Technology

I have been a proud owner of an iPad for almost one month now and I basically use it as a notebook replacement at home. When I leave the office at night I my laptop stays on the office desk and I do the private surfing at home on the iPad. The iPad is not a business device. I could not imagine talking it to a business trip instead of my Macbook Pro. It’s just not flexible enough and the although the touch keyboard works pretty well for typing (I was really surprised!), it’s just not fast enough for business usage. Anyhow, that’s not what the iPad has been designed for. Instead, the iPad is a really great couch-surfing device and that’s what I’m using it for. Watching news on the iPad is great and it’s the best device for quickly checking something out online without being limited to the screen size of a mobile device.

I love the iPad. It’s just the right device rightly positioned between a full-functioning laptop and a mobile phone. But as it is with the first version of a new product line, the iPad has its flaws. Here is my personal TOP 3 of things the iPad is missing:

1. Multi-User Management

As much as it makes perfect sense to not have a multi-user management OS operating on the iPhone, it’s totally missing on the iPad. Each person in a household has a mobile phone, but I doubt that there will be more than one iPad per household. The iPad is located near the couch and is used by multiple people. That’s what the user interface should be designed for, but it isn’t. I’m really looking forward for the first stories of small children sending business e-mails with daddy’s iPad. Personally, I like friends visiting my home, but not so much that I need them to read my e-mail when I hand them the iPad to play around…

2. Over-the-Air File support

Since having seen this, I hate iTunes. Why do I have to plugin my iPad to my laptop (which is staying on my office desk, thanks to you iPad!) in order to sync my music? In order to sync my apps? I want them to automatically transfer to my iPad – OVER THE AIR. Just as Google promises. This might actually be a reason for me to swap to an Android-based tablet if Apple won’t follow suit.

3. Surprise, surprise: Flash & Full Website Support

There has been much debate about Apple and Adobe sharing their love over Flash support, so there’s not much to add. For an iPad user though, it just sucks to constantly come across the “please get the latest version of Adobe Flash” signs. It will be interesting to see how many sites will be optimizing for HTML5 (a nice example is ted.com) instead of flash. Added to this, many websites automatically redirect iPad users to their mobile sites. This happens just too often and webmasters and companies should become more wary about the situation. This morning nespresso.com just lost a 70 EUR-order from me, because I couldn’t change the shipping address on my iPad. Lucky bastards, their business model has locked me in and I’m addicted to coffee…