Ihnatko, Mossberg, and Pogue, among others, have their advance reviews of the iPad out. The general consensus: Apple has a winner. Mossberg, Ihnatko, and a few others just love it. Pogue was the least enthusiastic, dividing his review into two: one for techies (in which he semi-panned it), and one for “everyone else” (in which he gave it a middling-to-good review).

Mossberg, however, was impressed:

I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop.

Edward Baig at USA Today was even more positive:

The first iPad is a winner. It stacks up as a formidable electronic-reader rival for Amazon’s Kindle. It gives portable game machines from Nintendo and Sony a run for their money. At the very least, the iPad will likely drum up mass-market interest in tablet computing in ways that longtime tablet visionary and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates could only dream of. …

Apple has pretty much nailed it with this first iPad, though there’s certainly room for improvement. Nearly three years after making a splash with the iPhone, Apple has delivered another impressive product that largely lives up to the hype.

Andy Ihnatko, however, was nuts about it:

iPad is pure innovation – one of best computers ever

No company can generate as much hype around a product launch as Apple. But that’s perfectly OK because no company is also nearly as successful at producing a new product that can justify almost any level of excitement that precedes it.

They don’t do it with every product launch, but bloody hell: they’ve done it with the iPad.

Ihnatko makes a good point concerning those who see the iPad as lacking because it doesn’t match netbook specs point for point:

… I’m here to tell you that in fact, we haven’t seen tablets before. And maybe the iPad is the only true tablet we’ll get in 2010. The hardware we’ve seen in years past, (and what we’re likely to see in these Android devices) are laptop computers with the keyboard section broken off. They’re not fundamentally touch-based computers, they’re the products of old thinking. When Apple looks at a fingertip, they see a warm, living thing that can feel. They don’t see a poor substitute for a mouse.

That’s the problem facing all of these other tablets. They’ve never stopped and looked at this device as a brand-new thing, and thrown out all of the design elements that they’ve only included out of force of habit. These other tablets have a feature list a mile long… That’s easy. The challenge they all seem to be avoiding is to restrict the device to features that are truly relevant to tablet computing. Otherwise, these added hardware and software features only create greater instability and user confusion, and turn this tablet into something that you’d never, ever use if you had any alternative.

If you doubt the truth of that, then ask why tablets produced up until now–and there have been many, over quite a few years–have never sold worth a damn.

One surprise: Apple, like most electronic makers, was inaccurate about the battery lifetime. Unlike most makers–including Apple itself most times–their claim for battery life was lower then the tests showed. Apple advertises 10 hours of video playback, but the reviewers got about 12 hours–with WiFi and email going on in the background.

From Pogue’s review and what I have heard others saying, I would make a general prediction: if you (a) know what level-2 cache is, (b) have ever installed a hard disk drive on your own, or (c) balanced your finances last month and decided you had to give up something you really didn’t want to, then the chance you’ll like or buy an iPad is going to be somewhat lower. Just a rule of thumb, not an absolute–I’ve done two of the three and I’m absolutely going to buy one–but people who like to control their tech and/or are really pinching pennies will be more likely to pass on the iPad, especially at first. Except developers, of course.

Me, I’m still waiting to hear whether or not the iPad can directly, wirelessly connect to your desktop or laptop and read from or write to their disks without having to sync through iTunes or physically connect. That will make a huge difference for me. Technically, there should be no reason whatsoever for the iPad to lack this feature, but it’s exactly the kind of thing Apple would intentionally leave out (probably because adding it in would weaken the necessity of buying a model with more internal memory). We just got an OS update (10.6.3) a few days ago–coincidence, or was it timed to allow for iPad interaction?

Anyone who finds out about that networking detail, please let me know–it’ll be a factor in my own purchase.

When you see these apps in motion–mind you, these are just some of the simplest apps you’ll find–you begin to get an idea why the iPad will be very different than computing experiences you’ve had before. There’s a big difference between clicking on cards in Solitaire and moving them around with your fingers, for example. And note the drawing app, and how clumsy the demo is–because the user is on the emulator and is using a mouse. With your fingers, the drawing will be a lot more natural. Also note the OS features, including the use of cover flow and side-to-side pans–not to mention simply very nice layout & design features.

A lot of examples we’re seeing show that one or two basic levels or features come “unlocked,” allowing for free demos to be downloaded so you can get an idea of what the app is like before plunking down whatever the app will cost you to unlock the rest.

Interestingly, the developers seem to be aiming for higher price points; a lot of apps appear to be at the $9.99 price point set by Apple’s iWork apps, without giving that level of actual productivity, as if the developers want to push the envelope and see how much people will pay. I have a feeling that we’ll see a repeat of what we saw with the iPhone–a lot of pricier apps at first which will, in time, get marked down as competition and customer balking force them to.

Side note: Dan Lyons (“Fake Steve Jobs”) has written an article on the iPad for Newsweek. Despite his initial negative reaction after (the real) Jobs’ introduction, his mind changed after actually using one and later consideration of what the product will bring, despite all misgivings about the closed system.

Some people fear the idea of Apple exercising editorial control over content which will appear on their iPad:

That’s why the issue of Apple picking and choosing what we can and can’t read is so disturbing. If they’re forcing magazines to edit their contents in order to get distribution, then whatever Apple’s then-current (and thus far completely arbitrary) rules would determine what you get to read.

I believe that this is exactly what editors and publishers have done on a daily basis ever since the invention of publishing. Deciding what content should or should not appear in branded media is the norm, not a scary new age of oppression. If you want to read something else, then go read something else. Apple will not control all media in the world, won’t stop you from reading whatever the hell you like. Nor, as the writers of the scare piece quoted above suggest, will Apple start forcing content providers to follow any particular “political, religious, or ideological slant” just because they won’t allow porn or boobie apps on the iPhone. To go from Apple not approving some fart apps to the idea that Apple might one day start telling Time Magazine what political slant they should take, or what religious views the Christian Science Monitor is allowed to print, is the slippery slope at its worst. Nor can they make the argument that Apple is different because it is a distributor of other media publishers; Amazon does not allow certain content to be sold on their store, bookstores similarly choose what books appear on their shelves, and so on. Nothing new here.

Fact is, outside of the web, all book, magazine, newspaper, radio, television, and motion picture content is already edited by a small group of people who decide what will or will not be published, and many already impose a “political, religious, or ideological slant”–always have, always will. And much of what is on the web is similarly controlled. (Come to think of it, the writers of that very article were working under the exact same level of editorial control, which could explode into terrifying abuse at any moment!) Look at Fox News; you think they don’t control the political slant on their media outlet? The authors of this piece are going for the shock value of a nonsensical potential state of affairs which (a) we have no reason to expect will happen on Apple media and (b) happens most everywhere else already.

Sheesh.

Good News: Apple will start selling the iPad from April 3.

Better News: You can pre-order from March 12, about a week from now.

