How expectations and rumors crushed the iPad

For a device that few people outside of the Apple organization have experienced up close and personal, the computing giant's new iPad is generating remarkably negative buzz, earning the kind of pre-release reviews typically reserved for Jonas Brothers albums and Michael Bay movies. Derided in some quarters as little more than an iPod touch on PEDs and roundly mocked for its unfortunate brand name, the iPad is mostly facing criticism for what it isn't, not for what it is.

A 9.7-inch touchscreen tablet promising a user experience optimized for the web, messaging, multimedia, games and ebooks, the iPad will ship with 12 new apps designed especially for the device, and will run almost all of the App Store's 140,000-plus iPhone and iPod touch applications. In addition to access to Apple's iTunes digital media storefront, the iPad also will support Apple's new iBookstore, slated to feature titles from major and independent publishers. As for pricing, the iPad will start at $499, about half of what many analysts anticipated and roughly the same price as Amazon's rival Kindle DX, the large-screen version of the online retailer's ereader device. Higher-end models with 3G wireless capacity will cost up to $829. Intriguing? Absolutely. Game-changing? Too early to call... which, fairly or otherwise, is the problem.

Expectations were impossibly high coming in to Wednesday's iPad launch event--rumors swirled around the device for months, creating expectations that Apple couldn't match, and when the company failed to transcend the hype (at least some of it self-created), the iPad was written off as a flop. Perhaps the most commonly cited complaint lodged against the tablet is that it doesn't support Adobe Flash, significantly limiting the scope of its web capabilities--some take exception to the absence of camera features, while others point to the lack of multi-tasking. Some onlookers expressed disappointment that Apple stopped short of unveiling a new iPhone to go along with the iPad, and still others vented because Apple did not announce a service partnership with Verizon Wireless. In essence, the iPad needed to be all things to all people--and there was no margin for error.

To whatever extent one can feel sympathy for a $50 billion-plus company coming off its most profitable quarter ever, Apple is a victim of its own success and history of innovation--media and consumers were anticipating another revolution, and they got an evolution instead. By making the iPad compatible with the vast majority of existing iPhone and iPod touch applications, Apple is giving its developers a new channel to market their mobile software without investing energy and resources into making changes to their work--at the same time, the iPad hits the ground running with a massive catalog of applications and media downloads already available. It's a pragmatic approach that makes a lot of sense, but there's no ‘wow' factor in practicality, so the knives are out. For a device still so new it doesn't even hit retail until March, the consensus seems to be that the iPad somehow isn't new enough. -Jason