I'll be honest.. after thinking it over... I want one. For $500, its just north of an impulse buy.
Now... where to begin:
- No Multitasking - Kind of a bummer, but to be honest I never miss it on my iPhone. The 3GS switches between most apps lightning quick, and this thing has nearly twice the processor speed (BTW anybody seen specs on the RAM yet?). I'm a habitual multi-tasker. I've got 15 spreadsheets open on my desktop right now, as well as Outlook, Acrobat, and paint (that's right MS Paint). When I'm on the go though, I don't really need to do a lot of stuff at once. I need to do one thing quickly.
- The Name - No getting around that one Niko... its terrible. Although to be fair at least three other companies thought it was good enough to name their products after it... so maybe its just me. I'd have preferred that they went with the iSlate.
- The Screen - Can't wait to try and use it in a teathered shooting set up. I see eye-fi has a iPhone app, so if they can get the iPad to support the eye-fi pro card with an ad Hoc network then you are talking game changer here. I love using OSxTouch to work with my photos... feels much more natural than a mouse. It's like combining everything thats great about a mouse with everything that's great about keyboard shortcuts.
- Flash - I could go on about this for days. Flash is a terrible. I don't miss it on my phone (except when ordering take out from Madam Mam's, but thats a different story). Flash needs to die. For Games, I prefer native apps (by the way check out the port of "Shopping Cart Hero" if you want to see what I mean). Is it lame that it doesn't run it? Sure, its certainly powerful enough and I like options. Will I really miss it in practice? Nope.
- No Camera - Why do people complain about this? Why would I want to shoot a 3mp image with a device that's larger than my iPad. Wouldn't have minded a front facing iSight camera though. Although, I've got two macs with them, and I've done only one video conference ever. I'm not sure that a laptop wouldn't be much better suited for that purpose anyway. Strictly from an ergonomics perspective.
- HDMI out - A curious omission to be sure. I think that Apple would probably prefer you use an Apple TV or a Macbook for that sort of thing
- Keyboard dock - Everybody is ripping that thing and honestly, it was my favorite part of the whole launch. I even want that for my PHOHNE. (BTW, I read that it does in fact work with the bluetooth keyboard as well. This version just props it up and allows it to charge \ sync while you work.
For me, this is the perfect e-mail reading machine, the perfect portfolio display machine, potentially the best platform of all time for a RTS game, and probably the best internet browsing device (provided the web meets el Jobso's standards). I'm excited about it and will almost certainly get one.
My biggest disappointment? No video in option. I still think this thing would kill as an auxilary input device for a desktop. Maybe next year.