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When I say “us” I mean ordinary people and not geeks and IT-pros.

Tablet PCs were always underpowered laptops, with stylus and touch-screen which you could proudly show-off to your friends — and that’s all it was. I always wanted one but couldn’t choose from selection, because they all had unbelievably silly price-tag and even more silly performance. But that was least of it’s problem, main one was an operating system it was running — Windows. But don’t get me wrong, Windows is fine and it was only proper operating system back in early 2000’s. Thing is that Windows and even my favorite Mac OS X weren’t designed for fancy touch-screens and fingers on your hand, what for they were designed had keyboards and accurate pointers built-in, like mouses and trackpads: Desktops and classic notebooks.

First ever software and operating system made entirely for tablet-like device, operated by the best pointing device ever made – your finger, was one running on iPhone — the iPhone OS 1.0. This was exactly what a tablet PCs/devices were missing.

Point I’m trying to make is that in my mind tablets have to be ultra-mobile laptops — a modern day netbooks. Because they are so small and have considerable less performance than modern full featured computers, there has to be a compromise on something. There were two ways for netbooks and tablets, they had to:

1. Do everything what a modern computer does, but very sloooooowly and badly on a uncomfortable tiny screen.
2. Do not do everything that desktop computer does, but do things you’ll need most commonly very well, and in some cases with more comfort and fun than standard computer.

As it usually happens, Apple and everyone else had done it in a different ways. It’s hard to tell who was right in general and from the business perspective, but for me personally — iPad launch has became one of the most exciting moments in my software developer’s carrier. I really do think that it will change the way people use computers and internet, as iPod changed the way people buy and listen to music.

Just think for a moment what for you use your computer in your everyday life. I bet you’ll find 95%, if not every single one, of your thoughts in a table chart bellow.

Everything listed above is possible on iPad not only without pain and frustration, but with a comfort, simplicity and fun. So classic desktops and notebooks are useless then? No, I do not think creative-pros and other field specific professionals will shift entirely on iPad because iPads simply are not fully flagged computers, they are cheap, practical and fun companions for your desktop. As a software developer and photographer, I’d rather have one powerful desktop with a huge performance and even bigger screen and cheapest iPad than even most powerful notebook, because no notebook will have desktop like performance and size of an iPad. So it becomes as simple as that: serious work on desktop and everything else on iPad.

That’s not all, because there are lots of professionals who do not need such computing power while working and everything they use is a e-mail, internet, chats, word processing, spreadsheets and maybe some project management and productivity software. I’m sure there will be tons of software in a few month time that will cover every-single thing you’ll ever want, and even today, with standard set of software iPad is capable of majority of those stuff.

Revolution

I truly believe iPad is going to be one of the main revolutions in modern computing, not because of fancy touch-screen and or some hardware related rubbish — those stuff is only interesting for geeks and nerds — but because of concept and approach to the problems. Even tho it’s not released yet it has phenomenal ecosystem and infrastructure. The App Store, iTunes Store and new iBooks Store is unbelievable big thing for iPad’s success, and the operating system it runs is another huge thing, because its designed for this kind of device from the scratch.

Why Apple won another time? Because they’ve done it properly. The’ve build an ecosystem in which iPad is already a winner. If there was no iTunes, iBooks and App Store with hundreds of thousand of registered developers iPad would be another failure, just like any other device form HP, Compaq, Microsoft, whoever. Just think about iPod, it was very simple quality player with no extra functionality which made a true revolution in music industry and portable music, but only after iTunes Music Store was introduced.

It is very interesting what will happen after one year or so when iPad will be publicly available and many software products will be written for it. Will it change the way we use computers today… or not?