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I’d been looking forward to this event all year, had even decided that I was going to buy it almost no matter what it cost. A device that bridged the gap between smart phone and laptop, with the Apple style and design, how could one not want that? Unfortunately, after all was revealed I was left sadly wanting. Sad, because it was not the device I was hoping for. And sad because this might be the first time ever I’ve found an Apple product undesirable. Anyway, let me count the ways:

• no multitasking: I can see me sat on the sofa enjoying a movie on the awesome big screen, decide to tweet what a fantastic device it is, so have to quit the movie, launch EchoFon, tweet, restart the movie, find where I was and carry on. Oh wait, what time does the Pizza place open? Quit the movie, open Safari, find the answer, call them (on the iPhone), and back to the movie. No, guess not.
• Apple says what I can do: The closed nature of the device in hardware and software means I can only do what Apple says I can. Surf the web with a tabbed browser? No, sorry, Safari only. Want to edit your photos, well there’s probably an app for that (but not iLife apparantly) but once I’ve edited them I can’t stick a thumbdrive in and copy it to my non-standard website. Not unless someone writes an app for that (and Apple approves it).
• Still no Flash: Like it or not, Flash pwns the Internet. No Hulu for the iPad owner, either. Or Vimeo or Viddler. No Facebook other than leaving each other messages, can’t run any FB apps. Yes, HTML 5 could make Flash obselete but thats still a couple of years and by then I am sure the iPad will be a very different beast.
• Assisted GPS: The iPad has the possibility of making an awesome Electronic Flight Bag (all the charts, regs etc, flight planning tools) but with a real GPS it could have replaced my aviation GPS into one awesome EFB. But assisted GPS won’t cut it in the air so I still need a $800-$2000 piece of kit for that, and it can run some apps as well….

I don’t hate it. On the contrary, it’s sexier than Megan Fox on the beach and I bet the experience is to die for. But it doesn’t do anything for me at this price point that I can’t do on my iPhone or MacBook Pro; I don’t see that it fills the gap between the two in any way like Steve said it does. So for now I’ll pass but with iPhone OS 4.0 coming out (with multitasking??) and future revisions likely I certainly don’t expect to be iPad-less in the long term.

These guys do a good job at expressing some of my thoughts: Engadget on the iPad.

It’s a new year (in case you hadn’t noticed) and although I don’t make resolutions these days I did make some promises to myself. The first of which is to lose weight. Ever since I stopped the competitive latin dancing (and increased my burger and fry intake to make up for it) I’ve been putting on the pounds (and stones) and by the end of last year I had reached a weight that I would never have thought possible.

So, I (re) signed up for Weight Watchers online, which I had done quite well at back in 2006, at the beginning of the year and am therefore back to counting points, working out if I can have that triple baconator or not. I’ve had a good start so far but it will soon get harder to get the pounds off. But since the beginning of the year I’ve lost just over 8 lbs but I’ve a long way to go.

Been hearing this on BBC Radio 1 in the evenings and I just love it. I’ve always been a big fan of Massive Attack but this track is just heavenly: trip hop at it’s best. The track is called Paradise Circus and is on their forthcoming album Heligoland, out in February (in the UK at least).

This obviously isn’t the official video. You can find the official video at this link but be aware it is very NSFW, but very interesting if you can handle the content. Can’t wait for the album.

I promise there’ll be some “real” content soon, this isn’t supposed to be a video blog. That’s what my tumblr is for.