you??

There are no USB slots to connect any external devices like Storage drive, external CD drive etc. It has got a dock connector, that’s it. Do anything only through that dock, nothing else is going to help you.

iBooks, not that highly advanced

Ok yesterday I too was pretty excited with the launch of new app iBooks, which they launched for iPad, for book reading. But after the testers say, my thinking has been influenced as Kindle reader has got a few better features than the iBooks app. So Amazon has not much to worry about it.

Not at all good for Indian users

3G is still in future for India, except at a few places where BSNL and MTNL services are providing the 3G service. GPS is not available in iPad and 3G not in India. How can we link both? And to add to this, Apple is not shipping the iPad internationally until the next 6 months so forget to dream about it. Am sure till then other brands might be coming out with better products to compete with the not-a-phone-not-a-netbook iPad.

U.S. fans are not all happy too

As always, Apple again is playing around only with AT&T, forgetting that there are many T-mobile and other subscribers too. So they have to wait till Apple does something to enable the usage with Micro-GSM SIM cards of other networks too.

Overall, its a non-impressive launch, and except for the good pricing everything was less than what we as Apple fans had expected from the device.