Ten things missing from Apple’s new iPad:
• Adobe Flash: Who needs Flash, anyway? YouTube and Vimeo have both switched to H.264 for video streaming (in Chrome and Safari, at least — Firefox doesn’t support it), and the rest of the world of Flash is painful to use. In fact, we think the lack of Flash in the iPad will be the thing that finally kills Flash itself. If the iPad is as popular as the iPhone and iPod Touch, Flash-capable browsers will eventually be in the minority.
• OLED: It may be more colorful, but it uses more power than an LED backlit screen when all the diodes are lit up… It is also rather dim in comparison, and making an e-reader that you can’t use outdoors would be a stupid move from Apple.
• USB: The iPad is meant to be an easy-to-use appliance, not an all-purpose computer. A USB port would mean installing drivers for printers, scanners and anything else you might hook up. But there is a workaround: the dock connector. Apple has already announced a camera connection kit, a $30 pair of adapters which will let you either plug the camera in direct or plug in an SD card to pull off the photos.
• GPS in the WiFi-only model: The WiFi-only models don’t have GPS, just like the iPod Touch, but the 3G iPads do have AGPS
• Multitasking: It will not matter at all to the target user.
• Keyboard: Nobody really thought the iPad would have a physical keyboard… The fact that Apple actually has made an optional keyboard for it is the biggest surprise (apart from the iPad’s base $500 price).
• Camera: I figure this is a cost-saving measure on Apple’s part. Too bad, though, as it is the only thing that stops me buying an iPad for my parents, whom I talk to on Skype. There seems to be no other reason not to have a webcam in the bezel other than price. We expect to see one in v2.0.
• Verizon: Until Verizon switches to the world-standard GSM SIM card, don’t expect to see an Apple product on its network.
• 16:9 Aspect Ratio: The Apple on the back, and the position of the home button both tell us that the iPad is meant to be used in portrait mode, at least most of the time. And a 16:9 aspect ratio in this orientation would look oddly tall and skinny, like an electronic Marilyn Manson. It’s a compromise, and a good one.
• HDMI: There will be video out, likely through the dock connector, as Jobs said during his presentation that you’ll be able to hook the iPad up to a projector. But no HDMI out? How do you hook it up to your HD monitor? The short answer is that you don’t. Remember, there are two kinds of people who will buy the iPad. One, nerds like you and me, who care about things like HDMI and also already own a computer that can do that. And two, people who are buying this instead of a computer. Those people will probably still have DVD collections, or even VCRs. They don’t even know what HDMI is.
Read the full article as it contains fuller explanations of the ten points than we could excerpt. Check it out here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Baron Von Raske” for the heads up.]