Great News (for me): Apple’s stock shot up to an all-time high on the news of the iPad release date. It now stands at more than $219, 240% up from when I bought in. Seems like it’s finally popped past the $215 barrier.

Crappy News: Apple Japan’s web site is listing the iPad as going on sale in “Late April.” Argh. Well, on the other hand, I’ll be able to read about everyone’s experiences with the device before sinking my money into it. It’s be nice, for once, to get a new Apple product the same time everyone else does, however.

As people talk more and more about the ups and downs of the Apple ecosystem–the closed nature of the App Store on the iPhone and soon the iPad–one theme always comes about: Apple is being oppressive and controlling. This viewpoint, however, comes from the perspective of what we have had up until now, which is not entirely objective–nor is it without its own ups and downs. It helps to step back and take a look at the bigger picture, trying to understand the forest instead of noting vague shapes beyond the individual trees we’ve come to feel comfortable around.

Think of the current system and then the App Store ecosystem as societies. Our current setup is, to be frank, kind of like a Joss-Whedon style dystopian anarchy with overtones of corporate oligarchy. Competing major corporations (Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.) offer the only real structure to what’s happening, and the denizens of this society often align themselves with these organizations. However, most of society is independent, trying to live freely on their own in the anarchy that exists outside the immediate corporate structures–but they can’t escape some level of corporate control as they depend on what the corporations produce. They grumble about the prices they have to pay to the oligarchy and they way things are run.

For that reason, many join the pirate culture, stealing from the corporations because they can, and because they feel they have paid enough already and are entitled to. But anarchy means that it’s not just the pirates stealing from the corporations–lawlessness abounds everywhere. Most people are beset by malware and scammer crime, and live amongst mountains of spam littering the streets lined with gaudy neon Flash billboards. They must hire anti-virus bodyguards and yet still watch their wallets and not fall prey to lures. Once in a while you may even be targeted by a professional hacker, god help you. Just as the anarchy allows you to be a pirate without much fear of punishment, the anarchy lets the element aimed at you work just as freely. Some avoid this by living closer to the oligarchy and paying full price for everything, others attempt to inhabit the Apple and Linux islands of relative stability. The Apple island has high rent, but it’s even easier to be a pirate and you’re safer from the anarchy pointed at you–but you get branded as an elitist snob who is a willing slave to Apple. The Linux island is sparsely populated and not well-supplied, but has more independence and is less stigmatized.

At some point, Apple declares that they’re forming a new state, the App Store Federation. It’s a territory pioneered by the iPhone contingent, soon to be joined by the iPad population, and who knows where it will expand to next. This new state has a rather structured form of government, introducing regular but not too excessive taxes–you’d be paying about the same most of the time in the anarchy anyway, unless you were really good at working the system just right. Apple is the government, and the OS is the constitution. They exert a certain amount of control, and they make the laws. It’s not a Democracy, it’s more like a benevolent dictatorship. But it’s clean, safe, and simple to live in. They’re not oppressive–they don’t arrest you or impose fines for misbehavior–but they do try to make you live the way they feel is best. You may not agree with what the government dictates, but most of the time it’s pretty good. There’s a certain amount of censorship to go along with it.

The society is nice, modern, bright. and relatively clean. As with the Apple island in the anarchic oligarchy, the rent is high. However, food, clothing, and entertainment are pretty cheap–mostly cheaper than you paid for before. It’s harder to be a pirate, but there’s also a police force to keep you safe. While there’s still quite a lot of spam litter and some scam artists lurking around, government regulation keeps Flash ads from making things seedy and the police force keeps most of the crime under control. You feel safer walking the streets. It’s a more comfortable life, but those who enjoyed the freedom under the anarchy feel chafed by the level of control exercised here. That’s the trade-off. If you don’t like that level of control by the government, you can always go back to the anarchy–but you lose the benefits of living here. There are some in the anarchy who try to replicate the Ecosystem without having the control, but they tend to be expensive themselves, and as copycats trying to get a quick buck, they tend not to be as stable, with shaky foundations and only superficial wealth. Google is making the best go of it, but is a bit disorganized and split between their Chrome and Android personalities.

But people often want the best of both worlds–they want the nice, clean, safe, and modern lifestyle the Apple ecosystem provides, but they also want the free-wheeling, independent, live-as-you-like and do-what-you-want lifestyle the anarchy afforded. So a splinter group formed the Jailbreak community, setting up in the foothills just outside the Apple ecosystem, living off the controlled lifestyle but at the same time sticking it to the man–who discourages the practice and tries to cut off their supplies from time to time, but otherwise just kind of lets them be. Most people commute, living partly in the Apple Ecosystem and partly out, so the control isn’t so bad even for those whom it chafes. But people can foresee a time when they may have to choose permanent residency, and are wary about what that would be like.

Apple is experimenting with a new computing culture, and computing society is reacting to it, forming new communities around it. The other major corporations are looking on warily, knowing their most of their business is still safe at the moment, but also aware that this could grow into something bigger later on. If enough people are drawn to the Apple ecosystem, it could become the new paradigm, replacing the old anarchic oligarchy with something new. Google is trying to set up its own ecosystem, but they’re less organized. Microsoft, meanwhile, just wants to maintain their current dominance in the oligarchy, but is willing to change systems if they see that things are moving that way–they’re used to watching Apple’s lead and moving in if there’s profit to be had.

Expect Apple to eventually bring the Ecosystem culture from the mobile community to computing at large–either by bringing it to laptop and desktop computers, or by having mobile devices become primary computing machines. I doubt very much that they’ll want to stop with the iPad–this system is too good for them, if they can make it work.

Where would you like to live in this world?

The iPhone-style app environment is another aspect of the iPad which tends to be overlooked. In fact, many cite this as a complaint about the iPad, saying that it’s not a “real” computer, that Apple has “locked” you in or out, that it’s an oppressively controlled environment. Sure, it has its down points–a famous one is Apple’s sometimes arbitrary (not to mention self-serving) censorship and lagging delays for app approvals, but that is something that users are barely even aware of.

The truth is, the environment, for all its foibles, works. People have accepted it for the iPhone, but few have looked forward and really thought out what this will mean for the iPad, which is much closer to being a “real” computer.

Begin by thinking about the issues with installing apps in Windows, on a netbook or any other such platform. While many apps can be downloaded from the Internet, those tend to be shareware/freeware apps, and must be screened for malware of all sorts–not all of which can be caught by anti-virus software, which must be bought or acquired and always represents a drag on the system. Most vital software must be bought, usually at a significant price, either at a store or by mail order, and then installed. Almost all such apps have serial numbers that have to be entered, and many have “activation” procedures; in short, a legitimate purchaser is treated with suspicion by those who sell to them, as if they were guilty until proven innocent. Then there are software learning curves as well as frustrating documentation (or lack thereof), not to mention facing the interference often times thrown up at the user by the OS itself. Windows is also notorious for losing stability with repeated installs and uninstalls; I recall once installing software on an office PC to test it out, and having someone who worked there become furious at me for it–as a Mac user, I was completely blind to this person’s concerns.

