[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by garynadeau, garynadeau, lovelyjunkie, Paul W Reynolds, Rob Imbs and others. Rob Imbs said: Really great discussion going on in the comments section of my iPad post. – http://tinyurl.com/yf23wgs and good morning everyone! :D [...]

I see an interesting psychological theory brewing. We are being trained by our own technology. Twitter, for you, lives on your iPhone. Final Cut lives on your Mac Pro and your (books, movies, whatever) will live on your iPad. For me, however, everything about computers lives on my computer: email, twitter, and yes, FCP. The internet comes out of a hole in the wall. For me, a cell phone is a phone. Books live on my shelf, and music lives in my car on the CD player. An iPad wouldn’t fit into any area of my life because I would have to change my way of thinking. But not everyone will have to change for the iPad. They already have for the iPhone, the Kindle, even the laptop in general. The iPad needs to be accepted into some facet (or facets) of life that no one other device can fill. Will I buy it? No. My laptop lives on my desk, and so would the iPad. For those who carry laptops around all day or who surf the web with their iPhone, you’re already most of the way there. Now you just need to pull out your credit cards and wait 60 days.

I believe we, as in reporters, tech analyst, and consumers, are over analyzing the iPad. I think the iPad will find it’s way into our lives and adapt well. We all know iPad was not the first just like the iPod wasn’t the first mp3 player. I had one of the first mp3 players that came out on the market. I actually returned it. the user experience wasn’t better than what I could get out of my portable CD player.

There seems to be some kind of want for a device like the iPad. Microsoft has been pushing this form factor for almost a decade. Hundreds of these devices have hit the market and then immediately faded away but, yet there is a sense that we still yearn for a tablet device. Why? The concept is cool. We see them in futuristic movies and they seem to work there in that environment. Why don’t they work now… in our current life style?

Simply put… I think we have been waiting for the planets to aline. Or in other words it hasn’t been the right device with the right user interface. What Apple is not showing is the power of the new SDK. I think the real deal is in this new application development platform. I can’t tell you how many times I get frustrated that my iPhone is just a smidgen too small or inconvenient for certain tasks. Surfing the web is one of those tasks. The iPhone is great for quick look ups but having to actually surf the web with it… Painful! I believe new applications will wow us and cause us to open our pocket books. We are judging the device on what we know from other experiences and not by what it’s potential is. Job’s knows… you can tell. they are holding back because it not done yet. It’s still in the oven.

I see and I hope the iPad becomes the replacement for text books for Universities and High Schools. A true multi-media learning experience with video and interactivity. That alone is good enough for me.

I see the iPad as the perfect blogging companion. I’m mean… how easy would it be to post a new blog while on location. This is something very interesting to me. Yes, a laptop can do this too but the iPad is less money and has wifi/3G built in. It just feels like it was made for this.

I can actually go on and on but, I dreamt just 5 years ago before any of this stuff about a PDA type device that would have GPS and video playback capabilities that could be an on location education/touring device. Something also along the lines of augmented reality. I have this interest because of the industry that I am in. Tourism. There’s good money in it. And this device that I dreamt up 5 years ago is here.

The iPhone has been readily accepted based after the model of the iPod. For this reason I believe the iPad will follow suit. And I think the fastest growing demographic will be 55 and older hands down. The Baby Boomers… It’s not coincidence… just perfect timing.

I agree with pretty much all that you all have said.

I think it is clear that the iPad isn’t a replacement for _owning _ a cellphone and a computer, but it really could be a frequent and easy replacement for _using_ either of those in so many situations.

Classrooms, hospitals, museums, and boardrooms have all been searching for a long time for a device that was both comfortable AND useful enough to fit their needs. Its not the size or cost of a laptop that makes it too unwieldy for those places, it is all the baggage that comes along with all computers (too much hardware variation, software maintenance, and UI complexity). Although small and simple, cellphones don’t quite make the grade either, because –as our primary communication devices– they are just too _personal_ for use in those human interaction spaces. As a doctor you don’t show you patient their X-rays on your cellphone (despite that sweet medical imaging software that was made for the iPhone launch), nor do you drag your laptop around the ward with you. Same thing for teachers, docents, and businessmen (etc. etc).

I think the most important and overlooked part of today’s news is actually iWork for the iPad. Not only does it look really sweet, but we can finally CREATE something rather than just consume media on the iPhone platform. There may not be much fanfare about it, but the iWork concept will open the eyes of many a developer, and I suspect that much will come out of it. That is likely the primary reason Apple chose to announce the iPad two months before it will be ready for sale.

Although the iPad doesn’t yet come close to matching my ideal notion of a tablet, it does have enough going for it that I am going to give it a thumbs up. I may even find a way to squeeze one into my life.

Hey Rob,

Had a day to think over my initial knee jerk reaction to iPad.
For what it’s worth…

1) I want an ipad. (even though I think it’s just another distraction to keep me from writing)

2) Next year at this time I will need an ipad.

3) This is wonderful product for Content Producers – yet another platform to distribute our content.

So all in all I think it’s a positive.

To be honest the only neg I really see in it as it will be another thing to lug around. But maybe that nifty keyboard will turn it into a very simple word processor. I personally don’t edit vids on laptop anyway. So for me maybe the laptop gets put aside for a while? Time will tell.

I think where a person needs an iPad or not would depend on the software that gets written for it. For instance, if someone writes a program that let’s it act as a virtual midi control surface to control software instruments or the mixer in Logic, I would be extremely interested.
Also I find myself reading surfing on my iPhone around the house quite a bit when I need some information fast and I’m not near the computer, so I imagine I’d get a good deal of use out of the iPad for that as well. The phone works great but if you want to do some serious browsing the small screen size quickly becomes tiresome.