In which I take on my gripes with the iPad

First, the name: it's stupid. It sounds too much like eye patch. If they'd released a bionic eyepatch, that would have much better.

Anyway, on to the real stuff. I'm typing this right now while sitting on the ground and typing on my laptop. My laptop which runs a full MS Office suite and has a hard drive that can store things to it. I like the keyboard. I like to sit up while typing. If I'm laying down, I feel like I'm texting. I'm not sure I'd ever get used to typing anything more than texts or tweets on a virtual keyboard. Maybe I will, but right now I don't think I will.

If I want to lay down on the couch or in bed and go through the internet, complete with flash animation and plug-ins and multi-tasking, I can easily do so. Replacing that experience with a larger iPod won't cut it. I'm sure it will be nice for casual web browsing assuming you don't want to view flash-based websites or hulu, etc, but I don't think I'd enjoy it.

Putting aside ALL of the massive, completely overblown hype, and knowing that Apple deliberately makes its first-gen stuff really crappy so it can sell really easy to make upgrades for double the price like 6 months later, I'm still very disappointed. The line "You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet" is so far the lie of the year. That's the line that I've based all my hype on, and it's a crashing disapointment. There's nothing new about the way you interact with the iPad. In fact in the presentation today they made a huge deal of the fact that 75 million people already know how to use it because they use iPods and iPhones.

So out of spite, I'm going to site the iPad out. Until they come out with something that surprises me in the revolutionary way I will interact with it, I will remain $499 richer.