Now move forward to the software paradigm for the iPad.

One-stop Shopping: for all the complaints about Apple’s control, it means that searching for and finding software is a heck of a lot easier. It’s all in one place, categorized, searchable, and with a good number of user reviews right there which give you a good idea of what you’ll think of it after you buy it. Demo software will likely be included this time.

Abundance of Software Titles: Ironically, this is the major reason people used to give for why they used Windows over the Mac–that Windows had all the titles, and the software they wanted just wasn’t available for the Mac. Well, now the tables will be turned: developers are going full-speed to develop for the iPad (even Microsoft hinted today that it was “looking at” porting Office to the iPad–c’mon, you know they’ve already started working on it). The App Store for the iPhone already has 140,000 titles available (OK, maybe only 40,000 which are actually what you’d call a “useful” app, but that’s still a huge number), and that number will explode when development for the iPad gets truly underway. “There’s an app for that” is more than just a catchphrase. If you ever used the “more software” argument for Windows, then you can’t not use it to argue for the iPad.

The iPhone ecosystem opened up software development like nothing before. I used to know one, maybe two people who developed software; now I know at least a dozen who do so for the iPhone, including people I never suspected of belonging to that club. And although my own progress has currently stalled on this, I fully intend to continue studying programming and joining that club myself–something I never expected to do before. Certainly I never expected to be able to sell anything I could make.

Cheap: prices on the App Store will be lower than what you would normally pay for equivalent software elsewhere, to a great degree because there will be less piracy, but also because of the legacy from the iPhone store, as well as from outright competition. Seriously, a commercial office suite (iWork) for thirty bucks? Expect to buy apps for maybe half or a third of the price you’d pay elsewhere. (Question: will Apple’s iTunes Store policy of authorizing up to five machines for iPad apps? If so, that solves the “family pack” issue.)

Secure: Anti-virus? What’s that? It’s already redundant on the Mac platform, it will be meaningless for the iPad. A huge advantage of a controlled ecosystem is that it’s controlled.

Fast and Dead Simple: You want an app, you find it in minutes and install it in seconds. No serial numbers, no activation, no install wizard. At most, you type in your iTunes Store password, and bam, it’s loading. Uninstall is even easier, won’t corrupt your system, and the app will always be there waiting in your account if you want to re-install it (no more “where did I put that install CD?”). Using the software will also be simpler: the iPad environment is geared towards intuitive, easy-to-use apps. Think about your iPhone: how often do you have to resort to the instruction manual? Same principle. The multitouch UI will make computing easier just as the GUI did.

The iPad will be a cheap, mobile computing device with a big enough screen to run most of the software you’ll need, and will have all the advantages of a multitouch UI. The software for it will be cheap, abundant, easy to find, a snap to install, and easy to learn, free from worry about malware. Tell me that this description is (a) inaccurate, or (b) not a huge plus for the device.

And if you prefer having more control over your computer, or secretly wish to pirate your software rather than buy it, then just wait a few weeks–maybe even just a few days–after the iPad is released, and get the jailbreak software. I guarantee you, it’ll be there. Of course, you’ll lose many of the advantages listed above, but if that’s how you swing, then so be it.

Jason Schwarz at Seeking Alpha thinks the iPad will explode in the business sector, becoming Apple’s “flagship product.” He explains:

The iPad is Apple’s upgraded version of a netbook, only it’s better than any netbook ever built. Netbook computers took the market by storm in 2009 by growing over 100 percent year over year to sell approximately 34 million units. The real game changing element of the iPad is that it’s the first computer ever designed to be held with one hand. This simple fact is a very big deal. Because of this, the iPad is primed to usher in a new era of mobile computing efficiency that will take the business world by storm. Nobody is talking about the iPad as a must have business device but that is exactly what it is.

Anyone who previously relied on a notepad or clipboard will adopt the iPad. Doctors will use the iPad as they move from room to room and interact with patients, teachers will use the iPad as they lecture, coaches will use it as an in game video/scouting tool…think of all the real estate agents and other salesmen who operate at point of sale. Anybody who walks around at work will want an iPad to hold directly in their hands.

I’m not sure if such enthusiasm is warranted, but I do know one thing with a fair amount of confidence: it will be popular at colleges. It will make e-textbooks far more widely used, and will be the best tool that a student or teacher could hope for. I would not be surprised if it is adopted campus-wide at some colleges.

Meanwhile, there’s talk of Apple lowering prices for TV shows to $1 per episode in time for the iPad release. This just makes sense, and not just for the iPad, but in general. $2 for a single TV episode has always been a ludicrous price, and the main reason I don’t even look at their offerings. Almost every TV show becomes available on DVD (and Blu-Ray) soon after the season concludes, usually for a total price that comes to less than $2 per episode (Lost’s Season 5, for example, costs $23.50, about $1.50 per ep.), and is stocked with a plethora of extras, including commentaries, bloopers, and deleted scenes. To pay more for that without any of the extras is just dumb. If the episodes were available via Apple at a reasonable resolution for $1 an episode, it would almost certainly more than double sales–not just drawing in more customers, but getting existing customers to purchase more content.

Seeing all the negative talk about the iPad brought to mind the early days of the iPhone (not to mention the early days of the iPod or even the Mac itself), in which so many people responded by saying, “ahh, it’s not so great as all the hype, it won’t sell, and certainly I wouldn’t want one.” I figured that it would add perspective if we looked back at early 2007 and saw what people were saying after the announcement but before the release. So I went to Gizmodo, checked out page 175 of their “iPhone” tag, and found lots of comments that sound like they could have been about the iPad. Here’s one person complaining that the real thing didn’t live up to the imagined hype:

I think Apple may have overshot the mark with the iPhone. Everyone was expecting an iPod Nano-sized device, which was an iPod and a phone. People were also expecting a widescreen full-sized iPod. By combining the two devices into one, they’ve created a device that everyone thinks they want, but in reality and in the cold light of day a lot of people will realise they don’t want a phone they can’t fit in their pocket, or a widescreen iPod with only 4 or 8GB of storage.

People were dismissive of the initial model’s sparse specs, and thought that existing devices would do a better job:

The iPhone is useless as a video player now because of the small hard drive, I already have an ipod video, and I use a cheap ass pay as you go phone that’s small enough to fit in my front coat pocket with out me realizing it’s there. Also, I’m worried about the scratches and smudges on this iPhone. If it’s anything like EVERY OTHER ipod, it’s dead to me. I’m tired of having a nice clean iPod for a week, and then all of a suddenit’s crapola. NOW if it doesn’t scratch/smudge and they cut out the phone part/increase the hd, then i’d probably get it, but until then… :-\

Oddly enough, some complained that having multiple separate devices was better–and this guy even combined that now-defunct preference with a complaint that the one device took up too much pocket space.

