I viewed/read the Gizmodo liveblog of the Apple event this morning announcing the (ta-da!) iPad. Now that the wait is over (well, for the announcement, at least – you’ll have to wait 60 days for the device to start shipping), it’s oddly, well, if not disappointing then not quite as magical as Steve Jobs claimed, IMHO. The price point is pretty good (the base wifi-only model will sell for $499), but some critical stuff is missing, and in my case they may be deal-breakers (okay, who am I kidding? they’re not really deal-breakers, I’d LOVE to get one). The first and biggest lack: Flash. Hello, Apple? What’s up with that? I can live without it on the iPhone but on what is clearly supposed to be a better-than-a-netbook device, that’s just lame! The second big failing (and again, pretty standard on netbooks) is no webcam. That being said, it does look like an awesome web surfing device, size-wise:

It’s a little hard to justify buying one if you already have a MacBook and an iPhone or iPod touch (which I do). It’s especially hard if you’re thinking (as I am) of upgrading your iPhone to a newer model in the next six months to a year and need to budget. But if you currently have none of the above (you lucky so and so’s), go for it – it really looks like a cool device!

If I had to guess, I’d say the real immediate market for the iPad is higher education – this could totally change the way students have to deal with huge textbooks. Oh, and it may be the eventual death knell for the Kindle since the iPad is using the ePub standard). Now let’s see how Apple’s competitors deal with this new class of device.