Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! It’s iPad day! The iPad is a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price! I know, ‘cuz Apple told me so. They told me, ‘cuz I asked them to notify me when the iPad was available (because otherwise, I might not have heard about it). And now it’s here, and I have an (almost) overwhelming compulsion to get one, even though it’s rather lacking in a lot of ways. I mean, first off, the price is only “unbelievable” because Apple had everybody thinking it would be about a thousand bucks, and then came out and said it was “only” gonna be half that. Pretty good, eh?

Of course, that’s for the 16-gig one. 16 gigs seems pretty lame to me, but I guess you can always plug in a USB drive or a memory card.

No? No. Apple says no. No external storage for you.

I have an alarm clock with a USB port and a cell phone with a micro SD card slot, but not on the Apple iPad. Sorry. Guess I’ll just have to upgrade to a model with a little more storage. So I guess I’d go with the 64-gig model, which pops the price up to $700. Unless I want the one with 3G, in which case it’ll be $829, but at least I can buy any data plan from any provider I want. As long as I want either the 250 meg/month ($15 a month) or “unlimited” plan ($30 a month), and as long as I only want it from ATT. But at least if I already have an iPhone with a data plan, I can just swap the SIM card, right?

No? No. Apple says no. No SIM card swapping for you.

Oh well, I don’t have an iPhone anyway, so I’ll just use my Verizon cell phone and USB cable as a modem if I’m out of WiFi range. Oh, wait, no USB. I forgot.

So, anyway, along with my $829, 64-gig iPad, I think I’ll want the iPad case ($29), the keyboard dock ($69), oh, and I better get Apple Care for $99, ‘cuz I kinda don’t trust their hardware not to break. So that gets me up to $1,036 – more like $1,121 with tax – plus $30 a month, ‘cuz, let’s face it, I need unlimited data; too bad it has to be ATT, though, which kinda sucks.

But for that, I get something that will run any software I want (as long as I only want software approved by Apple and available at the App Store). That means no Flash, of course, and no Flash video. Oh, and I’m required to use iTunes, which, frankly, I can’t stand. And I can’t have more than one thing running at a time, so I have to switch between apps, but I’m mostly gonna just be using Firefox anyway, right?

No? No. Apple says no. No Firefox for you.

I read one of many glowing iPad reviews that kind of sums things up. The iPad, this guy wrote, isn’t much good at creating stuff, but it’s really good a consuming stuff. And isn’t that what it’s really all about?

Just do what Apple says to do, and use what Apple tells you to use, and nobody gets hurt.

As for me, much as I want to be one of the trendy boys, I think I’ll just have to pass (though I’ve been trying to convince my boss that I need one for development purposes). While it looks like a nice toy, I’m afraid it just doesn’t do a thousand dollars worth of stuff. Maybe when somebody comes out with an open source version that isn’t crippled, I’ll go for it. Until then, I won’t be one of the cool kids, I guess. But that’s OK.

iPad or not, It’s tough to look cool when you walk with a limp.