I prefer mutiple devices that’s focusing on their functions, rather than just gathering them up and have an average performance… Besides, most of the devices can’t really muti task well… plus, in consumes the overall total battery life… As for iPhone’s function… I can find most of them on Sony Ericsson and other phones… I don’t want to pay extra hundreds of dollars for something I already have. Besides, there are other MP3 players that’s better and cheaper than iPod anyways. For ex. Creative… Heck, even Sony is cheaper than iPod sometimes.

Being big, clunky, expensive and with no new innovations except the multi-touch screen I would say the claim that this bloated iPod will “revolutionize” the cell phone market is slightly dubious.

However history has shown that when enough people want to appear “different” and “special” by buying the “it” gadget of the day the company that makes said gadget has the last laugh. Such is the case with the iPod and there is a chance it will be the case with the iPhone as well.

However (point 2) the iPhone is both big, expensive and will be up against some extremely well established and aggressive competition not to mention that any owner will have to purchase an expensive pouch/case/skin accessory to avoid scratching and/or cracking that huge unprotected screen.

And I doubt it’ll sell well in Europe – the competition is far worse there, not to mention Asia where it won’t sell at all.

Did I mention it’s huge? I don’t have pockets that big in my pants.

That was a recurring theme: no way it’ll revolutionize the smartphone market, much less cell phones in general. A major oversight: future versions of the device. Few were able or willing to look a year into the future.

It’s gonna revolutionize the whole phone industry the same way Duke Nukem Forever was supposed to revolutionize gaming. Sorry, but a phone without 3G and no third party apps is nothing to get excited over.

I’m glad that I followed my instincts and not guys like this for stock advice:

This whole phone from Apple thing is a bad idea. Sure, fanboys want it real bad, but they will have to pay through the nose to get it the way they want it. Everyone needs to realize that the existing market is “FAT” with cell phone diversity to meet the public demand for different needs. It is foolish to even think that a cool looking phone that costs 3 or 4 times as much to purchase/operate will make a dent in the current market. If you just bought Apple stock thinking you will have a hold of one of the cash cow’s teats for a big drink, you’d better do some quick selling now. A dry teat gives no milk for sure.

Many thought it would die because it was more expensive than perceived alternatives, was only appealing because of hyped “coolness,” and would always be too expensive:

I have said it before, and I am an obnoxious fool that will say it again: The reason there is not a consumer smart phone on the market is because Joe Consumer can not afford them. You can bet that Apple will sell every iPhone they can make in 2007 because it is ‘cool’. In 2008? That is when the iCrap hits the iPhone as consumers realize that it is not something they can afford.

Ironically, 2008 is when iPhone sales started to really rocket.

Others just couldn’t understand it at all:

Do people still want this thing?

:/

Why?

This commenter didn’t see anything new in the product:

i hate everyone on here that act like they’ve never seen the features on the iphone before.

this is going to be a debacle just like the ps3 was. lets make sure they everyone on here who talks about getting one of these phones true to their word. this will never ever work out because i guarantee the price of the 1st gen iphone will never go down because apple has no stake in the money that cingular makes from the service and cingular has no stake in the phone whatsoever. cingular will come out on top with a few extra customers while apple will be sitting on a pile of unused iphones.

Some were closer to the mark, but again seemed to believe that prices would never fall:

Yeah, a few users will be able to justify the cost, and a few will buy it just to have the “latest and greatest” – but the vast majority will pick it up, and go “Eh. It does some neat things, but nothing I need to spend $600 and sign up for a $2400 contract for.”

And that’s why you won’t sell 10M units.

Others expected it to be a handheld PC:

Also, let’s talk about application support. WinCE is essentially an open platform. I could buy a Blackjack or Motorola Q and play Super NES on it right now. While the iPhone is supposedly running OS X, it won’t support regular OS X applications, I guarantee it. So, where does that leave application support? Even the Sidekick has more apps than the iPhone will for a long time.

Boy, was that guy off the mark. Unless by “for a long time” he meant “less than two years.”

Once again with the “nothing new here” theme, who just couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea of “gestalt”:

Almost every mobile phone available can play MP3s, download email, take pictures. There are already phones out that integrate with iTunes. There are phones with a touchscreen, phones that run Linux, phones that run WM. Other than a snazzy interface and OSX what am I getting with my iPhone? If this were three or four years ago when we first heard buzz about an iPhone, I’d say sure 10 million. I just think it’s too little too late.

The “10 million” references Apple’s prediction that it would sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. They hit that mark and passed it, selling 13 million by Q4 2008. Today, the total stands at 42 million and counting, with Apple selling 8.7 million iPhones in the last quarter alone.

So, will the iPad repeat this success? Not exactly. It’s a different kind of product; most people need a cell phone and figure why not get an iPhone if I’m paying for the contract anyway? In contrast, the iPad is a new product line Apple is trying to create a market for, a harder thing to do. But there are a lot of parallels–people unimpressed by what is seen as a paucity of features or capabilities, few seeing the potential of future improvements, and so on–where the comments made about the iPhone compare very closely with why people say the iPad will fail.

To wrap up, here is a comment by someone in early 2007 who saw the future with stunning accuracy:

People need to relax. Dont worry, in three years everyone will be iChat’ing on the various iPhone models about how lame the 2010 MacWorld keynote was and how the new iWare will never cut it.

After months, even years of speculation and rumors, Apple introduces a brand-new product intended to revolutionize a neglected product category. Upon the release, naysayers all buzz that it doesn’t have enough features, is way overpriced for what it does, and competitors will soon outstrip it with cheaper models. And since the announcement, surveys claim that fewer people say that they are more likely to buy one.

So, which does that describe–the iPhone or iPad? As you probably guessed, it describes both. After the iPhone was announced, only 15% of those surveyed said they were “very likely” or “extremely likely” to buy one, while 26% had answered that way just before the announcement.

With the iPad, the number who said they plan to buy one stands at 9%, up from 3% before the announcement–but many who were previously interested decided they were not so much interested after seeing it, similar to the iPhone.

Still, that 9% figure is a key one. 9% is a pretty big chunk of people. Just like the iPhone in Japan, where a similar 9% was projected before the launch here; many dismissed the number as anemic, but that’s a lot of people. And for a tablet computer, 9% is higher than any interest shown for any other model.

But let’s also remember that in all of these cases with the iPhone, actual purchases after release far outstripped what the surveys expressed. Even in Japan, where the iPhone occupied #2 and #3 of the top-selling smartphones for December, before occupying the #1 and #2 slots last week. In the U.S., the iPhone continues to gain market share, having blown past the survey predictions about who is likely to buy one. The iPhone is now ubiquitous.

