You followed the live blog updates, you've read the articles, you've drooled over the beautiful images, and you've figured out how you're going to clear space under your credit limit before the iPad ships in a couple of months. (But really, other than maybe education settings how many people aren't going to wait the extra month for the 3G models?) In the midst of all the excitement, though, maybe we should take a minute and look at some things that were not announced.

Where's the camera? Steve Jobs announced that all iPhone apps would work right out of the box. Nice thought, but how about the Chuck app that let's you take an iPhone pic and plug yourself into a Nerd Herd badge? They must have meant all iPhone apps that don't require hardware they didn't include in the iPad. Seriously, this thing was made to be the ultimate portable videophone. Except it's not a phone. And doesn't have a camera.

Connectivity. And how about a plain old USB port for attaching a printer for those slick iWork documents you created on your iPad? Or a webcam since you didn't give us one? Or an external disk drive, or any of the other 3 billion USB goodies?

Multitasking. Are we really going to have to jailbreak this thing to use all the power it has? Sure, multitasking could put a damper on the huge battery life they bragged about, but shouldn't users have the option of making that trade-off for themselves? You want to avoid threatening the Macbook market? Okay, but this large a screen cries out for the ability to have multiple windows running at the same time.

Flash. The one thing that frustrates Safari Mobile users more than any other is the inability to watch Flash video. The excuse in the past was that AT&T's network couldn't handle the load, but since the iPad is unlocked the load will probably be spread over other carriers. Jobs made a big point of saying this was a new niche that was more valuable than netbooks because “netbooks aren't better than anything.” Hey Steve, netbooks can browse Flash sites. This is another reason to look forward to the jailbreak apps showing up.

OS X. After hearing Apple crow about the new custom 1 GHz Apple A4 chip with integrated graphics, it's hard to believe it wouldn't do a great job with OS X rather than the iPhone OS. Even if Apple didn't want to have to worry about compatibility testing all the existing Mac apps, they could lock it down and trust us to only run the things they authorized. Right?

Voice Over IP. They made the point that the 3G support is data only. Okay, they don't want to hurt iPhone business. But it sounds like they're specifically saying that Skype is another of those “all iPhone apps” that aren't supported. Have we discussed jailbreak yet?

HDMI or DVI output. The iPad's native resolution is 1024x768 and it can run 720p video. There is a VGA adapter to connect it to a projector, but the composite video cables available only run up to 576p. Why not a standard high-def connector so you can connect it to your big screen with high quality?

The iPad is a great innovation with a lot going for it. But there is a whole lot more that it could have had, and it's not too early to begin letting Apple know what should be there in future versions.