Flash has been strong and key to the web just like the basic idea behind java applets… they were good tools for creating more useful sites. The big problem with flash is their memory leaks, I bet you’d be interested looking at flash sites. However, I’m very convinced that you wouldn’t be interested to sacrifice most of your device’s response time due to the leakish flash supporting software.

In other news.. Adobe is so desperate to be involved in iPhone and other products from Apple.. that it was announced that they are currently building software for translating flash programs into iphone programs. Imagine that!

Where as Apple has taken the approach of expanding a smartphone OS up to tablet size, HP’s Slate takes a desktop OS and shrinks it down to fit. Two different approaches from opposite ends.

At this time, purely conjecturing, I would give the edge to Apple. They’ve made some interesting advancements to the multi-touch interface for their iWork apps (equivalent to MS Word, Excel, and Powerpoint). Please, no criticism until you have seen how the OS works on the iPad. Go to the 59:10 minute mark in the iPad presentation, it’s 10 minutes long: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1001q3f8hhr/event/index.html Again, the emphasis is on simplicity, ease of learning and use (90% of folks), not on the needs of power users (the other 10% like yourselves.) 75 million people know how to use the iPhone and iPod touch interface already.

From the videos of the HP Slate, it looks like they run WIndows 7 and replaced the mouse with your finger. I don’t think tiny pull down menus would work well with fingers, but maybe MS has tweaked the interface and made some advancements to multi-touch themselves. I would guess that trying to shrink a desktop OS to work in a tablet would have higher hardware requirements, in terms of memory usage and processor efficiency, than the opposite way that Apple has chosen. I wonder how Apple’s custom chip will compare to other ARM chips. Battery life will be interesting to compare. But maybe MS has also further streamlined Windows 7 code. It will, of course, multitask, have Flash and have all sorts of ports. We’ll see if consumers value this over simplicity.

I find all these developments very exciting.

Browsing: My experience blows iPad’s away. I have no ads (thanks, Adblock Plus), fast response, and compatibility with every webpage.

Photos: My netbook is just as passable as any iPad, if not as pretty. Navigating from photo to photo is easy with the innovative Arrow Keys(TM). The best part is, I can plug my camera’s SD card right into the computer.

Movies: Movies play smoothly, and don’t take up space because they stay on SD cards. If you watch DVD rips on your computer, good luck fitting them on the iPad.

Games: My netbook, with overclocking, can play WoW, Half-Life, Civilization, and other classic games without issue. Casual games of the kind in which the iPhone specializes are perfect for the iPhone, which is a darn good device for its size. For the iPad’s form factor, I expect a bit more.

E-mail: What can’t do e-mail? My flip phone did e-mail 4 years ago. Moving on.

E-books: If I am ever possessed with an urge to read e-books, I’ll look at a Kindle, which is a more comfortable and useful book emulator than an iPad could ever be. Until then, I prefer nice, real books. They’re portable, never run out of power, and get my nose out of a screen for a couple hours.

The “Old World/New World” article I linked above discusses the current trend away from do-it-all, fully configurable computers to devices that hide the complexity and perform certain tasks very easily. For probably 90% of people, 90% of their computer activity consists of the basic activities of email, web, photo viewing, e-reading, and games. People who read and respond to this type of blog, you and me, are in the minority. I can understand why the iPad is not for you, but the question here is will this be something that many regular folks would want to buy? I am constantly amazed by the number of non-technical people, who I would never have thought would buy a smartphone, that love their iPhones because it is so easy to use and does so much.

So how well does the iPad (or other tablet form factor, for that matter) perform the above 5 activities? Well, as I discussed in my original post, an iPad is BETTER than a netbook/laptop for viewing photos. You get to your photos quicker, you can pass it around, you can turn it to either portrait or landscape, it’s an nice looking digital picture frame on it’s charging stand. That’s hard to do with a laptop form factor. Same for reading, hard to curl up with a netbook in portrait mode, plus the iPad is 1/2 the weight and thickness. Games? The added screen size has great potential, if you saw the presentation video. But even now, it’s better than a netbook for board games like Scrabble, chess, or Monopoly. Players can pass it back and forth, you touch and slide pieces instead of clicking and dragging–just so much more natural than a netbook form factor. As for email and web the advantage over a netbook is not so great, but I find touching links, double clicking to expand text and photos to the exact width of the screen, pinching and zooming make web navigating easier on my iPhone than scrolling and clicking on a small netbook touchpad. Plus, the small form factor of a tablet is more mobile. Sure you can sit back on the sofa with a netbook, but it starts to become more awkward. The shape of a tablet plus 1/2 the thickness and weight would be so much more natural to use. Many reviewers said that you have to have one in your hand to really appreciate its appeal.

So, what limitations? Flash? I agree with that, but honestly I rarely come across a Flash video or website on my iPhone that I just simply MUST see. My surfing habits may be different than yours and I don’t play Flash games, but I’ll concede that point. I do think, however, if the iPad is a success, HTML5 use will accelerate. Speed? If you have the time to see Job’s presentation, you’ll see the iPad is certainly zippy enough. Almost all hands-on reviewers note how fast it is. Again, we’re aimed at that 90% of folks, we’re not decoding video or using Photoshop here. Memory? Sure it doesn’t have 250 GB, but it’s not designed to be your primary computer. I think 90% of folk’s music, photos and video would fit in 32 or 64 GB.

I think that web, email, photos, reading, and games are the exclusive computer activities of the vast majority of people. If that’s the case and the iPad is BETTER in many ways at doing all these basic task, there is a market for the product–the “gap”. People want simpler, easier to use computers. That’s the paradigm shift discussed in the linked article.

Before the iPhone, we couldn’t imagine what a cellphone could be capable of doing. It may be the same with the iPad. I believe in the creativity and ingenuity of app developers. So, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see the sales numbers.

They will have colour. As for demanding multi-touch, that’s no different that demanding full preemptive multitasking for the iPad, i.e., it’s a nice feature that’s not a must. Multi-touch is completely unneeded for the majority of uses (reading books, watching videos, …).

Regarding a fast processor, it’s not the processor that matters, but the performance. If the UI is snappy, browsing the web is at an acceptable speed and videos don’t drop frames, then that’s what matters. Far as I know, the iPad’s processor isn’t “very fast”. Certainly not compared to desktop Intel CPU’s.

Apple would be wise to add Flash video support and Flash card reader. If Apple had added these 2 basic features, I would have considered buying an iPad.

I would like to get a eReader some day. It remains to be seen which eReader wins out. I’m debating between the Kindle, iPad, or one of the new eReader platforms coming out. Whichever platform can provide the content I’m looking for (mostly non-fiction), will get my business.