There seems to be a general lack of concern about the iPads shortcomings. I guess if you are an Apple fanatic you turn a blind eye. I received the iPad for Christmas - someone was way too generous! Anyway, it is cool and all but really, really limited. The fact that it won't play Adobe Flash sucks......HTML5 is hardly as ubiquitous. But ok...yet when I tried to listen to earnings calls and presentations from corporations.....which is really what I do.....it is totally useless. Veracast, like most other such sites, makes you choose between Windows Media Player or RealPlayer to listen to the stream but you guessed it - the iPad OS doesn't support them either! Why do these forums not address these glaring oversights????? Can someone confirm that I am correct about the iPads shortcomings, I would really appreciate it. (my girlfriend could have bought me 2 nice net books for less than the cost of this one neat doorstop) Any takers?

Okay, we forgive you... this time! Because the iPad came to you as a gift. Most of us had to shop for it and learned early on what shortcomings it had. I'm a PC user so I did mind about some of your gripes too. But after living with the iPad for 8 months and discovering the great things the iPad can do, I hardly ever use the PC directly anymore. When I do it's by remote, through the iPad with Splashtop. (that solves using Flash)

The iPad is not a computer, it was meant as an Apple sold media consumption device, like the iPods. You can do more than that with it if you wish. You just have to be clever about it and look for things in the AppStore that will do what you need to be done.
If you want to remain (have your pick) lazy, stubborn, unimaginative, obtuse or ignorant, just throw the piece of crap out the window and you'll make sure that your life does not change.

Of course if you take up the challenge you'll have the luxury of looking for solutions on this fine site. And the fine people you've just slapped in the face will be eager to help you... Me included!

No we're not blind to it's shortcomings, just prepared to accept it's limitations.
It's a new gadget and compromises have been made for portability and battery life.
Your's is a somewhat specialised requirement and the iPads obviously not for you. Sorry if you feel money has been wasted.

ps Avoid netbooks like the plague and get a reasonable laptop as they are built to a budget and perform accordingly.

Fair enough. The media I would like to consume primarily comes from a website that forces me to choose from one of two players - RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. I am not super technical (but don't want to remain ignorant which is why I came to the forums to begin with) - so am I correct in assuming that until such websites offer the option of playing such transmissions with some other programs - I am out of luck????

Originally Posted by Hasty

It's a new gadget and compromises have been made for portability and battery life.
Your's is a somewhat specialised requirement and the iPads obviously not for you. Sorry if you feel money has been wasted.

ps Avoid netbooks like the plague and get a reasonable laptop as they are built to a budget and perform accordingly.

Come on, you are kidding, right?

The problems with Flash Player is simply hardheadedness on Apples part. They don't want to allow you to use Adobe products. It has nothing to do with portability or battery life.

Originally Posted by herbdb

Originally Posted by Hasty

It's a new gadget and compromises have been made for portability and battery life.
Your's is a somewhat specialised requirement and the iPads obviously not for you. Sorry if you feel money has been wasted.

ps Avoid netbooks like the plague and get a reasonable laptop as they are built to a budget and perform accordingly.

Come on, you are kidding, right?

The problems with Flash Player is simply hardheadedness on Apples part. They don't want to allow you to use Adobe products. It has nothing to do with portability or battery life.

Agreed about some of the reasons behind flash but avoiding the huge, bulky, bloated software such as most of Microsoft's or Adobe's, is a big reason why battery life is so efficient. Using a slower processor is then possible and so benefits longevity. I don't dispute that Apple also benefits in the process but I'm okay with that and so should we all. That will mean ongoing R&D for better new products... BTW when's this TabletMac coming out?

I really don't see how this is a lack of oversight that we should all be up in arms about. From the Veracast website:

"We are a leading developer and provider of web-based solutions for multimedia webcasting over the Internet. Veracast serves businesses and organizations that want to use the Internet for virtual communications. Formed in 1998, Veracast is a leader and pioneer in the use of streaming media technologies for virtual communications in business, particularly the financial services industry.

Veracast has built its business and reputation by providing our clients with the highest level of service, technical support and reliability to help them extend and expand the reach of their corporate communications efforts."

How can they possibly call themselves a leader and not have solutions in place that would support some of the most ubiquitous mobile devices? Have you tried contacting them?

People forget that apple has been studying crash logs for years and one of the major culprits has always been flash and adobe's crappy upgrades and security loopholes.
Why should they open another can of worms?

They clearly said they had no intention of running flash on the new gadget from the start, especially when the hardware is so limited.
Anyway how do you do a mouse roll-over with touch?

Maybe they will reconsider with later models with better cpus and memory but for the moment we have to do without.

Stackman, I'm prepared to get severly flamed for this, but there truly is a FanBoy culture with Apple users. If you have a reasonable question about a feature, there are many who will tell you to stop complaining because you don't really NEED it. Talk about half price, full featured NetBooks will be noted as your stupidness for not recognizing value. And your failure to recognize the iPad as the answer to every problem, will earn you criticism for being out of touch.

The ipad is many great things and fills a portability and entertainment need. But it's not reliable for business use because of the limitations you cited. Personally, I save my serious work for the PC. Applets are the greatest thing, because the sites make their content work on the iPad.

So I agree with the poster to use it for what it can do, get some great tips from this site (they're not all fanboys), and set your expectations of the device accordingly.

After reading the first post I was ready to start cheering for the Jets. I use PCs at work. But there is an app I use that outshines anything MS could produce. It's just different.

It's like boats. Just because you can't waterski behind a sailboat doesn't mean the sailboat is defective.

I think over time you find how useful the iPad is.