Now that the excitement and surprise has worn off, how “amazing” is the iPad really?

Yesterday was the big exciting iPad unveiling. Everyone and their mother was tuned in to see what el Jobso’s “greatest work of all time” materialized to be. Make no mistake, yesterday I myself also fell into the hype, excitement, and overall fan-fare surrounding the iPad’s release. But this morning when I woke up, a funny thing happened. Reality set in…

How breathtaking and “revolutionary” is the iPad? If you ask some, it’s like the iPhone all over again — a completely new contender in the “netbook” sized market. Asking others however will net a very different response with some saying that it is merely a bigger iPod Touch/ iPhone without a camera, the same mind numbingly frustrating 3G favoring of AT&T, and of course, no background processing.

Let’s start with the 3G. In short: it sucks. Apple is in deed pushing the iPad as “unlocked” and in the technical sense, it is. The only problem is that the iPad only supports AT&T 3G. There isn’t any support for T-Mobile’s odd ball 1700MHz 3G frequency let alone any CDMA support. In the world of 2010, rolling back to EDGE as a scape goat to call the iPad “unlocked” is deceiving and downright ridiculous. And let us not forget that while Apple does tend to push the technological boundaries as to adopting certain pieces of new tech and pushing out older ones earlier than most, using newer micro-SIMs instead of the standard SIM is a minor annoyance as hardly anyone actually uses them.

Further complicating the 3G issue, you have to pay either $19.99/month for 250MB of data which, let’s face it, is worthless on a device like this. You’ll go through 250MB of data without so much as a blink of an eye. Instead, most users will have to pony up $29.99/month for “unlimited” data. We’ve all seen that word “unlimited” misused so many times before. Now is no different. What’s disturbing is that AT&T and Apple claim that AT&T is actually doing them a favor as normal mobile data plans often reach towards $60+/month. If you cut through the crap, no one is getting a favor. $60 or more per month for mobile data is ridiculously overpriced. Even at $30/month, now anyone whom already owns a smartphone (and fort he sake of examples) and home internet could now easily be paying a bare minimum of $90/month to get internet access on all 3 devices.

If AT&T really wanted to turn around their piss poor reputation and really “wow” us with the iPad and mobile internet, they would throw together some special deal for AT&T customers who use all three: Smartphone, iPad, and home internet via AT&T DSL. Cut this $90/month crap and instead offer a truly “unlimited” plan (both in data allotment and in the sense of number devices you can use it with) and give said customers a flat rate of $50/month for data on all three devices. Want more devices? Charge an extra $4.99/month. It sure seems a whole lot more reasonable than the current scheme does it not?

The 3G situation is but a second on the clock of time however when compared to the even bigger and more glaring omission: The lack of background processing. Time and time again I hear blind Apple fanboys that are so infatuated with their shiny little devices such as the iPhond and iPod Touch, that background processes aren’t needed blah blah blah. Bull shit. They are needed. In fact, they are desperately needed.

For example, without background processing, if I’m listening to a great song on Pandora or Last.fm and want to reply to an email, send a text message, work on an iWork document on the wonderfully redesigned iWork suite for the iPad — I can’t. The OS Apple won’t allow me. Some how Apple managed to create this wonderful ecosystem built on the iPhone OS and leave out the simple ability to multi-task. A human being never does one task at a time. We are always juggling various different jobs, task, etc. So why should a “smartphone” and in this case a freaking netbook/mini computer not be able to multi-task? Remember when Microsoft was planning on releasing a gimped version of Windows 7 Basic that would allow at most, 3 simultaneous programs to be run? They got a media shit storm for it and look what happened — they backed off. Yet in the case of Apple, we again see how they can do no wrong.

Personally, I feel the reliance on a broken 3G network and lack of any real usefulness as a computing device do to the lack of background processes will keep me from ever purchasing an iPad. Don’t get me wrong, while these two are very important flaws with the iPad, there are several more including the use of a 4:3 aspect ratio, not having more games available for demo/at launch, the uncharacteristically and monstrously large bezel, lack of any rich media support (read: video/picture cameras), lack of ports to share content, and the increased difficulty to even use the few available ports (read: adapters galore) are key areas where Apple messed up this whole tablet thing….again.

Yes, the iPad is both a beauty in the night and a disaster in the light. She’ll wow you with her good looks and flashy UI but when it comes down to the meat of why we use computers and how we use them in our lives, the iPad falls short. Even still, it’s the best tablet computer yet. Is that saying something for Apple and their ability to constantly get people talking about their deivecs? Or is it telling of how tablet computers still aren’t very useful to a mass market?

Author: Mike Norris

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Gadget lover, smartphone collector, and beer connoisseur. I've been writing about gadgets for three years now and loving every minute of it. Outside of the digital landscape, I enjoy being active outdoors. I'm always up for a good conversation, so feel free to drop me a line!