Despite being a Wintel expert I really don't have any bad feeling against Apple.  I don't own any of their products, but that's a personal choice.  The iPhone plans are too outrageously priced.  Apple computers are too expensive and I can't game much on them.  As for the iPod ... I've always wanted one but could never justify the cost when I have 6GB free to store MP3s on my WinMo phone.

But when the rumors started coming to a head about the now announced iPad I thought, "This could be really good!"  I honestly wanted it to be a great product because I've always wanted a good tablet.  Now that the official product launch has occurred it just seems...lacking.

www.apple.com/ipad/

First off, it doesn't have the sleek "Apple look.” The bezel is HUGE and that one tiny button seems out of place. Maybe pictures add the proverbial 10 pounds to the iPad, but it looks bigger than I thought it would be. The thing that bugs me the most about the look is the interface. It’s just a plain old, stripped down, iPhone/OS X UI. How boring.

Somehow I expected something more.

The most shocking part, being a hardware geek, is the processor. I guess we all kind of expected a custom chip seeing as Apple took the time and effort to buy out P.A. Semi, but that chip is a huge unknown.  It will be interesting to see how it compares to the likes of the Qualcomm Snapdragon, nvidia ION and Intel Atom platforms, all of which are known to be very powerful, energy conservative solutions.  While early reviews do show the iPad is blazing fast, we still need to hear from the dev's how the iPad handles heavy graphics at full resolution.

Oh, and they kind of forgot to add multitasking to the iPad. Yes, you heard that right, you can’t listen to music and surf the web at the same time. Or work on say, I don’t know, a research paper and look up a reference online without closing Pages first. [EDIT: I am told that certain applications can multitask iPhone OS 3.2.  Still, I am convinced it is a showstopper if I can only multitask with certain Apple apps.]

I call that a showstopper.

Though I have to give Apple props on two things: price and content. For once an Apple product doesn’t give me sticker shock. Especially with that beautiful LED-backlit IPS LCD display. That should look really handsome. And we all know Apple will deliver on the content.

Overall I am extremely disappointed, and not just because of all the pre-release hype. It’s just…boring, and that’s so not Apple.

EDIT (more thoughts):

I’ve been thinking about the iPad more – it’s hard not to with all the coverage it got today – and I think what disappoints me the most is the fact that it offers me nothing new but a bigger screen. It reminds me of those giant remote controls you find at the corner drug store. The iPad is nothing more than an iPhone with a bigger screen.

While this may make other people ecstatic it is a letdown to me. I was hoping for something revolutionary and instead I got something that is barely evolutionary. In fact, I would argue that it is not even evolutionary.

Apple didn’t release the first portable media player, they released a revolutionary media player. Apple OS X, at its core, is nothing more than a modified FreeBSD distribution, but Apple gave it a pretty, easy to use, arguably revolutionary shell and put it in a pretty package. The iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone, but it was smarter than all the others. The iPad, however, gives me little to nothing new.

Maybe I’m wrong and someday I’ll beat off the throng at the local Apple store with a billy club and I’ll really like the iPad…but I doubt it. Maybe the iPad gen 2 or 3 will bring about the tablet revolution everyone is waiting for. Or maybe Microsoft or Google will beat them to it. Time will tell.