Steve Jobs announced the latest and greatest that they can come up with in 2010, the iPad.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here folks… don’t buy it. If you’re someone who has to have everything Apple, then by all means, stop reading this and go on about your day.

The reason I gripe about this product is because there’s nothing ‘new’ about it. It’s basically a giant picture frame with an operating system. It’s a fad product with a fad price. Why do I say that? Well lets get down to the details shall we?

First off the price point is going to be in and around $500 dollars. This means that it will be in line with either a low end laptop and/or a high priced netbook.

Most netbook/laptops have:
USB Port – the iPad does not…
What?? Even the lowest end netbooks have USB Ports. Today’s cameras, printers, external hard drives… wait the better question is, what DOESN’T use a usb port. Instead Apple has opted to offer their own little dongle… free? No no… for a fee of course.

Keyboard – the iPad does not…
I think we’re going back to the stoneage here. Yes you can type using the iPad’s touch screen keyboard, but for anyone that’s ever used the iPhone, it’s annoying. I need to be able to feel the physical keys, blame my 6th grade keyboarding teacher for

Flash Support – the iPad does not…
Okay in Apple’s defense, I hate Flash too, I think it’s the bane of the internet and as a designer it is one of the few technologies I wish would’ve been chucked a long time ago.

A webcam/camera – the iPad does not.
Everyone has a webcam now, at least has capabilities on their laptop/netbook. I would understand if it made the iPad cheaper, but it doesn’t so… where is it? Let me guess I have to buy it and it will attach later.

There’s a few other features that I could go into, 16:9 (widescreen), HDMI support, ability to launch different things at the same time… So the biggest question here is, what the heck is it useful for? It’s not a laptop/netbook it’s not a mobile phone, GPS, and despite the name, a female certainly can’t make any use of it at a certain time of the month…

3G Network? Interesting.. but so what? There’s tethering technology already out and to add to AT&T’s already clogged up network because of the iPhone, this is just another reason for me to switch to other carriers. Frankly, I think the research department just botched up this year for Apple. Lackluster features and no matter how great Steve Jobs is at presenting products, there was nothing he could do to hype up this product.

It’s just a fancy screen that has only Apple proprietary devices that can hook onto it, most of which is not included with the product itself.

Thanks but no thanks. Hopefully Apple will have something innovative next year and keep these useless gadgets for the bargain bin or at least hide the fact that it’s for die hard Apple fans with deep wallets.