Ipad 2 - 5 out of 5 ??

Almost tempted to go and buy one to find out...

Possibly because What HiFi, Sound and Vision reviews both critically independently, and doesn't have the acute anti-Apple bias that you have.

So are you saying that the Ipad2 doesnt have these flaws ?

They have to be worth at least 1 star deduction. I would have given the Ipad 2 a 4- and the xoom a 3 - at least until the xoom gets it firmware update.

Depends.  Should all CD players have a star deducted for not playing DVD-A, DVD, Bluray or VHS?

Only if they're made by Apple .

Or should all TVs be deducted a star for not having DLNA support, BBC iPlayer, Lovefilm etc., no matter how good a picture they display?

Plenty of valid criticisms, many of which we mentioned in the review. I think the short answer is we could make a similar list for all the iPad's rivals, except it would be a lot longer.

As ever, we're thinking about what the majority of our readers want, and how well the product then delivers on that. With that in mind, the iPad2 is well worth its five stars in my book.

I completely agree with the above.  Apple products nearly always seem to get 5* regardless of their flaws.  Other products are docked *'s but not Apple.  I was amazed to see the Apple TV getting a polar opposite review from the original review recently.  The Boxee box mysteriously swapped places.  Why did WHF take so long to realise this?  Boxee box owners seem to have known this for a while.  I digress.

Just out of interest, when will a WHF cover not feature an Apple product?  I stopped subscribing to Stuff magazine as it was simply an Apple brochure and also completely lacking in substance.  It was just pages upon pages of photographs and very few words, except when Apple launched something and it was on nigh on every page.  It appears WHF are going down the same route.  Yes, Apple products are cool and attact media interest but that doesn't mean that one has to feature on every cover in between launches.  How about some balance now and again?

Next issue, on sale Thursday, highlights Arcam and B&W products on the cover. OK, so they're iPod dock systems, but...

- No Flash Support   Only people who care are Flash Developers.  Battery Hog  
- No Java Support    Only people who care are Java devs.  Works in web apps.
- No Tabs on Browser   Coming in iOS5.  Has separate pages already, same idea, just a different graphical metaphor.
- No widgets, or animations   Hints from the beta code suggest this is coming.  Animations, not sure what you mean.  If you mean the swirly background animations android has that is good for nothing other than battery hogging, not really interested.
- No 1080p video playback, and low bitrate support at 720p   Coming in iOS5
- Limited video/audio codec support  VLC app is free, can play whatever you need
- Dongles at extra cost needed for USB & HDMI   Who needs dongles when airplay is free?  
- Poor cameras   Buy a camera.  Tablets with cameras (for anything other than video chat) is convergence gone mad i tells ya.  I saw someone on tv filming wimbledon with an ipad, they looked ridiculous.
- Poor multitasking support.  I think its awesome.  Its the secret to the ipads battery life and speed.  Also, no modern OS should need to download a task killer app.  Task killers are in the top ten downloads for android, was the same on symbian phones 6 years ago.  
- No memory slot     Buy a dongle.  You got me there.
- Tied to Itunes      Don't personally see this as a negative, but if I was using iTunes on a PC maybe I would.  Alternatives available once jail broken.

Actually, lack of flash & java support annoys me on my iPad 2. Otherwise I wouldn't be even switching on my laptop.

Interesting to see the current Blackberry tablet TV ads focusing on its ability to run Flash...

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration - Flash is a very broadly used technology across the web.  I also think "battery hog" is Apple's spin - I've never seen independent confirmation of this.

My own testing shows I don't have to charge my laptop as often when I use 'click to flash' and that my browser is faster, and crashes very rarely.  Most Mac users know this all too well, as Flash is the number one (and pretty much only) cause of browser crashes on a Mac.  Phones mostly have hardware encoding that is not compatible with flash flv, so battery life is significantly improved when using h.264 as its processed by the GPU not the processor.  Flash quite literally hogs the Processor, when video should go to the GPU.  

As to the Only people who care comment... Writing is on the wall for flash.  Apple, Microsoft and Google all have no love for it, so its only a matter of time.  The real question is, what flavour will HTML5 come in, and how long will it take for all parties involved to agree?  Your average consumer doesn't care about flash, youtube, vimeo and god knows how many video sources sources are available to veiw in iOS.  Dont think any of them miss the pop up ads, and all the games are available in the app store.

Apparently it was Porn that won the VHS-Betamax war.  Porn has sided with iOS

(had to close my iPad & switch my laptop on just to post this pic....WHF, please sort this out)