And then there’s the App Store, which took the iPhone’s success and made it stronger. The App Store will do more for the iPad’s popularity than it did for the iPhone’s, as the apps delivered will be one of the biggest reason for getting the tablet, in addition to the draw of holding and using it, something people also can’t experience yet.

Just a reminder for those predicting a flop. The iPad may well not take off like a rocket–in fact, I expect more of a slow but steady rise–but it is way too soon to count it out yet.

Textbooks. At least, that’ll be just one killer app, for anyone in higher education.

Right now, the students at my school hate the whole textbook game, and I bet they’re not alone by a long shot–I remember the same thing back when I was getting my degree, and got another taste recently with a few online courses that required expensive textbooks. $100 for a single text is often the low end.

But prices are just one of two major complaints. The other is the weight and bulk of the books. More and more you see students who use travel cases on rollers, like carry-ons for airplanes, because backpacks are just getting too heavy for them. My school has lockers, but not enough; everyone wants to store their textbooks in them. Sometimes they’ll even store texts in classrooms, stashing them away around the room. They even refuse to bring in their laptops, as they just add to the weight.

What they need is something like this:

ScrollMotion takes digital files provided by publishers for the iPad, adapts them to fit on the device, and then adds enhancements such as a search function, dictionaries, glossaries, interactive quizzes and page numbers.

The features of its iPad deal with publishers include applications to let students play video, highlight text, record lectures, take printed notes, search the text, and participate in interactive quizzes to test how much they’ve learned and where they may need more work.

If my students could get access to those textbooks and use them on the iPad, I think a lot would go for that deal. Even if textbooks were priced identically to physical copies, a lot would want it–but if there were a discount on the texts, it would likely be a very hot item. If, for example, they could save enough over the course of a year to pay for the iPad, then it would be a no-brainer. And there are several ways they could save–no physical printing of the texts, no shipping to Japan, and the potential for buying chapters instead of whole textbooks all are possibilities for savings. The built-in dictionary, ability to search text, and multimedia add-ons would all be features they currently either lack or have poor substitutes for, and would be extra enticements. Add a cool touchscreen computer with all of its abilities and a planned school-wide Wi-Fi network… you get the idea.

The Wall Street Journal reports that McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson Education, and Kaplan Inc. have all signed on, and one would guess that whomever is left will buy in later on. Just the ones announced today would account for most textbooks in my school, I believe.

My own question: will desk copies for instructors still be part of the new paradigm? Gotta find out about that.

It’s inevitable: Apple releases what is to be a hit device, so smaller companies line up to sue Apple for “copying” or “stealing” from them, hoping the deep-pocketed company will settle and cough up the cash. In fact, it is so established an industry that some companies are designing their wares so they are set up to sue Apple. It only took a few days for Wu Xiaolong, the president of “Shenzhen Great Long Brother Industrial Co.” to announce that they were furious:

I was very angry and flabbergasted when I saw the news of the iPad presentation two days ago… It is certainly our design. They’ve stolen because we present our P88 to everyone six months ago at the IFA (International Electronics Fair in Berlin).

Now, if you’ve seen the iPad, you may be wondering: how can you copyright that design? I mean, it’s a rounded rectangle with a metal bezel and black border. You can’t get more simple than that. Zillions of devices have that basic look; it describes half the monitors on laptops today. Besides which, one of the major grouses people have been lobbing at the iPad is that it looks exactly like an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch–so if Apple’s design is just like the P88’s, then isn’t the P88’s a copy of Apple’s handhelds?

According to Wu: “[Our machine has] nothing to do with it, as they have completely different functions.” Ah, I see. And so the P88 and the iPad have identical functions? Well, not quite. The iPad has a 9.7“ capacitive multitouch screen, the P88 has a lower-resolution 10.2” resistive touch screen (no multitouch) and uses a stylus; the iPad runs the iPhone OS on flash memory in a closed ecosystem, the P88 has Windows on a HDD and is essentially a PC crammed into a tablet form; the iPad gets 10 hours of battery life, the P88 less than 2 hours; the P88 is thicker, heavier, and sits on an ugly metal bracket. But the real difference is in appearance:

Whoa! Spooky, huh? I mean, I can hardly tell the two apart!

What was even more funny was that when the P88 was released, it was called a “non-existent Apple Tablet Clone,” as it resembled most mock-ups and estimations of what the iPad was supposed to look like.

But it gets even better. Want to see another computer made by the Chinese company?

OMG! Apple stole the iMac from them too!!

Expect this lawsuit to fizzle. As Wired so aptly put it, “Anyone confusing the two products deserves the P88.”

A lot of people are panning the iPad, voicing a variety of complaints. It’s not revolutionary, they say; there’s nothing new here, it’s just a giant iPod Touch. It’ll be too heavy, too awkward, I don’t see how I will hold it or use it for such-and-such an application. It doesn’t replace other devices like the iPhone did, putting the features of the cell phone, iPod, and PDA all in one place. There’s no multitasking, no front-facing camera for video conferencing, there’s no USB or video out without an adaptor, no HDMI at all, and Flash doesn’t work on it. The battery can’t be replaced. The screen is a bad aspect ratio for watching widescreen video, I hate touchscreen keyboards, and an LCD monitor is bad for my eyes when I read. And the name is terrible, just look at all the feminine hygeine jokes.

So, the iPad is the biggest disappointment in history relative to its hype, right? From how these people are complaining about it, you would think so. It seems like articles based on the “iPad sucks” thesis are in vogue now. The question is, are they right? Is the iPad being trashed for good reason? Well, you can easily see from the title of this blog entry that I disagree. So let me explain why. It helps to break down the complaints into categories: lack of features, lack of novelty, and the user experience.

Lack of Features

Many people are upset that the iPad lacks many things they expected. This is often because they heard about such features in pre-release rumors, and came to think of them as part of what the iPad should be. It has a powerful enough CPU, so there should be multitasking; why won’t Apple support Flash animations; the device is a natural for video conferencing so where’s the camera; and why doesn’t it have the ports I want?

There are three answers to cover all of these questions. First, some features are software-specific, like multi-tasking. As with the iPhone, multitasking can and will be added with a software upgrade. If you get an iPad today, expect improvements to come without having to purchase a new device. Just like early iPhone adopters eventually got features like the App Store and cut-and-paste despite them not existing on the original device, your iPad will similarly receive updates, and multi-tasking is an obvious one–not to mention that it is implied in OS upgrades even now being tested.

Second, some physical features were not included in the original model, but they will be eventually. Yes, there’s no camera–but you can fully expect the feature to come with a future model. Again, just like the iPhone originally had no GPS, no video camera, and no compass, the iPad comes with a relative paucity of features. This was an obvious thing to expect; I predicted it myself in a blog post published ten days before the iPad was announced. This is simply the way many products are released. If you feel that a front-facing camera is a must-have, then simply wait for the next model to come out.

