and to be honest, i don;t think i’m shooting that high with my expectations, everything i talked about they already have in their other products.

but who knows, maybe future updates will bring it closer to my vision.

I think I forgot the real reason… tracking movement and character sheets for D&D…

as far as your concern about the traveling business? uh, that’s what a laptop is for. this wasn’t meant to replace the laptop. this is a device (with a horrid name, btw) for personal use. could you use it for a business? sure. as something to showcase your work, and what you’re capable of doing. but it’s not meant to RUN your business while you’re out of the office. with the e-mail access, you could e-mail anything to clients, and then, ta-da, they do the printing. would it be more convenient if it could sync with printers on networks you have access to? sure, but that’s all it is, convenient.

A developer has written an app that will wirelessly sync your iPod to your mac, or PC, and i’m sure another developer will write one that will sync your tablet to your computer (heck, who knows, maybe the app the same app that is already in use will work for the iPad, too).

the target audience would be mobile people, not for hard-core computing people. i would use it as something to port my portfolio, use it as a GPS system, something to check my e-mail while i’m on the road, etc. etc. etc. i wouldn’t use it as an e-reader (i can’t even stand to look at a kindle). but i would watch movies on it.

but, one thing you have to keep in mind: apple is a business and it’s looking to make money. $30 for the iWorks software? cheaper than what it would be for your laptop. but, i would much prefer the adobe suite, or microsoft office suite.

so, you raise some good ideas for future generations of the apple tablet, but for a first generation, with all the hype, it was bound to fall short of expectations. take a look at it for what it is, not what it could be. the could be is for the later generations.

1) They don’t have a keyboard and it is supposed to surf the net? I hit wikipedia and google a ton and typing on a screen leaves me wanting more. Why not have a slide out keyboard or something… kindle like

2) Book reading. Not a good device for this given the screen won’t be as readable, although you can now read in the dark. The other non-starter on this is battery life.

I guess that is really it. I think people were expecting magic, but this is just a tablet. Human computer interfaces are important and this is so much worse than what we have today. It can be extended to support what we have today, but it will now have reduced its power to that of an ordinary laptop.

As for your book comments… well books are hard. Publishers are scared silly. If music can’t protect a 5 MB song, how are they going to protect a 100Kb book? Also we should leave libraries out of this as a publisher would probably pay an arsonist to burn them all down. Why do they charge so much? I wish I knew. Amazon even pays for the wireless connection to download the book, which is more than Apple is doing.

It really comes down to a device that is looking for a market instead of the other way around. iPhone would be the complete opposite where there was a market for smartphones that were actually smart….