Some Thoughts on the iPad and the Cloud

I played with an iPad over the weekend and was very impressed. Reflecting Apple’s robust engineering and design in just about every product it offers, the iPad is an elegant, fun and very solid device. I haven’t purchased one because I don’t believe it will offer me much that I can’t get from my iPod Touch or MacBook, but that’s beside the point. Plus, I like to joke that if the next version of the iPad offers a hinged aluminum cover – and a physical keyboard built into that cover – it really will be a killer device!

All kidding aside, though, I believe the iPad reflects what has looked for a long time like an inferiority complex on the part of Apple. The company offers hardware and software design that is second to none (albeit with a few minor exceptions) and their marketing prowess is extraordinary. Apple stores are packed seemingly just about all the time and the experience of buying, unpacking and using any Apple product is without peer. However, Apple almost seems to intentionally underdesign its offerings for reasons that are often difficult to explain. Consider:

• The iPad is clearly designed for a cloud environment and would be ideally suited to videoconferencing for mobile workers – if it had a built-in camera like all iMacs have. This is a serious flaw for those that really would like to participate in a videoconference on their patio or in an airport.
• The iPad does not support Adobe Flash, a nearly universal – and the de facto – video standard on the Web today. While there are some good technical and marketing reasons not to use Flash from Apple’s perspective, this limits the appeal of the iPad for a wide variety of applications, including some messaging tools.
• That the iPad comes with varying amounts of internal memory, coupled with the fact that it still requires a physical connection to download music and photos, indicates that Apple intends for the iPad to be semi-cloud enabled, not a fully cloud-enabled device.
• The iPad does not permit multitasking, a major drawback in my opinion. This is particularly true for people who won’t necessarily use their iPad for doing lots of work per se, but who would like to use it for simultaneous use of Twitter, email and maybe instant messaging. I suspect the iPad will permit multitasking in a future iteration – it should now.

I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts on the iPad, particularly if you just bought one.