So, the Apple iPad has been announced after months – and months – of speculation.

Many people were expecting some exciting name, with it often being referred to as a “slate”. In the end it’s the underwhelmingly named iPad. You see, it sounds like iPod. How they must have chuckled at their own ingenuity.

The thing is, nobody was really talking beforehand about the software – that’s the one thing that Apple are good at and with the iPhone and Mac OS already available, it was obvious that one of them would be used. None-the-less, most thought it would be the latter as they were expecting a slim, multi-touch computing device. In the end, it’s turned out to be a big iPod.

And there’s the rub – Apple have traditionally not been so good with the hardware so, to me at least, the resultant iPad isn’t very exciting.  It literally is a big iPod. Or iPhone if you buy the 3G version. Look at the picture above of Steve Jobs with the iPad – it does look like he’s got some kind of promotional oversized iPod in his hands. To me, it looks like some kind of bad Photoshop picture.

What does the iPad offer? Well, it’s got a special screen with a wide viewing angle but it’s smaller than the screen on my Netbook. It’s not even OLED – it’s just a bog standard LED with better viewing angles. And, well, that’s about it.

Apple are intending to target gamers and, particularly, eBook readers.

The former, well, I can’t see it working. Gamers either want full scale powerful gaming or a pocketable device – this is neither. Electronic Ink based eBook readers are 100 times (okay, maybe I made that statistic up) better for reading eBooks with. Why spend £500 on an iPad instead of under £200 for a dedicated eBook reader?

Okay, I’m not Apple lover but I can appreciate a good bit of kit and I will happily say good things about the iPod and iPhone, even if I don’t want one myself. But the iPad has left me cold. I just don’t get it.