It's a shame that Today's Internet is coated in tacky menstruation jokes as a result. "Canvas" would have been a far cooler name, but one supposes Apple is married to the "i" bit now, for better or for worse.

The overall weirdness about today's presentation was that almost the entire thing was Steve Jobs and company talking about stuff that we would expect it to do anyway. Of course it will play your iTunes music/movies/shows. Of course it has apps. So it seemed like kind of a waste of time to keep belaboring that point. And, really, enough with the feints at the gamer market, Apple. You guys invited Kotaku for the press, that's it. After two years, we're only now barely starting to get iPhone games that you could actually call games... and even those pale in comparison to what you can get on your DS. iPhone games cost, on average, one fucking dollar and that's about what they're worth. Touchscreen Need for Speed? Whatever. Nothing will come of this until somebody figures out the kind of games that are made specifically for the device, not just sideways ports with touch-buttons pasted on to them.

I was waiting for the "one more thing" and it didn't happen. Boo.

The book store thing is okay, but stupidly expensive. $15 for a virtual book - a little more than most new paperbacks? How about $5 or less. Apple's media pricing has been inconsistent (I remember $10 iTunes albums being cheaper than actual CDs, but $2 TV shows and $15 movies are more expensive than buying DVDs), however this seems way off. Let's hope that Ted Kennedy book was a bad example. Essentially, we're paying more for the privilege of not needing shelf space... which any good book geek will tell you that having a glorious library room is part of the fun. I'm also a bit cheesed that paperbacks sell for $6 to $12 and factor in all the hard costs of creating it... while a $15 digital book has none of those costs, so why am I paying more?

I can't think of a more out-of-touch feature to harp on than the ability to read a newspaper. Seriously.

The more-or-less standard def aspect ratio is an odd choice. That letterboxed Star Trek sure looked like crap.

Immediate access to 99% of the iPhone App Store is a great start. This is like when Nintendo introduced the DS with a Game Boy Advance slot. It's also nice that you do not have to re-buy any iPhone apps for use on your iPad. They will just sync on over. Compare that to Microsoft's recent reveal that 360 owners who bought classic arcade games over XBLA will have to buy them again if they want them inside the upcoming Game Room feature.

The MLB.com thing could be huge. Did they mention what that would cost? I fully expect the MLB to sabotage the concept by charging $10/month for it. Still, watching live sports with the ability to pull down instant stats and replays? That's pretty slick.

I'd love to know if that painting program can take a stylus for precision art. I would love to be able to draw directly, as on the Wacom tablets of yore.

I like the idea of the $10 iWork apps. I'd certainly play around with the touch controls, even if I haven't needed any kind of Office anything since my junior year of college (that's a joke that references me not doing any work in my final year.) My old buddy Matt wants a touchable Final Cut app. I think this is another step on Apple's path of going touchscreen on all models, desktop/laptops included. Rather than doing it the Dell way, they're really checking this concept out and making sure people "get" it. The iPhone was step one.

Although getting these into business hands will be a tough sell, there are plenty of opportunities where a salesman with an iPad could stage some serious stuff. Easy slideshow creation, projector attachment, gesture controlling everything... that would be some impressive tech to whip out at a business meeting.

The lack of multitasking apps is a concern. I mean, it hasn't hurt the iPhone any, but with a larger screen people are going to assume they can have different program windows. On the iPhone, I can jump from Safari to Twitter with no problem, and the fact that one app "quits" is never really a problem. So I wouldn't call it a dealbreaker just yet. Part of the iPad's challenge is that people are going to constantly compare it to a "real" laptop and find reasons to call it lacking. I like how the iPhone OS lets everything just work. You don't need to worry with networking or directory paths or save locations. It's a smooth abstraction of the computing process, continuing the curve Apple started with the very first Macintosh. I'm perfectly OK with the iPad taking those lessons into a physically larger arena.

The model differentiation is confusing and a mistake. Did we really need three GB options? I think it's silly to break out the 3G version as being $130 more expensive. Sounds like another AT&T backroom argument. That $15/month 3G data cost is cheap, though, and makes me wonder if AT&T offered that up in return for something else... like more exclusivity months with the iPhone. DRAMATIC PRAIRIE DOG!

The Flash debate amuses. Apple is going to have trouble washing this one away. I get that Flash sort of sucks and is controlled by a diagonal competitor... but, again, with that big screen, people are going to be disappointed when they head to their favorite website and find a plugin error. On the iPhone there is a built-in acceptance because the device is small, and when was the last time a small browser was worth a damn, on your cell phone? I think not. But the iPad is going to confront the Flash issue head-on.

Where's the camera? I expect that to be item number one on the hardware revision list.

But that $500 price (for the low end model) is pretty amazing. Nobody predicted that (except me, about twenty minutes into the pitch). What's especially great about that is that it can only go down. Next year, the enhanced iPad 4G will be $300! (*speculation) At $500, consumers have a choice: spend half that and get a piece of shit Windows netbook, or spend double that and get a fullblown laptop.

I think there genuinely is a middle ground there, because we all know that most people just don't care about all the "potential" you get with a "real" computer. They simply never use it. Networking, upgrading, all that nerdy stuff. Most people don't even pull their SD cards out of their digital cameras, for crying out loud. And, as Apple pointed out, with 70 hojillion people out there who already know the iPad interface, it does seem like we've got a Trojan iPhone in our midst. Many people could be plainly happy with an iPad that is super-easy to install apps, brings in media, allows for web/email/IM, goes direct to Facebook and YouTube... and just happens to be a sexy piece of kit from a sexy company. Look at those posed models, those people are holding Sci-Fi datapads! The only way it could get more futuristic is if the damn thing floated in mid-air.

Just in our house, I know we use our iPhones all the time. The iPad is a bigger, meatier version that, potentially, doesn't cost as much a month.

But we all know better than to buy first-gen hardware, right? I'll be watching 2010 carefully. Rhonda and I technically do not own a current laptop, so a $500 finely honed version of what we saw today would be just the thing.