Why iPad is better defined by what it doesn’t have

The iPad was supposed to change the face of computing, to be a completely new form of digital experience.

But what Steve Jobs launched on Wednesday was in fact little more than a giant iPhone. A giant iPhone that doesn’t even make calls. Many were expecting cameras, kickstands and some crazy new form of text input. The iPad, though, is better defined by what isn’t there.

Flash

Many people will bemoan the lack of Flash in the iPad. It wasn’t mentioned, but eagle-eyed viewers would have seen the missing plugin icon on the New York Times site during the demo, and given that Apple clearly hates Flash as both a non-open web “standard” and as a buggy, CPU-hungry piece of code, it’s unlikely it will ever be added, unless Apple decides it wants to cut the battery life down to two hours.

Who needs Flash, anyway? YouTube and Vimeo have both switched to H.264 for video streaming (in Chrome and Safari, at least — Firefox doesn’t support it), and the rest of the world of Flash is painful to use.

In fact, we think the lack of Flash in the iPad will be the thing that finally kills Flash itself. If the iPad is as popular as the iPhone and iPod Touch, Flash-capable browsers will eventually be in the minority.

OLED

One of the biggest rumours said that there would be two iPads, one with an OLED screen and one without. But as our own Apple-master Brian X Chen pointed out, an OLED panel of this size runs to around $400.

Add in the rest of the hardware and even the top-end $830 model wouldn’t be making Apple much money. OLED also has some dirty secrets. It may be more colourful, but it uses more power than an LED backlit screen when all the diodes are lit up (white on black text is where OLED energy savings shine).

It is also rather dim in comparison, and making an e-reader that you can’t use outdoors would be a stupid move from Apple.

USB

The iPad is meant to be an easy-to-use appliance, not an all-purpose computer. A USB port would mean installing drivers for printers, scanners and anything else you might hook up. But there is a workaround: the dock connector. Apple has already announced a camera connection kit, a $30 pair of adapters which will let you either plug the camera in direct or plug in an SD card to pull off the photos.

The subtle message here is that it’s not a feature for the pros: the lack of a Compact Flash slot says “amateurs only”. Expect a lot more of these kinds of accessories, most likely combined with software. How long can it be before, say, EyeTV makes an iPad-compatible TV tuner?

GPS

Apple put a compass inside every iPad, so you’d think that there would be a GPS unit in there, too. The Wi-Fi-only models get nothing, just like the iPod Touch, but more surprising is that the 3G iPads come with AGPS.