Third, some features were not included for design and esthetic reasons. We all know that Steve Jobs is a stickler for seamless designs; it’s the reason he never added a separate, physical right-click button to any Apple mouse. Few people agreed with him, and maybe this aspect of his design preferences is unnecessarily off-base. But this is part of the overall package, both the good and the bad, and what it means in the end is just that there’s no seam for a removable battery, and fewer ports along the edges. Fewer ports may also be a pricing or manufacturing concern, but whatever the case, most of these issues can be worked around, or don’t matter as much as many may think. You can add USB, SD card, and video out with adaptors. HDMI adaptors may come in the future (just as third-party HDMI adaptors came out for the MacBook Pro), but VGA should suffice in most situations if you want to use it as an output device. As for the battery, ten hours is more than almost anyone would use the device in a single day, and plugging in the device to recharge at night is not a hardship.

Some people complain about the lack of sufficient storage. I myself am peeved by Apple’s pricing tiers: $100 is way too steep for an extra 16 or 32 GB of memory. They clearly want to lure people in with the base price, but get them to end up spending the extra cash on more memory after having decided to buy one. However, there is a possible reason why the amount of internal storage won’t matter as much: networking. The iPad is not designed to be a storage device any more than the iPhone is. You don’t store your entire film and music libraries on the iPhone, you leave them on your main device and then sync the media with iTunes; same with the iPad. With the iPhone, wireless syncing was not included due to certain issues, battery life being the most significant. With the iPad, that may not be an issue. If you need a file, then from what I hear, you will be able to get it from your main computer using the WiFi network. Most stuff will be stored over the network, and so more storage on the iPad won’t be a big issue.

That leaves the lack of Flash support, and that was not an oversight: Apple intentionally left it out. They did so because they see Flash as more of a vulnerability than a benefit. Flash is slow, buggy, and opens up security holes. Personally, I detest Flash; although it can be used beneficially in controlled moderation, most Flash designers go way overboard, creating a web-surfing blight unmatched by any other, including the animated GIF and the “blink” tag. Apple is right to abandon it–and not just because it would open up the iPhone and iPad to hacking attacks, which is a good enough reason by itself. Flash is so Internet Explorer 6, it’s the Floppy Disk of software. Apple abandoned floppies years ahead of Windows PC makers, and they are similarly ahead of the curve where Flash is concerned. HTML5 is where it’s at.

Lack of Novelty

The next category of complaint is that the iPad isn’t revolutionary. We again see the problem–once more, as I predicted before the iPad was debuted–where expectations raised by the rumor mill led to disappointment. Everyone was looking forward to something completely new, a revolutionary OS or a stunning new design. Instead, Apple came out with what was essentially just a big iPod Touch. Why did it takes years for the Apple design team to start from scratch several times over to come up with something so basic?

It helps to remember that Apple’s challenge here was not to make something completely new and unexpected; Apple’s challenge was to make a tablet computer that would be practical and fun to use. People just assumed that this would naturally involve something new and revolutionary. I was personally nervous about the rumored “steep learning curve” of the tablet: if Apple made it too revolutionary and different, then people might not be able to use it. Just look at the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard–hardly a huge new concept, but people freaked out at the idea.

The lack of novelty in the iPad might be explained by the old saying, “That’s a feature, not a bug.” As Steve Jobs pointed out in the unveiling, there are about 75 million people who will know exactly how to use this device from the word go. Apple chose the exact opposite of a steep learning curve, and once you think about that in light of the challenge of making a tablet computer easy to use, it makes perfect sense. The iPad is not intended to wow you with its novelty, it’s intended to be comfortable and convenient. People who complain that it’s just a big iPod Touch are completely missing the whole point of this new device.

One other consideration along these lines is the iPad’s place in the spectrum of usability. Many have noted that it doesn’t replace anything, save possibly for ebook readers. The iPhone, for example, replaced the need for lugging around a cell phone, PDA, ipod, digital camera, and video recorder. That’s wonderful, but that doesn’t mean that every device has to accomplish the same goal. The iPad was not design to replace existing products, it was designed to fulfill an existing need. That need was for a mobile device which was more capable than a smartphone, but easier to tote and carry than a laptop. It may not be the widest category of need you can imagine, but a lot of people will greatly appreciate and desire exactly such a device. Students will go nuts over what this will do for textbooks, for example. People who want color, backlit ebook readers will love it. How many people have complained about laptops being too heavy, or burning their legs with the excess heat, but can’t do what they want on a tiny smartphone screen? And then there are the uses that nobody thinks they need right now, but the iPad will open up for them–a holy grail in product design.

The User Experience

That brings us to the last category of complaint: it looks like I won’t like it. It looks too heavy and awkward to hold, the size is wrong, the screen won’t be good for me, the touchscreen keyboard is no good. The problem is, people who have only seen the device and have never held one in their hands are already making judgments about what it feels like to use one. That may be why almost all of the criticisms are coming from those who have never had a hands-on with the device. Look at the reviews by those who have played with the device, however, and you’ll encounter the same advice that Jobs gave: you have to use it before you understand how right it is. Once you use it, you may find that your concerns were unwarranted or have easy solutions. It may be heavy, but so are some books; we compensate by holding such objects while resting them on our laps or whatever surface is available. The touch keyboard may seem awkward, but so did the iPhone’s, and most people seemed to have little trouble adapting to that. I myself took just a few hours to get used to it, and now type on my phone almost as fast as I do a full-sized keyboard (a miracle relative to the numeric-keypad hell that I avoided for so long). The screen may be brightly backlit, but that’s what the brightness control is for.

This is not to say that the iPad will be for everybody. Some will never get used to a virtual keyboard; others will never be comfortable holding it; many may be bothered by any level of light from a backlit LCD screen; some may hate the design and esthetics, or may never get over their high expectations from the pre-launch days. Apple has always had its haters, and always will. That doesn’t mean that the product is bad or doomed to failure.

Dispelling Criticisms Is Not Proof of Excellence

You may have noticed that I have spent the entire blog post so far explaining why the negative reviews are off base, and have not really explained why the iPad is “Deceptively Good,” as I claim in the title. So let me take a whack at it. The answer lies in two aspects: the user interface, and the product’s future potential. Both are inextricably linked, and both are right now vastly under-appreciated.

The UI

When the first “personal computer” came out, it was fully a geek’s plaything. The Altair computer had no monitor, no keyboard–just a few rows of switches and blinking lights to allow for communication in binary code. Very few people could actually use one for anything. A few years later, the “trinity” of PCs–the Apple II, the Commodore Pet, and the Tandy TRS-80–introduced a “CLI,” or a text-based interface. You either remember or have somewhere seen the old “green-screen” text displays. This allowed people who were not comfortable in binary to use the machines, although you did usually have to learn the language that the computer understood, which still kept most people too distant from the PC experience.

