It's January, and that can only mean one thing in tech circles: CES! Apple has new products to talk about!

Well, two things, really: The doubters and the naysayers will also be out in full force, as a direct result of the announcement. Apple's iPad has only been "official" for a matter of hours, now, and the collective "meh" couldn't be any meh-ier:

Gizmodo leads the pack with a story entitled 8 Things That Suck About the iPad

A lot of people are psyched about the iPad. Not me! My god, am I underwhelmed by it. It has some absolutely backbreaking failures that will make buying one the last thing I would want to do.

Amazingly, one of those eight items is not "no FM transmitter" so perhaps that ship has finally sailed.

Even more amazingly, one of those eight items is not "no removable battery" so please, God, let that ship have sailed.

The twitterverse isn't far behind and may win the day through sheer volume of posted opinions. Sure, each tweet only gets 140 characters, but there's strength in numbers and the peanut gallery is in rare form:

Aside the cool factor can anyone tell me what an #iPad is *for*?

"iTampon" was a trending topic for much of the day, yesterday.

What about Slashdot, perhaps the most wretched hive of snark and asshatery to be found on the internet?

Yeah, they're thrilled, too:

Isn't this just a big expensive iPod touch now?

In fact, just take a moment and read through the whole thread.

Mainstream outlets are having a go, as well:

I don't want to be too harsh -- after all, I've yet to actually hold the latest Apple brainchild in my own hands -- but I've got to say I was mightily disappointed with yesterday's announcement.

Maybe it was inevitable, with the hourslong drumroll ahead of the iPad event. Then again, I don't remember such an overwhelming sense of "meh" when the iPod or iPhone came out. I just remember the extreme and almost immediate coveting. SOURCE

He goes on:

Even worse, this device doesn't do much for readers. The screen is too harsh for extended reading -- unless you've already trained your eyeballs to remain in your head after hours of intense staring at your computer screen.

1) This guy has a short meh-mory and 2) it's always neat when people admit that they haven't actually used or even held a device but nevertheless go on to offer statements about how well it works in practice.

As to the first item, either he wasn't alive when the iPhone was announced or he wasn't following tech. I'll get to that.

If, by sometime next week, Steve Ballmer hasn't cockily (and dismissively) compared Microsoft's recently revealed "Slate" (Full name: Windows 7 Touchscreen Computing Tablet Device) to Apple's iPad offering, well, I don't want to exaggerate or anything, so I'll just say the world might very well end.

All valid-ish gripes. Seemingly reasonable. But also eerily familiar.

Not long after the iPhone launched, Ballmer had this to say:

The most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn't appeal to business because it doesn't have a keyboard... SOURCE

Ouch.

Serial jack-ass and all around Apple troll Rob Enderle, on why the iPhone wouldn't work out, for Apple:

The iPhone is the Ultra Mobile PC done right according to analyst Rob Enderle who gives credit to Apple for starting this new revolution. "But they will not benefit from it", says the analyst. Here are some of his reasons: too expensive in a highly competitive and saturated market that favours $100 or less phone and not a $500 one with a two-year contract. For Rob, Apple did well with the iPod because it was facing two fairly small competitors in the market: S3 and Creative. But this time around, Apple will be facing giants like Nokia, Motorola, Samsung or LG which is launching next month in Europe its LG-KE850, an iPhone-like, under the Prada name. SOURCE

Double ouch!

Surely the iPod, unarguably the most popular digital music player in the history of such devices, and quite possibly the most popular portable music player ever, period, fared better?

Let's just go straight to Slashdot, for a now infamous quote:

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. SOURCE

I could fill pads and pads (chuckle, pads) of paper with other criticisms, but that's a great place to stop because it's the sort of dismissal that epitomizes the commentary of those who tend to bet against Apple's products, especially Apple's first generation products.

We now know the iPod's place in history and we're just at the beginning when it comes to seeing where Apple can go with the iPhone as a platform. (For those keeping track, the iPod Classic still doesn't have wireless and the Nomad appears to have wandered off the map.)

Point being, the iPod (with an assist from iTunes) revolutionized the (legal) music industry and the iPhone is redefining the smartphone market and, more specifically, the mobile app market. That first claim is going to be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of Blackberry Storm, Droid and Palm Pre fans, but the fact of the matter is, those devices owe their existence to the iPhone.

The thing is, neither the iPod nor the iPhone were guaranteed successes. The iPod didn't have a library of digital music to rely on, and the iPhone was limited to around twelve total apps when it was first released. Twelve!

The iTunes Music Store and its 11,000,000 songs, and the 140,000 available iPhone apps were developments which evolved over time, but well after the fact.

Which brings us back to the iPad.

Steve Jobs didn't announce any ground-breaking content deals with publishers, no "killer app" that will aggregate newspapers and magazines onto a tablet-sized device to emerge as the savior of an entire industry, there was nothing to the thought that Apple's tablet reveal might come as a boon to the education sector, and there was no agreement to stream prime-time television for a monthly fee, but thinking that any of that means the iPad won't do those things, eventually, is short-sighted, at best.

