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So. The iPad. Cool, eh?

What, you don’t like it? Think Jobs under-delivered in his keynote? Thinking your tiny Dell netbook can do all that and more, even if you have to crouch to look at the screen and glue your hands together to type?

Yeah, I know. Tablets with full 9.7 inches of ultra-sensitive touch screens are so common nowadays. I mean, these things can even play HD video without crashing their way to reboot, yeah, that’s common too. And the interface? Pssssh, I’ve seen Excel worksheets looking better than that iCal view. And all that starting from $499? Gee, what were these guys thinking.

Seriously, people, get a grip. I don’t know what kind of mystic arcana you believed Jobs would unveil in his keynote, but really, are you that close-minded to think that the iPad is common and overrated? Have you seen many tablet PCs nowadays that look and function as cool and intuitively as the iPad looked in that intro video?

And don’t get me started about the lack of Flash support; seriously, who cares¹. Oh I know – Flash developers care. Look, my fellow developers, I admire your skills but seriously, seriously, don’t you ever think that maybe it’s the time to expand your skills a bit if you want to hop on the bandwagon?

Most developer complaints I’ve heard are based on the loose axis of “yeah I know I could do that and more with Cocoa, but I’m confident with my current set of skills and I don’t want to learn Objective-C”. This is wrong and you know it – this is as if PHP developers absolutely refused to dabble on Ruby & Python because they’re “happy with their current set of skills”. We’re called developers for God’s sake, don’t you think we should develop our skills every now and then?

The iPad is not made for you and me, fellow geek. It’s primarily targeted to people that are still afraid of interacting with PCs, those that don’t have a clue about drivers and web apps and Wi-Fi setup. And this is exactly the kind of people that won’t buy a Linux netbook, dear Open Source zealots – because as much as Ubuntu has made Linux user-friendly, there’s still much filling that shows between the seams.

One could argue that I’m a total iPad fangirl and everything above is the fruit of my utter fangirlism, but I assure you, I’m not that much of a fanatic cookie. I’ll probably don’t even buy the first generation iPad. But I’ve seen people getting it so wrong on the interwebs these days that I’ve collected a massive amount of ranting fume.

¹ Yeah, I know Farmville fanatics, you’ll have to stick to your netbooks to sow your corn, but I don’t really care about you to be frank.