It only took seven years after that for the first commercially popular PC to use the GUI–the graphics user interface with visual metaphors like the Desktop, folders, icons, and menus–that we have become so accustomed to. The GUI was a godsend because it made the computer interface more recognizable, something we could relate to more easily. We understood that a desktop is a place where you begin your work, that you choose from menus, and that folders contain documents. Suddenly, almost everybody could use a computer, and PC sales took off. But we’ve had the GUI for a quarter of a century now, and it’s beginning to show it’s age. What’s next?

The answer is multitouch. Using a mouse may be a step up from a text-only interface, but it is still uncomfortable and clunky. Surely you have seen people trying to move something on the screen farther than their mousepad gives them room for, and clumsily attempt to pick up the mouse and reposition it–in fact, you may well have been that person, several times. The flaw with the mouse, and the trackpad as well, is that you are not directly controlling the content on the screen. It is one step removed from a “hands on” experience.

To get a good sense of how significant that is, try drawing a picture. Do it on paper first–I draw a pretty good Snoopy, for example. Then open a drawing app on your computer, and with the mouse, try drawing the same picture. You’ll most likely find the results appalling. A trackpad may not fare much better, unless you’re experienced at it. Whenever your hands and fingers are removed from the immediate action, you lose dexterity and control. Current cursor devices like the mouse and trackpad are remote devices; multitouch allows direct access, which is far more natural, comfortable, and accurate. However, you won’t realize this until you’ve actually used a device like the iPad where multitouch comes into far more appropriate use than it does with the smartphone.

The problem with multitouch is how the screen is placed when you’re doing your hands-on controlling. A desktop screen is much too distant, and even a laptop screen would require holding your hands out in an unnatural fashion. A smartphone screen is more suited for that, but it’s too small to do much with. The tablet PC is, if you’ll forgive the cliche, just right. Anything you control with your hands has to be in your hands. Yes, there are disadvantages, but the payoff in control will far outstrip any of those.

A good example is Apple’s multitouch trackpad on the MacBook Pro. When it came out, I thought it was cool, but not really revolutionary. I figured that I’d be able to do a few new things on it, but did not expect it to change they way I use computers. However, I only recently realized that I had completely stopped using a mouse–something I had depended upon for years with previous laptop models. The multitouch screen is the next step up from that; after getting used to it, you’ll laugh at how clunky a mouse is. But the catch is, you won’t realize it until after you’ve used it for a while. The true utility of the touchscreen sneaks up on you.

One Word: Potential

That brings us to the real promise of the product. A lot of people look at the iPad’s current state, and what we already know about using iPhone apps, and see that as the end result. That’s a big mistake. What you have seen is only the beginning. Most of what the iPad will wow you with hasn’t come out yet.

To get a better sense, watch the keynote, and pay special attention to the software demos. Pay attention to how Jobs used the photo viewing app. Watch what Phil Schiller does with programs like Numbers and Keynote, how the multitouch comes into play. Watch the Nova game demo, and note the grenade-throwing and door-opening gestures. Be sure to watch the users’ hands, not just the screen. These are just a few examples of what can be done, but there is far, far more. It is limited only by what software developers can come up with, and you’ve seen the amazing stuff people have come up with on the iPhone App Store. The closed ecosystem provides a sheltered environment which not only helps prevent malware incursions, but slows piracy so that apps can be sold more cheaply. But most significantly, it allows the individual, the small-time software tinkerer, to immediately offer their wares for sale in one of the biggest marketplaces in the world. And now the iPad blows that wide open by combining the novel and powerful multitouch interface with enough real estate to make almost anything possible.

I can appreciate the benefit to apps whose layouts have traditionally been hard to control, like Filemaker Pro for instance; creating, resizing, and placing fields and buttons has always been a bit of a pain. I can easily imagine multitouch being used to make that not only easier, but a lot of fun to boot.

Conclusion

The features most people have focused on so far–the music playing, movie viewing, browsing and email, and even the ebook reading–are all just background. They are little more than examples of what can be done with the machine. Once you take in the full potential of the device, you will come to understand that the concerns people are airing today miss the point entirely. Panning the iPad because the screen size doesn’t fit the aspect ratio of certain movies is like saying that your Porsche is abysmal because the gas cap is the wrong shade of grey. The iPad is way, way more than just one application. Watching movies on it is a perk, not a raison d’etre. Same goes for many of the other concerns.

Apple’s mission was very simple: make a platform, and they will come. The idea was not to introduce something with whiz-bang flashing lights that would knock people’s socks off, it was instead to do what computer makers have been trying for nearly a decade and failing at: creating a tablet computer which has enough going for it that it can succeed as a product category. Apple has, by all appearances, succeeded in doing that. By building on the achievements of the iPhone platform and the introducing full-scale multitouch UI in a low-cost product where that feature can flourish, Apple has created something which is truly groundbreaking.

Remember, ground-breaking innovations are not always appreciated or understood when they come out. A lot of people sneered at the original Mac, many thought the iPhone would fizz out after the buzz dissipated–heck, even the PC itself was dismissed as an expensive toy at first back in the late 70’s. So don’t count the iPad as DOA before it even arrives. It’s far more than it seems.

Hey

So, by now, you have probably thought, “If you’re criticizing others for coming to conclusions about the iPad sucking before they get their hands on it, how can you claim that the reverse is true if you’ve never held one yourself?” Well, you got me. Part of it is an educated assessment–I’ve been looking at this kind of technology for a while. But that’s not enough.

Call it an article of faith.

This reporter makes an interesting observation I hadn’t thought of before: Japanese people don’t do ebooks. You just don’t see them here. And the idea is that it’s not because they just haven’t arrived, but rather that Japanese people are not really that interested in them. From what I can gather, Japanese do read quite a lot (though not as much as 30 years ago), but most ebook reading is done on a cell phone. What drives most ebook reader sales in Japan is obvious–I knew even before I looked it up that manga would be what drives the ebook reader market. They come out often, and come in thick tomes that resemble gaudy, small-format telephone books. The bulk, graphic format, and large number of constant releases would make manga a natural ebook target.

So people do read ebooks here. And from what I found from a quick search, the market is taking off–it just hasn’t developed nearly as much here as it has in America. So the question is, will the iPad change that. The answer might be similar to what we saw with the iPod, then the iPod Touch, and then the iPhone: an initial lukewarm reaction, everybody says that Japanese people aren’t interested… and then a few years later, you start seeing them everywhere.

Unless you have some very specific needs, I can’t really see how the Kindle could outclass the iPad as an e-book reader, especially if you compare like sizes–the iPad vs. the 9.7“ Kindle.

Now, that’s all subjective, and depends on what you prefer and what you can stand. Some people will prefer the Kindle no matter what because the e-ink screen is less a strain on their eyes. Others will very much prefer a backlit display (my father sent his Kindle back because he couldn’t read in bed with the lights off).

