If you've been browsing around, you'll probably have noticed a lot of adverse reaction to the Apple iPad – at least among the geeks …

The amount of user-generated hype for Apple's new tablet computer was so vast that almost anything was likely to be a let-down, so the immediate backlash (ipad sucks) is hardly a surprise. The iPad turned out to be, at bottom, an iPod Touch with a big screen. It failed to offer a magical new 3D interface, or an OLED screen, or a built-in projector, or any other revolutionary features. Indeed, it doesn't even have basic features such as a webcam, microphone, USB port, SD card slot, HDMI port, or a standard mobile phone SIM slot, though some of these will be provided at extra cost, via adaptors.

As Bobbie Johnson has already pointed out here in Apple iPad: what it doesn't have, the new tablet also lacks Adobe Flash support (which means that, like the iPhone and iPod Touch, it can't handle some websites) and multi-tasking. No Flash means no Farmville or similar Facebook games.

Gizmodo, the influential gadget blog, has a post - 8 Things That Suck About the iPad – that says No thanks! and gives the device the thumbs down. The list currently includes 11 things, though a rider adds: "This post does not necessarily reflect the opinions of others at Gizmodo."

One aspect of the iPad was that some saw it as Apple's answer to the netbook – a cheap form factor that millions want but Apple won't supply. CNet argued that the iPad wasn't the answer, in 10 Things Netbooks still do better than an iPad. It fails to mention that you can get netbooks that offer higher screen resolution than the iPad, as well as the usual netbook features (hard drive, keyboard, webcam etc).

In The Case against the iPad, Timothy B Lee wrote: "I'm not impressed. I'm a lifelong Mac fanboy, so I'm not averse to buying Apple stuff. But I don't understand who this product is marketed for, and I'm disappointed that Apple has decided to adopt the iPhone's locked-down platform strategy."

The iPad name also attracted derision because, as the Examiner pointed out, "For North American women the word 'pad' means but one thing, a sanitary napkin":

"So flabbergasted were women, and a good many men, at the name that not only did iPad quickly become a trending topic on twitter but so did iTampon. And the jokes were flying through cyberspace ..."

Jezebel quickly compiled The Internet's Best Period-Related iPad Jokes

Silicon Alley Insider had so many negative posts that it headlined its link post Wow, Did Apple Just Blow It? The stories include Apple's iPad Is This Decade's Newton, and The Truth About Apple's iPad: It's A Big Yawn.

Fake Steve Jobs (actually, Newsweek's technology editor Dan Lyons) summed it all up in his live-blog of the launch:

11:01– and i know what you're thinking – we came up with a new device and all we could think to do with it is run the apps that run on your iphone, and have a clone of Kindle, and now run iWork apps? um, yes. that's all we could come up with.

11:04– good lord, did i really say this is the most important thing i've ever done in my life?

As software developer Dave Winer says in Apple's jumbo Oreo:



"Finally, Apple went too far, and the emperor is totally naked for all of us to see. Ridiculous product. Absolutely completely ridiculous."

But not everyone took such a negative view. Some reckoned it really was a new type of device, and the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg argued that ultimately the iPad would be about the software and media, rather than the hardware.

After an attention-grabbing (but silly) headline, The PC Officially Died Today, Nicholas Carr claimed: "we've entered a new era of computing, in which media and software have merged in the Internet cloud".

"With the iPad, Apple is hoping to bridge all the niches. It wants to deliver the killer device for the cloud era, a machine that will define computing's new age in the way that the Windows PC defined the old age. The iPad is, as Jobs said today, 'something in the middle,' a multipurpose gadget aimed at the sweet spot between the tiny smartphone and the traditional laptop. If it succeeds, we'll all be using iPads to play iTunes, read iBooks, watch iShows, and engage in iChats. It will be an iWorld."

However, he was not blind to the iPad's obvious limitations, or to the risk of entering an Apple-dominated world. Jobs's "overriding goal is to establish his company as the major conduit, and toll collector, between the media cloud and the networked computer. Jobs doesn't just want to produce glamorous gizmos. He wants to be the impresario of all media." Carr concluded.

At The New York Times, David Pogue's The Apple iPad: First Impressions said the iPad bashing "will last until the iPad actually goes on sale in April. Then, if history is any guide, Phase 3 will begin: positive reviews, people lining up to buy the thing, and the mysterious disappearance of the basher-bloggers."

"My main message to fanboys is this: it's too early to draw any conclusions. Apple hasn't given the thing to any reviewers yet, there are no iPad-only apps yet (there will be), the e-bookstore hasn't gone online yet, and so on. So hyperventilating is not yet the appropriate reaction."

True, but it's not as much fun.

Maybe the iPad will find a market among marketing people, old people, parents, as some have suggested to Dave Winer. "What they're really saying is that it's the computer for idiots. I agree. Idiots with $500 burning a hole in their pocket. Like me. I'll almost certainly buy one. But unless I'm missing something, I'll still travel with the Asus that I'm typing this review on."