The Kindle killer? Not yet.

Over the past week, two important announcements were made, both on Wednesday the 27th. The first was President Obama’s first state of the union address. And the second was the official announcement of Apple’s new product, the iPad. Unfortunately, I missed the President’s address due to class, but I did manage to steal off a few minutes of time at work to catch Steve Jobs do what he does best.

At least within the circles that I seem to run, Apple’s iPad seems to have made the bigger splash. In my other GB759 class that meets Wednesday, several of us sat around talking about the iPad (and no one even mentioned the President’s address). The consensus was that though it was kind of cool, it was not nearly as cool as prior Apple gadget releases such as the iPhone and the iPod. Furthermore, Apple was hamstringing the iPad right out of the gate by the features that it didn’t have. No USB? No Flash support? No camera?

We all agreed, while waiting for our professor to restart class after break, that the device was cool but did not move us in the way that the other big Apple releases had. We do not seem to have been alone. Apple stock, at $213 per share on Wednesday before Jobs’ Keynote address, dropped $21 to $192 at close on Friday.

While not all of it is good, there is still a LOT of buzz for the iPad. It will be interesting to see what Apple does to offset the lackluster press for its newest “must have” gadget. In my opinion, though, it is still a generation or two from being something really special.