I decided to make an impromptu chart to compare the two. Advantages are colored in orange. Note that I did not give either machine an advantage for the screen type (depending on visual preferences), WiFi vs. 3G (Amazon’s 3G connectivity is free), keyboard type (some people will always prefer a physical keyboard), or even the USB / VGA comparison (despite the video out, the iPad requires adaptors which many dislike).

The Kindle DX has an advantage with slightly higher resolution and pixels per inch (ppi) screen density, a slightly lighter body, and far superior battery life. If e-ink and long battery life are critical for you, then the Kindle wins hands-down–with all cylinders firing, it gets more than 4 days of continuous use; with the 3G used only sporadically and when used even at heavy reading rates, the Kindle can last weeks on a single charge. Some also claim that weight is an issue when you’re holding that device up for hours on end, and a 5-ounce difference is a difference some will balk at.

The iPad, meanwhile, is not limited to being an ebook reader, but if only used for that, it could still hold its own. For the same price as the Kindle DX, you get full color, a backlit screen, and four times the storage in a smaller form factor. But in addition, you get… well… a computer. You get to run apps, read email, play games, and most anything else a computer can do. You can run an office suite, watch movies and TV shows, all that and more–virtually no limits within the allowances of the hardware.

iPad vs. Kindle
	iPad	Kindle
Overall Size	9.56" x 7.47" x 0.5"	10.4" x 7.2" x 0.38"
Screen size (diag)	9.7"	9.7"
Screen Type	backlit LCD ISP touch	e-ink, no backlight
Colors	millions (?)	16 grays
Resolution	1024 x 768 (132 ppi)	1200 x 824 (150 ppi)
Weight	24 oz.	18.9 oz.
CPU	1 GHz custom	532 MHz Freescale
Storage	16 GB	4 GB
Battery life	10 hours	"1 week" (4 days)
Wireless	Wi-Fi (n), Bluetooth	3G (free)
Main connectors	iPod	USB
USB / VGA	yes / yes (adaptor)	yes / no
Book Store	yes (? vols.)	yes (400,000 vols.)
App Store	yes	no
Browser	Safari	"rudimentary"
Email	Mail	no
Games	yes	no
Plays music	yes	yes
Plays Movies/TV	yes	no
Keyboard	touchscreen	physical
Price	$499	$489

So the question becomes, what are you looking for? Just an ebook reader geared toward general ebook reading preferences? Or an all-in-one device with loads of potential? Comparing the two is a bit jarring because they are different beasts, but like comparing the iPhone and the Zune, they both cover the same territory, and then one goes a lot further, for about the same price. And we all know how stunning a success the Zune has been.

One word: potential. Remember how I mentioned people hyping it up too much? This is what I was talking about. Clearly Apple wanted to start from bare basics and then upgrade. Essentially, this is exactly what people heard since a while ago: a giant iPhone or iPod Touch. Apple clearly wants to ride the familiarity people have with the iPhone, which may or may not be a mistake. People were expecting something revolutionary, and instead they got the familiar, just bigger.

In one respect, the iPad is disappointing in that it really doesn’t do anything new. No 3-D interface, no use of advanced multi-touch, and no steep learning curve. It doesn’t even have multitasking, which people expected the iPad would bring to the iPhone. Instead, we’re all trapped under a single app at a time, which is virtually inexplicable for a device with a 1 GHz CPU that reportedly performs very quickly. I can only guess that Apple wanted to prevent the device from slowing down after opening up too many apps at the same time.

What Apple did right: the price. The base unit, 16GB WiFi and no carrier contract, starts at $499, which, if you recall, is exactly what the original 4GB iPhone cost with a contract. The 16GB price is obviously meant to sell, as I seriously doubt that doubling the memory really costs an extra $100. Apple wanted the low-end model to be at a price people wouldn’t gag at, and they did it: $500 for a tablet computer is actually pretty damn good. Add the pre-existing app base and how comfortably anyone will be able to slide into using this, and you begin to understand Apple’s strategy.

And that, I suppose, was a key point: make it available for most people, get the basics down right, and then follow up with more features every model. You can fully expect a new iPad in 8-12 months with a front-facing camera, Bluetooth and a compass, then another one after that with new screen sizes and multitasking, and so on. This is what Apple does. I called that one spot-on in my prediction 10 days ago:

Like the iPhone, one should expect a relative paucity of such features upon the initial release, allowing not only for everyone to focus on the core innovations of the product, but also to allow for Apple to make the subsequent generations of tablets more attractive.

See?

Apple is indeed going with the closed ecosystem; again, they are going with their strengths. Hopefully, you will be able to “authorize” the iPad so it can use all of your purchased apps right off the bat, without having to buy them all over again. Apple is adding iWork to the mix, so we get a long-overdue office suite. The apps are priced at $10 a pop, I presume no discount to buy all 3. But $30 for an office suite seems quite acceptable to me.

Missing from the presentation: any indication of how the file system will work. Now that we have an Office-style set of apps, surely we’ll need a place to save them. How will that work? If they introduced that, I haven’t seen it yet.

And textbooks! What’s up with that? No mention of textbooks in the keynote? Surely there will be something coming, but Apple better not make it so you have to buy a separate textbook app for each publisher. Even free apps from each publisher would be a pain in the ass, as you’d have to remember which textbook you’d gotten from what publisher, and you’d have to switch back and forth.

My predictions for the tablet were not bad–I got a lot right, probably more wrong, though I probably fared better than most analysts. The iPad is slightly larger than I thought, in order to accommodate the border/bezel, which I believe I accurately predicted–I think that’s about a half-inch, maybe a bit wider. I nearly nailed the pixels-per-inch prediction, guessing 130 (it’s 132), and was right that there’d be at least a 720p resolution–I guessed 1080 x 720, it’s really 1024 x 768, not spot-on but fairly close. I predicted that viewing angles would be an issue, and was right–Apple went with a special type of LCD called “IPS” which was a wide viewing angle. I don’t recall many other prognosticators addressing that issue. I was right about the camera not being there, and why not; I was right about the price but for the wrong reasons; and I was right about the importance about there being a Wi-Fi-only option.

I was wrong in my expectations for the interface to use advanced multitouch, though I fully expect Apple to start from the familiar base OS and upgrade gradually instead of shocking people with a new, hard-to-learn UI. I was wrong about the home button location, but right on all the other buttons. I was wrong about the mini-USB and the mic, and missed it on the CPU.

Overall impression: Jobs did not hit one out of the park like he did with the iPhone, in that this is not a huge, awe-inspiring device. Instead, it is far more subtle and subversive: it will slide people into a new way of computing, slowly acclimating them instead of diving right in.

In the end, the question is, will people buy it? It’s a very nice, familiar tablet/ebook device for an affordable entry-level price. I think people will indeed go for it, though not in the excited droves they went for the iPhone. Jobs is playing this one safe rather than taking risks. It’ll be a sleeper, slow in the short-term, but a long-term hit.