I’ve been pretty positive about the iPad, but even I have to admit that this commercial – which apparently premiered during the Oscars – is pretty ho-hum:

First, I think the music is just wrong. I would have used something hip but a little less jumpy. It makes the whole ad seem kind of frenzied to me.

Second, the part near the beginning when he selects the Star Trek movie and it pulls up the poster art and then promptly shifts to – a calendar app? Later in the ad they show a clip of Star Trek playing in high-def, but why not at the earlier point? Show people how easy it is to select a movie and have it immediately playing in HD, not some calendar app.

Finally, at about the 22-second mark, when they pull up the on-screen keyboard and are just about to start to type, it cuts away – to the clip from Star Trek that we should have seen about 15 seconds earlier instead of now. Why not show us a little bit of typing on the on-screen keyboard? I guess you could say “We know what someone typing looks like.” But no one has ever seen anyone typing on this full-screen keyboard, and many questions have been raised about how accurate it will be, etc. Why tease it and then cut away from it?

All in all, just a weird ad from my perspective. I thought Steve Jobs keynote announcing the iPad was the lamest of his keynotes that I’d ever seen. And now this ad is pretty lame too. I still have high hopes for the device itself, but I am starting to wonder if, for some reason, Apple is not as confident/enthusiastic about the iPad as they typically are about their products.