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?

FireFox for Android coming as early as February?

Say it isn’t so?! FireFox Mobile (or Fennec as some prefer) could be out as early as February according to Camp-firefox.de. I don’t have too many bones to pick with the stock web-kit browser other than it’s lack of multi-touch out of the box as well as it’s less than smooth scrolling. But as far as rendering and speed goes, it’s isn’t too bad. So why the excitement for another browser?

More options is always a plus. Not to mention, after seeing the various early builds of Fennec on Nokia Maemo devices such as the N900, it’s hard not to be impressed, yearning for your very own copy of Fennec to grace your mobile handset (in this case, Android) of choice.

February is but a few days away so the wait to waiting more isn’t too far off. Excited for Fennec or think it’s over-hyped? Sound off below.

Unwired

BlackBerry Magnum does the motion picture thing…

Oh BlackBerry Magnum. How you used to fill our dreams with visions of hardware + touchscreen goodness. Now, you are nothing more than a failed attempt, a black sheep, a prototype that will forever be stuck in the lab, replaced by another model with a classier case and flashier specs. You were at one time, the pinnacle of the BlackBerry world while always remaining deep within RIM laboratories. And now, we sit back and watch a video what might have been as your white, OS-less body puts on it’s best face for the camera.

Anyone upset we never got the Magnum or super pumped for the bigger and better Dakota?

FoneFrenzy

[Image Source]

Super massive Apple Event post: The iPad — starting at $499. [Pictures Galore!!]

The day has finally arrived folks. Apple has finally taken the wraps off of their Jesus Tablet, which has been given the name: “iPad”. So is it cool enough to live up to the hype that has been literally saturating the internet for the last month? I’m not a tablet fan and even this has my interesting piqued. The iPad is the fruit of well over a year of labor between scores of Apple employees. It is easily the best tablet “computer” available on the market. And starting at $499 it will be impossible to beat. Shall we…?

**Pictures property of Engadget**

iPad: Starting at $499!

-Hardware

• 9.7″ IPS display

• 16GB-64GB Flash storage

• 1GHz Apple A4 processor

• Hardware-accelerated OpenGL for graphics

• Select iPads: AT&T provided 3G — $14.99/month for 250MB data (why bother?) | $29.99/month for unlimited data (I can hear AT&T’s towers weeping…)

• iPad 3G activated right on device itself — pre-paid = No Contracts!

• Uses new GSM micro SIM cards

• All iPads: WiFi 802.11n/Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

-Dimensions, Storage, and Pricing

• 0.5″ thin

• 1.5 lbs.

• 10 hours VIDEO battery life — “over a month standby”

• Price: (WiFi Only) 16GB – 32GB – 64GB | $499 – $599 – $699