What a thoughtful and informative post. Thank you for contributing and hope you'll continue doing so on every other thread in this form. For sake of time efficiency, just copy-paste the text above and post on every iPhone/iPad related discussion.
And all this because you can't turn on the flashlight after exiting a flashlight app? Hah.
Nope.
It's because I actually just realized that my spanking new iPads 4 don't have LEDs, after I wanted take a picture of my cat in twilight (and at the end I had to go get a real camera to do it).
Apple is traditionally cheap: my first iPhones didn't have GPS, when the two generations of WM phones I had had before did. Yep, Apple made the same "battery life" excuse they always do.
The next time around they made a big deal of the GPS feature, touting maps and navigation and so on.
The iPhone also got a LED flash way after all other smart phones on the market had it (and even now the iPhone LEDs are cheap low-powered affairs).
That's how it will be with NFC and most likely, with LED flash implementation on the iPad.
Apple as a company has mastered nickel-and-diming customers. For instance, most other companies include adapters in the box whenever they introduce a new connector. I am yet to see one with an Apple product. Heck, the Mac Mini doesn't even come with a keyboard and a mouse anymore.
Apple is also damned good at implying features which are not there. I actually had to return two non-3g iPads 4, because I found out the hard way that my $550 iPad WiFi did not have a GPS chip in it -- it never even occurred to me to check, since Apple plasters maps and location images all over, and hides the lack of GPS pretty well. Since I genuinely like Apple's design, I had to spend an additional $150 per unit for the cellular version, just so I can get the $2 GPS chip. If MS did this, everyone will be screaming they are "evil," but when it's Apple, the fans suck it up happily.
Nice to see that the cold winter has not affected your innate sense of humor, BTW.