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

Assisted GPS can be one of two things, both of which offload some work to internet servers and use cell-tower triangulation. The difference is that some AGPS units have real GPS too, and some don’t. We’ll know which the iPad has as soon as we get our hands on one.

Multitasking

From the demonstrations at the Jobsnote, it appears that, like the iPhone, we can’t run applications in the background. This will annoy many, but it will not matter at all to the target user, who will be using the iPad to browse and consume media. In fact, this user will benefit, as the lack of CPU-cycle-sucking background processes is likely a large part of that ten-hour battery life.

If you are authoring content, like this post, then multiple browser windows, a text editor, a mail client and a photo editor all make sense. If you’re reading an ebook, not so much.

Keyboard

Nobody really thought the iPad would have a physical keyboard. That won’t stop the whining, though. The difference, again, between the iPad and a MacBook is that one is a multi-purpose device and the other is a media player. The fact that Apple actually has made a keyboard for it is the biggest surprise (apart from the $500 price).

In fact, this little $70 accessory will mean that, despite its simplified nature, the iPad is enough laptop for many people. Why bother with a $400 netbook when you can have this instead?

Camera

No video camera, no stills camera, and no webcam. The first two will likely never make it into a future iPad, as we all have our iPhones or actual cameras with us, too.

But the lack of a webcam is odd. I have this down as a straight cost saving measure, and it is the only thing that stops me buying an iPad for my parents, who I talk to on Skype. There seems to be no other reason not to have a webcam in the bezel other than price. We expect to see one in v2.0.

Square screen

The iPad screen is a relatively square, by today’s standards, 4:3 ratio. This is not ideal for watching widescreen movies: you get a thick black bar top and bottom. But take another look at the hardware: the Apple on the back, and the position of the home button both tell us that the iPad is meant to be used in portrait mode, at least most of the time.

And a 16:9 ratio in this orientation would look oddly tall and skinny, like an electronic Marilyn Manson. It’s a compromise, and a good one. If you really do spend most of your time watching movies on the iPad, maybe you should think about buying, you know, a big TV.

HDMI

There will be video out, likely through the dock connector, as we were told in the presentation that you can hook the iPad up to a projector. But no HDMI out? How do you hook it up to your HD monitor? The short answer is that you don’t. The maximum audience for an iPad screening is two. You want more? Use your laptop and hook that up, or your desktop machine.