A disappointment.

I confess to spending a minimum of time watching the iPad videos on Apple’s web site. There’s only so much self-congratulatory hype I can take.

However, a friend, an enthusiastic Mac user, watched a few and pointed out that the iPhoto app on the iPad has no editing controls. I checked the video and she appears to be right.

That’s a major disappointment as iPhoto on a Mac, in its current version, is a remarkably competent application. Sure, when I get serious it’s Lightroom (and Photoshop if I really must) but the processing controls in iPhoto are non-trivial and largely eschew the simplistic Disneyfied world Apple places many of its users in. You now what I mean – everyone only takes pictures of Mom and Pop and the Kids’ birthday parties thewhile listening to the inane pap passing as music from the iTunes store before settling down to some mainstream saccharine coated garbage movie or sitcom, rated G of course.

iPhoto on the Mac – seriously competent

Adapting this clean and simple interface to theiPad is surely the work of moments for the smart programmers at Apple, so let’s hope that the iPad soon has a version 2 available with functionality comparable to that in the desktop version.

iPhoto on the iPad – an intuitive interface

On the other hand, when it dawns on programmers that there will be huge demand from enlightened photographers for the iPad as a processing platform, rather than just as a tool for retrieval, you can bet we will see some truly innovative photo processing apps in the AppStore, if Apple allows them in. There are some lightweight ones available for the iPhone already and I am looking forward to more and better.