Concerns about touch-typing feedback and unitasking dampen my enthusiasm, however. How can a device “just work” when you can’t do real “work” on it? But I’ll admit: I haven’t yet touched an iPad, which (so I’m told) is necessary if I’m going to “get it.”

A market that didn’t exist before, now exists, and Apple created it. Go to an Apple store soon. I’ve been twice in the last couple weeks. PACKED. People waiting in line. Geeks? Hardly. Fanboys? Maybe a few. You know who’s there? People who know nothing about computers. People who are intimidated by computers. People who hate computers. And they are buying iPads, because the iPad doesn’t scare them. They use it with confidence. They can slide their fingers across it with no fear of screwing it up. They can make it do amazing things effortlessly.

It’s hard for you and I to grasp this, but the vast majority of people (people who don’t read and comment on blogs for example) are not techies. They buy a car and expect to know how to use it without being a mechanic. They buy microwave ovens and expect, they will be able to use it without reading the manual first. The iPad, and it’s predecessor the iPhone finally removed this hurdle of entry into the world of computing. And people are eating it up.

Like you, I expect to see this feature in a future revision, and (again, like you) consider this artificial upgrade cycle pretty despicable.

But what’s your use case for an iPad camera? A front-facing cam would offer a table-level look at my nosehairs. A rear-facing camera doesn’t seem very useful, either; the iPad seems too big to whip out for snapshots.

Good thoughts, in any case.

1. Planned obsolescence. Sure, tech always improves and gets better and cheaper, but no camera on the iPad? Really? It’s like they couldn’t even trust themselves to come out with a way to upgrade the thing, so instead they create this artificial upgrade cycle by holding back obvious features.

2. OS4 (and the lack thereof). If OS4 were hitting the iPad in June, I might have still caved and purchased an iPad. As it is, you have to wait until fall to multitask (no multitask is a deal breaker for me on a tablet), as well as experience things you don’t want like the impending glut of ads in all your applications.

3. The closed system. There’s a huge rant here that other people have argued better than I could, but when I read about how it’s a pain to actually transfer files to and from the iPad if, for example, you actually want to use iWork and be productive on the iPad, a lot of that hampered user experience is due to just how closed Apple’s system is. It extends beyond just only being able to load apps that Apple approves and only being able to load them through Apple’s store.

I don’t know, however, whether any of this matters. I took a third of the money I was going to spend on the iPad and bought a Barnes & Noble Nook (the Kindle doesn’t allow free ebooks from the library, so screw Amazon), and I’ll just keep using my laptop for things like watching streaming Netflix. But I’m a geek. I care more about these issues than a lot of people, who aren’t even aware some of these issues exist.

Perhaps the true brilliance behind the iPad and nearly every other Apple product is that Apple caters to people who don’t actually know or care that much about tech. As you mentioned, Apple customers just want a cool device that works. That’s understandable, and Apple does a great job with industrial design, user interfaces, and branding. Those three things are enough to sway a lot of people.

I also reserve the right to change my mind about the iPad in two or three years when it costs half as much and comes with all the tech and capabilities it should already have today.

The closed system isn’t always convenient. I don’t use iTunes because it doesn’t work with what I’m already using- Ubuntu. In the past year I’ve been surprised by many people I know switching to options like Ubuntu even though I wouldn’t describe them as particularly technically inclined.

Apple has a large, committed group of fans, but I think ticking off developers limits their potential to attract new customers. New customers are attracted by doing new things or doing things in a new way.

Freedom is overrated