I was busy in a shoot all day yesterday so I didn’t have time to eagerly watch the new apple product launch.  I finally got a chance to look at the image after I put my girlfriend to bed and was waiting for my webproofs to upload and my loaf of bread to finish baking.

I’m dissappointed as I was looking for it to be a bit more of a tablet style laptop.  I knew it would be less powerful, but limiting it’s capabilities to match what we expect from a phone?

It’s talked about by apple as the BEST way to experience the internet but there is no support for Flash?  I’m a photographer, my site is built on a mixture of flash and html much like many media rich sites.  Flash is integrated into many sites that the majority of people watch and read and it’s a shame this hasn’t been launched with the Flash issue tackled.  All those cool videos on Hulu and Vimeo, all the nice website features, all disabled.  Basically any web technology developed in the last 4 years works with flash.

For $499, I can just buy myself a reasonably priced pc laptop.  I want to love the Tablet, but not this version.  If the Iphone, Ipod and Imac are any examples for us to look at, apple will eventually get better at this format, but it’ll take at least one more round to figure out that it’s ideas so far aren’t flawless.  Even my girlfriend who just needs a laptop in general who would love to get something like this is annoyed it still won’t be what she as a casual user needs because of its slow processor and lack of real hard drive space.

There are niche markets that a tablet shaped version of a macbook would be very welcome.  For example, I frequent a professional photographers section of a forum that discusses medium and large format cameras with digital backs, and many of them were hoping to be able to use the tablet as a tool to tether their cameras to because of the lack of a decent screen provided by companies like Phase One, Leaf and Sinar.  Most of photographers love the quality of these backs, but its hard to see them in daylight to check if the shot is in focus because the screens are so shabby. (they’re not all bright and shiny like the pictures featured below)

I know whenever I’ve used digital backs for shoots, the only way I felt comfortable shooting was tethered because I could never trust the screens.  They were all hoping for a FW400/800 port and a standard Snow Leopard OS.

Once again Apple has ignored the professional base that is it’s bread & butter to reach out to the masses, but it doesn’t even offer an upgraded pro version with more real notebook features.  Please Apple can you get it together and not spit marketing bs at us?  The BEST way to view the internet?  really apple?

Of course as with all things, in the end I’ll have to see it in person to see what it’s really good at and how it could benefit me having one.  I could see myself using it for portfolio presentations, especially where I want to mix stills and video.  There’s a great discussion going on how this impacts magazines and newspapers as they could come up with an easy delivery option that cuts out the printing part of the equation and allows their publications to finally be media rich and easy to use.

Really what it comes down to is that the Ipad is a delivery tool for media more than a work tool.  BUT to be 100% successful we’ll have to see how content providers work around not using flash.  Or is the new version of flash going to go around the devices?