Well, there we have it. The Apple iPad is officially no longer just a rumour. It’s a lovely new shiny device. There’s a lot right with it; go to the Apple website to see about that. However, there’s also a lot wrong with it. Three key things really disappoint me.
Firstly, in spite of the misleading name, this is not a ‘pad’. You cannot write on it. There is no handwriting recognition, no stylus. Surely one of the key functions of a tablet should be that you can write notes on it and do away with paper pads? A cleverly-designed operating system would help no end in managing pages and pages of scrawled notes by making them searchable, date-stamping them and adding other meta-data. OK, handwriting recognition is still a technology that has a long way to go but Apple didn’t even try to address this.
