Oh pseudo-geeks...
Can't believe people are attacking our photographers folks like telling them how you can do the same or better by using HTML5 + JavaScript instead of Flash. First, there's not really full support for 5, JavaScript isn't the most secure way to go and finally if you're a photographer why are the pseudo-nerds telling them to use HTML5? Obviously they won't, they're good at photography which is indeed a profession still they are fairly good on programming Flash web-pages, that like it or not, some look stunning. The thing here is that like it or not, Flash is of course not a "web standard" but is something a lot of companies consider like a must to know for applicants to their programming positions. Flash is everywhere and sure it slows down your browsing performance and such, still if you're selling an iPod Touch at $500 and saying it gives you "the best browsing experience ever" then you must have to be able to view Flash content. Not only advertising uses Flash, as someone said, even a non-essential but actually widely used and oddly "essential" to the majority as it is Facebook has half of their users playing Flash games. You cannot deny everybody is very into the Farmville, SuperPoke! Pets, Mafia Wars, Yo Ville, Happy Aquarium, etc., and you cannot use those games or applications on the iPhone/iPodTouch and you won't be able to do so on the iPad neither! Even if you download appStore's "Facebook" application, you will be able to do some limited Facebook that is the essential Facebook, but you cannot go further and harvesting your farm or petting your buddy. That's just one example of a social network that almost everybody uses world-wide and it's almost just half-functional on the iPhone's OS. And lot of examples can be mentioned. Newspapers, Flight Reservation, Banking, etc., lot of places that include Flash content. As some have pointed you'd have the ability to turn it on/off but if iPhone's processor isn't prepared to properly support Flash then it won't appear. And something I hadn't think about before but surely raised my attention was that one who said it was pure greed, like if you were able to play Flash games on the iPhone/Touch/iPad that are free most of them, then lot of people wouldn't be buying some even silly AppStore's games, and makes sense.
No multitasking is another big failure. I cannot imagine myself without the ability of having "Mail", "Safari" and "Pages" opened at the same time, and maybe even listening to some music. Also the lack of a pen makes it not that useful for those attending university and taking notes trying to draw a graph, a math symbol, a note, etc., that's really foolish. Without a camera, when everything now comes with a camera makes it like a big joke. You cannot video chat with it. It's priced starting at $500 which isn't a cheap product. Sure it is for an Apple product but $500 are $500!!!
Lack of "iLife". Wow. Will have a reduced but apparently improved version of "iWork" if you pay for it but, will you be able to convert a .docx file to a .doc format? I don't think so. And then something I didn't paid attention to before: no profiles. So that if you lend your iPad to a friend for him to send an email or check whatever, he could by accident open your Mail app and read your stuff or maybe sending an email on your behalf? That's no security at all.
Talking about security, will it include a firewall? Will it be able to get intego's software installed on it? I know there are almost no Mac OS viruses around but there have been and mostly risk issues on their mobile OS.
I don't know for sure. Obviously it is a beau. It is an Apple product and it's priced like one.
But as usual, I guess Apple brought something that is kind of revolutionary, trendy, fashion but unproductive. Useless for the majority.
And call it whatever you want but to announce a product showing it can surf the web and as an example showing Flash content when it doesn't supports, is fraud. Obviously they will say that the little captions said "the image above blah blah" and maybe that was why Steve Jobs showed web-pages that uses Flash on purpose, like to let you know that it doesn't supports it so if you complain after buying it they will say "even on the keynote presentation you saw Flash content wasn't shown" but that'd be bullsh since most consumers have never seen a keynote presentation and they are not asking the sales employees "will I be able to run Flash?".