Apple threw the word 'magical' around a lot on the greatly punned and anticipated iPad. Is it really magical? I don't think even the most hardened fanboy would believe that. Instead, it's an incremental evolution of Apple's mobile platform. Bigger screen, more possibilities for things that the iPhone/iPod Touch are too daintily small for. Did much change around the operation system? Again, no, not really, just a minor evolution again with pop-over menus.

Will the iPad be a success? Sure, because Apple these days tends not to fail. Will it be a huge success? Likely not. I see the iPad fitting neatly with sales figures akin to what the MacBook Air is to the MacBook Pro. A specialized model for specialized tastes. By that yard stick, I think the people that genuinely have a need for a small, extremely portable media and light-work device will be extremely happy with it. Those that are perfectly happy with their laptop and iPod/iPhone combo won't see a need for it and likely won't "get" the device either.

It's easy to fault Apple for a lot of things but easiest to fault them for perceived "killer" features that the whole world sees is missing from newly announced devices and for whatever reason are left out by Apple. A few of these came to mind in watching the live feed of the event and I'd like to share my list with you.

#1 Wireless sync - The AppleTV has been out for quite a while now and the very first revision shipped with wireless syncing with iTunes. After all, it's not like you're going to disconnect the whole shebang from your HDTV just to get some movies on it. So they wrote and integrated very nicely wireless syncing for the AppleTV into iTunes. This has been notably missing from the iPod/iPhone primarily to be because they're not 802.11n devices and going over 802.11g would be painfully slow depending upon how much stuff you're transferring. Well, now we have a very mobile device that supports 802.11n and sync still has to take place over that damn white dock cable. There's no technical reason for it and it's bloody annoying. Support both syncing methods!

#2 Front-facing camera - Or any camera at all! The amount of real estate used by CCDs that go into mobile devices is extremely small and given how large the iPad is compared to the iPhone which does have a camera, there really is no excuse for not building in one. But this is the thing that has bugged me most about Apple mobile devices. Apple has done a fantastic job with iChat video and yet none of the mobile devices support it because they lack a front-facing camera which every MacBook on the planet has. To me, there is no bigger reason to have a truly mobile device than to be able to use it to communicate in whatever form. This could've been the iPad's killer-app. Completely free (with data access), face-to-face video conferencing on the go. It's a huge miss in my mind to ignore what they've had the ability and nuts-and-bolts to do for years now.

#3 Multitasking - One of the reason people adore their laptops is because they're mobile, full-fledged computers. I understand that Apple wants to focus on more scaled-down devices but to think that people really want to keep hitting the home button and stopping what they're doing to say check an e-mail is asinine. The iPad has the horsepower and battery life to do, so just let people be able to run multiple apps at a time, even if it's just 2 or 3. Think PIP perhaps?

#4 No flash - Flash is somewhat of a necessarily evil these days. It sucks CPU, it sucks battery but many websites use it in some form. You're really setting the iPad up to fail when you call it the best web browsing experience yet it still has little puzzle pieces where Flash embeds should be.

Those are my four biggest gripes, but really #2 is what hits home with me. I don't think I see a need to buy an iPad but, with my girlfriend and me both sitting on the couch with laptops open is evidence to, a little streamlining of web-browsing couldn't hurt either.

UPDATE: John Gruber has written a fascinating, excellent article on Apple and Flash for further reading on point #4.