iPad - Pros and Cons

Third-party support: the iPad will be able to run third-party apps without modifications. Something like the iPhone! Apple will profit even more at app store, but users will benefit from the flexibility and creativity brought in by (mostly profit-seeking) developers. Also key: the iBooks e-reader app.

It’s running on the iPhone operating system (currently, version 3.2); no OS X. Among other things, this means no multitasking: as in, you can’t run two applications at the same time.

HTML5, the still-developing next generation of HTML, has been thoroughly embraced by the iPhone’s OS, and, by extension, the iPad’s. HTML5 isn’t yet fully there, but it’s promising.

No Flash. This isn’t totally a minus but the Web is a long way to go from being all HTML5, with the result that big chunks of it will be shut off to early iPad users.

Price: the cheapest iPad, which has the minimum 16 gigabytes of storage, costs $500; this is well below the $1000 pricetag predicted by some.

Expensive 3G version: The cheapest iPad doesn’t come with 3G coverage; for that, you’ll need to bump it up to $629, which doesn’t factor in the $30/month you’ll be paying for unlimited data.

Battery life: 10 hours while watching video, with up to a month of standby! At least according to Steve Jobs. Given that it’s so thin and weighs only 1.5 pounds, this is pretty remarkable.

Built in battery: it means you’re screwed if it conks out. This was one of the things that people most disliked about the MacBook Air.

The iPad has a digital compass, Wi-Fi, 3G-assisted GPS, accelerometer, ambient light sensor, Apple’s custom 1 GHz Apple A4 chip, and is multitouch-compatible.

For all of that, no camera, at all. No Skype, no augmented reality, no photos on the go. You need to buy propriate accessories.