All of the necessary ingredients are present for Apple to pursue any of those avenues. The missing pieces are all based in software (and licensing agreements, which may prove to be the bigger obstacle) so there's nothing to stop Apple from moving forward in the future, assuming content partners line up to play ball.

These other industries may hate the idea of working with Apple, but they love making money, and more than that, they love being relevant.

Some of the complaints are hardware related, though. There's no camera for taking still shots or shooting video. Not on the front or on the back. There's not much in the way of ports. (A common complaint is that even USB devices like digital cameras will require an adapter.)

History again favors Apple: Commander Taco decried the iPod's lack of wifi on the original iPod. Everyone in the world laughed at Steve Jobs when he said the iMac would forego the floppy drive. The imminent failure of the iPod was alleged for years, due to its lack of a built-in FM tuner.

Apple's strategy, at least since the return of Steve Jobs, hasn't been to see what they can cram into consumer devices, but what they can get away with leaving out, and despite the nerds and the naysayers, they've proven to be fairly adept at making the right choices on that front. USB connectivity is great, but on a device with wifi and syncing capabilities, is it really necessary?

As for the camera, the iPod Touch doesn't have one either, and no one (who wants to be taken seriously) would argue that the iPod touch has been a failure. More importantly, there's nothing to stop Apple from dropping a camera in if, at some point in the future, sales suffer for the lack.

This is not to say that some people wouldn't like to have a camera--I happen to think there's a lot of useful reasons to include a video camera, as many of my favorite apps make use of the one built into the iPhone--it's to say that the iPad probably doesn't need one, and if I have to choose between a $499 price-point and a few bells and whistles that I can probably live without, I'd go with the lower price. Ironically, if Apple's tablet were eight concepts closer to Gizmodo's wet-dream devie, one of the things that would then "suck" about the iPad, in Gizmodo's mind, would be the price.

And then there's the name: iPad. People think it's stupid because it calls to mind feminine hygiene. Great. It is kinda stupid. But, the connection isn't nearly as funny as it's been made out to be, and no one has said anything that is anywhere near as funny as the old MadTV sketch that has been making the rounds ever since "iPad" was first rumored as a possible name.

Ultimately, people will get bored making the same jokes, day after day. Then, they'll start to think: "Wait, why don't I laugh every time someone asks me for a pad of paper and where was I when the ThinkPad was first released?"

For those who still doubt the name, or who think that it will doom Apple's tablet to obscurity and poor sales, consider this: Nintendo was in a similar position when they announced the name for their newest gaming console.

"The Nintendo Wii. Get it? It sounds like a penis." Ha ha. "Just a minute, I've gotta go take a Wii!" Ha ha.

And then Nintendo, ha ha, laughed all the way to the bank. Chuckle.

The last thing I'll mention regarding the backlash surrounding the name is this: Whereas "iTampon" was a trending topic on Twitter for a few hours, "Apple iPad" is still going strong. No, the name is the last thing Apple needs to worry about, and anyone who hopes to make an ongoing issue of it is wasting their probably not very precious time.

(Side note: Does the grade-school giggling about tampons and maxi pads mean that it's okay for men to refuse to purchase them when doing the weekly grocery shopping? Look, ladies--they're either fodder for juvenile humor and, as such, something to be embarrassed about or they're not, and if they are, well...)

Still others are thinking: "Tablet computing failed once already, what makes Apple think they can walk right in and do what dozens of others have thus far failed--and failed spectacularly--to do?"

Because they already have. Tablets failed the first time because they were nothing more than laptops without keyboards, because no one liked the way they worked or what they offered, and because no one had hit a home run with a touchscreen device of any kind.

Apple cleared that last roadblock with the introduction of the iPhone: Millions of consumers expect to be able to interact with a touchscreen the iPhone way. Apple's implementation of multi-itouch gestures is either copied by other smartphone makers, or else other smartphone makers are faulted for not supporting them in their devices. (Cough, Android, cough.) As a method of interaction, it's that ubiquitous.

I don't think it's going too far to say that the popularization of multi-touch is the most important interaction innovation since the mouse.

Just as importantly, Apple has conditioned consumers to accept the fact that these devices need not and should not replicate the functionality of a laptop.

These are coffee shop browsers. They're couch potato devices, aimed at late night readers. They're for backseat gamers and road-trippers and international travelers. They're digital assistants for on-the-go students. They're beach-blanket-friendly travel buddies. Etc.

Yes, much of the above could just as easily describe the iPhone or the iPod Touch, but Apple is betting that the size and increased real-estate of the iPad means that in two years, we'll see added value through content, which will provide an experience that simply cannot be duplicated on a three inch screen, and which is cumbersome on a laptop.

It's not wrong or stupid to have reservations about the iPad, or to think that it's not right for you but it is wrong to think that because it's not right for you, Apple has a failure on its hands.