Do you have a USB port on your cell phone, your camera or your video recorder? No, you plug them into a USB port. Do you need Firewire on a USB device, especially one that is 3G? What is Firewire? What purpose does it serve away from your network, or somebody’s network? To what network does a 3G device belong?
You’re locking yourself in to existing assumptions. How can what *is* be configured, in a disruptive way that puts computing power into the hands of everyday people? That’s Jobs’ motivating philosophy, and always has been.
OK, so it’s a giant, wifi enabled iPod Touch, soon to be a giant iPhone without an official voice plan. Think about it. That’s been stated as if it were some sort of putdown. It’s not.
Sorry, but you’re defending the indefensible. I’m no “Apple hater”, by any means, but I have been in the industry long enough to know some basics. This is a media platform, and yet they cripple their initial release (face it; that’s been their pattern) by omitting standard interfaces to facilitate the transfer of such media to the iPad from other platforms?
Let me put it another way. If I was the product manager for this thing, there’d be some engineers being braced against the wall and getting blasted.
Mark my words....subsequent releases of the iPad will have these added (and more) and will obviously be hundreds of dollars cheaper. They will prove my point. Look at some competing products (ICD, et al) and you’ll see exactly what I mean.