Did we get any technological progress today?

For those burried under rubble in Hatti, or busy tracking Tim Tebow, there was another event that took place on Wednesday. Apple introduced their new tablet computer called the iPad.

What is it? Essentially, it is just a larger and flatter iPod Touch on steroids. It runs the iPhone OS. It will run most iPhone apps unaltered. It is powered by that unfortunate 1Ghz A4 processor. It has no telephone or video phone capabilities. It has a resolution of 1024 x 768. It does not support multi-tasking at all. This is intended to be used as an eBook reader, and they say it kills Kindle in this regard.

What do I think? I think Apple aimed too low. I would have greatly preferred 1280x720 resolution (at a minimum), and better still 1920x1080. I would have greatly preferred a Core 2, or Core i3. Multi-tasking is imperative. I would have greatly preferred full video teleconferencing in a tablet form. In short, it is too much of a pad, and not enough of a tablet.

I would have been willing to pay $1,299 for the device I wanted. Nope, they were set on an intro price level of $499. Hence we have a device weakened by consumerist pricing.

I am going to call it right now folks: Unless Apple greatly extends this bitch's capabilities quickly, it is going to be an epic failure.