So after all the fanfare I decided to go check out the iPad at the local Best Buy store. I had read a LOT about it and as a believer in convergence and not adding another device that needs recharging, sync’ing and carrying around, I still thought perhaps as a photographer this could be a great specialized device for showing portfolios, proofs to customers, and video slide-shows with background music.

My first impression of the device was pretty positive, great screen, awesome form factor, the blown up iPhone/iTouch interface is simple and intuitive. Then I went straight to my portfolio site and although it had no flash components, a simple fade-in fade-out transition slide-show was VERY sluggish, it seemed it could not keep up with the transitions. Bummer. So I decided to hop onto my SmugMug Pro account to view recent pictures of a wedding I shot…. and bam, I hit the “sorry cannot play any flash” error in Safari. So neither the regular picture slide-show nor the mp4 video slide-show I had created for the couple could be shown as both needed flash to run. In a screeching halt my test drive was over . Needless to say, compared to the iPhone, the lack of flash support on this device is an even bigger blow to its potential market share as it tries to find niche markets where flash still has a heavy presence.

I don’t have high hopes for flash support on the iPhone and iPad, it’s really a shame they couldn’t reach a deal with Adobe, hopefully this opens the door for healthy competition like the Joojoo and similar devices but this hot new breed of devices seems to be going through some rough beginnings on the critics side. This is all good though, I’m sure version 2.0 of these machines will have rounded their edges and polished their software for more solid products.