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And the answer is — “of course!”, everyone will buy it because it’s an Apple made tablet/slate device everyone was waiting for. But what about other questions like “do I need one?”, “is it practical?”, “what I’m going to do on it?”. Few years ago I abandoned PC/Windows world all-togather because I found Apple devices and software much more productive and comfortable for my lifestyle and job, so after every single keynote I ask myself — “do I need this?”. After iPhone 3G announcement answer was “Naah! I’ll wait for next one”, then there were new iMac and MacBooks, same here “No, mine’s are still fine”, after 27 iMac — “Yes! I need one!” and now, iPad — “Well… I still have my classic iPhone which is fine and fits my pocket and I also have my aluminum MacBook in my back-bag which can do anything except for really heavy calculations, what I’m going to do with iPad?”.

iPad in the wild, 9.7″ screen with 1024×768 pixels. What about glare?

To be brutally honest, I do not know yet, but what I definitely know is that my mother wants one, she never had an interest in any kind of electronics except for washing machine, and now she really wants iPad. But when she told me why — everything became very clear and I saw the real idea behind iPad. You see, only reason my mother uses computer is: to read email from friends, to chat (text, video/audio) with those friends, read articles and news in internet, listen to music and look at photos of her sister’s little child. Actually if we add some social networking and blogging stuff to this list we’ll end up with typical day of a normal person using internet for blogging or networking, but most amazing thing is that everything listed above could be done on 700 gram, keyboard-less, half-inch thin, touchscreen device called — iPad. Thing is that Apple screwed up with name, iPad is a really silly name, they should call it a something related to netbook, because iPad is a fully flagged netbook and those little crappy things they call netbooks by Asus, MSI and others, are just cheap, low-performance, uncomfortable misery with tine useless screens.

So, an Ultimate Netbook?

Well… Yes, even today, with standard set of features and double sized 3rd party iPhone apps it is an ultimate and simplified netbook which can do nearly anything you’ll ever want in internet except for some specific activities, and it will become better and better as developers rewrite UI to adopt current iPhone apps to new bigger screen.

Another great thing about iPad is a iBooks and iBooks Store with simple and very elegant user interface. I really do not think that it will kill Amazon’s Kindle because of non-ink color screen and pre-payd 3G internet costs. I think everyone interested in just reading will buy Kindle which is cheaper and cheaper to run as long Amazon provides free 3G internet connection for downloading book and news feeds.

iPad introduction was not a revolution, but what it was is a first proper netbook for your mom or anyone who doesn’t record guitar, write code, edit movies on the go. It’s am ideal portable device who serfs web, works as a columnist, listens to music, watches TV shows and movies, communicates throw Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and writes on the blog.

Era of iPad Killers

I’m sure that Nokia, HTC, HP and other companies will start making “iPad killers” as they did when iPhone was announced. This is good, competition is always making thing for us, users, better — as long it’s good competition. A very smart and interesting person in iPhone/Mac development community, Matt Gemmell, has written an open letter for iPad competitors with his thought how to compete with iPad. I liked it even tho I think everything he has written is well known fact in those companies. You can read my comment for this letter if you are interested why.

Verdict

Personally I still prefer my MacBook, because I can always open Aperture or Xcode, but it’s me. I bet if only I’d have non computer related work, I would easily prefer iPad over any mobile device, as my mother does, and as many of bloggers will… and  journalists… and average computer users… and non-computer related people…

As I said before, iPad is NOT a laptop computer, it IS an ultimate netbook.