I believe at least part of the answer is space. The current design is very tightly packed from what I have heard.

microSD would be very small. If one looks at the internals of iPad 3G on iFixIt, there's plenty of space to fit such a slot.

Apple is now charging double the price for the storage compared to (slow) microSD cards, so it's a small profit item for Apple as well. Still love my iPad 3G 64G but I would like to have a removable memory card option as well.

Because they need to reserve a certain number of "should have had" features in order to entice current iPad owners to "upgrade" to next years model [cough]iPhone[/cough]. ;)

Having seen the engadget tear-down photos it is clear that they could have included at the very least a MicroSD slot into the existing form factor.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Did you say that about the lack of a memory card it in the original iPhone? ;)

It's one of the reasons that I don't have an iPhone, but I will look closely at the 32gb iPhone4 now that they have finally caught up to everyone else and included multi-tasking.

I will never forget a discussion a couple of years ago with several acquaintances and their friends concerning the iPhone 3 vs. 3gs where one guy, who has to go down in the Apple fan boy hall of fame, seriously tried to suggest that the iPhone 3 didn't have cut and paste because the technology didn't yet exist to implement it properly, that it took Apple to finally get it to work the way it should – unfreaking believable.

so unbelievable that microsoft is doing exactly the same thing. there is no copy/paste in windows phone 7. implementing it is not as simple as people think it is. not only that, but windows phone 7 only runs one app at a time, from a single app store that will approve all apps. where is the outcry? or is it only when apple does it that it's bad?

copy/paste on the iphone wasn't as a high a priority as other features, such as getting the sdk and apps store ready, which was far more important.

Yeah, and the fact that Windows Phone 7 is getting rid of features that Windows CE has had on its Pocket PC version since it's inception in 1999 or so is ridiculous. Going from the most open (from an end-user POV) of the major mobile platforms to a watered down imitation of the iPhone OS is not a way to keep your long-time users.

OTOH, given how the commodity smartphone market has exploded over the past few years, forcing the hardcore older users to Android in return for a shot at trying to eat into the unwashed masses must seem like a good business move.

Im thinking of getting a slight used 64 3g. The guy says he has the unlimited data plan with it and I can be grandfathered in the plan. Do you all think that is possible? Not sure how much Ill use it, but with my current blackberry usage, plus tethering, I use about 400 MB a month. The tethering is over 300 MB. Anyone here buy a used one or know anything about grandfathering the unlimited plan? Not sure I will need it, but ....

Thanks