After a decade of waiting, the Apple tablet is finally here, and reactions across the Internet are mixed, to say the least. Sure, there's always a bit of widespread deflation after a launch with so much hype behind it; nonetheless, the range of attitudes toward the iPad goes from "it's a great tablet, but I'll have to wait and see about the 'revolution' part," to "I'm so disappointed that it's just a giant iPod touch." Missing is the near-universal "Apple has changed the game" sentiment that followed the launch of the iPhone.

None of this is to say that the iPad won't fundamentally change the game. It's just that this launch is closer to that of the original iPod—the idea itself isn't exactly new, competing offerings seem arguably better in some respects, and Apple will have to set itself apart from the pack by delivering a superior user and e-commerce experience. In other words, the iPad isn't going to waltz in and just change the world the way that its smaller predecessor, the iPhone, did. It'll have to fight its way to the top, like the iPod.

As was the case in the wider tech community, reactions to the device at Ars HQ were mixed. During the launch event, tensions ran high, fights broke out over issues like Flash support and the e-book experience, chairs were thrown, and the server melted down from the incredible load of a legion of tech geeks dying to get a glimpse of the Next Big Thing.

Now that we've had time to get the site back together and collect our thoughts, we've put together the following, quick reactions to the iPad. All of the usual caveats apply—opinions are subject to change, your mileage may vary, and so on and so forth. Now, on to our take on the Apple tablet.

Jon Stokes, Deputy Editor

I thought I would have a lot to say about the iPad, and perhaps I will in the coming weeks. But as of this moment, the following feature matrix essentially sums up the whole of my thinking on the iPad. Note that this is not a complete list of features and capabilities for current phones or tablets. Rather, it's just a list of stuff that I personally care about in a mobile device, and it reflects my expectation of what's coming this year based on my time at this past CES. Your mileage may vary.

iPad Leading Smartphones A bazillion other tablets in 2010 Buy & watch video X X X Buy & play music X X X Buy & play games X X X Buy & read e-books X X X App Store X X X Use non-Apple media stores (e.g., Netflix, Amazon MP3) X X Use office apps (word processor, spreadsheet, slides) X X X Surf Web X X X E-mail/IM X X X Multi-task X X Multi-touch X X X 3G X X X Wi-Fi X X X Integrated SD card slot X X Flash support X X Integrated webcam X 10 hrs battery life X X ? 0.5 inches thin, 1.5 lbs X X ? $500 starting price X X ?

Given that matrix, it's hard to see how the iPad is really the no-brainer upgrade over everything else in the world the way that the iPhone was when it was announced. Yes, I'd rather own an iPad than, say, either the HP slate or the 10-inch Tegra 2- and Android-based tablet prototype that MSI showed at CES. But, at least in the case of the MSI tablet, I'd have to do a little more homework first before making a final decision.

It's certainly true that with many of the items above, Apple's implementation will be superior to the competition, and in some cases dramatically so. But there are also places where Apple's iPad will be inferior, so the end result is that buyers will end up making a tradeoff based on the same kind of "what matters to me" feature grid that I've given above. I honestly wasn't expecting to have to do that.

Take the custom 1GHz SoC that powers the device, for instance. Given the PA Semi team's reputation for miracles, this is probably a fantastic little part. But even if it's stupendously, amazingly awesome, you can't break the laws of physics, so it's very hard to imagine that it has even a 20 percent performance/watt advantage over a comparable SoC from Qualcomm, TI, or Freescale.

(Before you get out the flame gun: 20 percent is about the performance advantage that Intel is able to get from non-process-related design innovations alone from one generation to the next. So Intel, a very large, very old chipmaker, full of very smart people, puts the full weight of its collective design know-how into getting that 20 percent boost. That's why, if PA Semi's ARM implementation beats the competition's ARM implementation by over 20 percent in performance per watt on the same process, I'll eat your hat.)

Or, take battery life: 10 hours is amazing, but is it really that much more amazing than, say, the 8 hours that a Linux-based competitor might achieve?

For my purposes as a power-user and professional gadget freak, you could take either Google's Android or Palm's webOS, put them on a similarly-sized tablet that's designed by, say, HTC, and you'd have a credible iPad competitor that is inferior in a many areas but possibly superior in a few critical respects.

For instance, I can easily imagine an Android-based tablet that's designed by HTC, powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 2, does 1080p video (vs. iPad's 720p maximum resolution), and has much better 3D gaming performance, but at the cost of two hours of battery life. And if someone made such a thing, I would rather buy it than an iPad. I'd even pay over $500 for it. Given the number of Android and ARM-based devices I saw at this past CES, and the amount of design talent that's going into many of them, I expect to see at least one non-embarrassing Android-based competitor to the iPad by at least the second half of the year, if not earlier.

In the end, Apple has done something with the iPad that I didn't think they were capable of: made it worth my while to look around, or possibly even wait, for a better, more open alternative. I'm ready to buy an ARM-based, thin-client tablet computer—I'm just not ready to buy this one.

All of the above being said, I'll buy an iPad anyway because it's my job to be up on this kind of thing. It'll probably also be the first time that I "jailbreak" a device. That's because Apple's closed ecosystem is feeling less and less like an exclusive resort and more like Big Love's Juniper Creek compound. If the company doesn't figure out this whole Internet thing, soon, they're ultimately destined to go the way of the once-mighty AOL. And if you're itching to retort that Apple really does "get" the cloud, as is clearly evidenced by the amazing MobileMe service, then congratulations—you're now ready to buy yourself some prairie garb and take that second wife you've been eyeing.