Just applied the InvisibleShield whole body kit to the iPhone 4. This stuff is amazing!

The Hardware: Yes, it is an overgrown iPod Touch. Same design, form factor and operating system. Call it what it is. Where it adds more value than either the iPhone or the iPod touch is in screen real estate. Period. However, the real estate is what puts it in the league of the micro-notebook, PC tablets or NetBooks. But outside of the screen that is where the iPad is definitely not any of these and does not have the benefits of these devices. Then again it was not designed to.

The Software: Possibly the biggest advantage the iPad has over these devices. Arguments have been made that the iPad does not have the capability to run the same apps as NetBooks or PC Tablets. Fine, but why would you want it to. In many cases anything put on these devices is overkill and rarely used. Not to mention the bulk space required to put a full blown operating system and a full Office Suite on it. Again, why? I asked my co-workers on a few occasions, "What is it that you do on a Laptop that you think couldn't be accomplished on the iPad even with the apps that have been developed for the iPhone/iPod touch which will run on the iPad?" I didn't get an answer. To avoid any possibility of a response however, I did add that even my iPhone has the ability to run a Remote Desktop session with either my MacBook Pro or my PC at home. If they are running these "Have to have" applications, why would I need it on an iPad if companies like VMWare and others are looking to provide applications for the iPad.

Seriously, if you have an iPad, are mobile, you are rarely going to need such powerful applications when you are out and about. Which leads me to my next point... people.

The Users: As previously mentioned much of the heated debate lives within the technology community. Everyone is taking shots at the iPad or the failure of mobile PCs. What apps, how much memory, to USB or not to USB, those are the questions. What we in IT need to do is top thinking about ourselves and where any of these devices fails in our eyes. The general non-technical public could care less. They want simplicity, they don't use big corporate applications in their daily lives. They live on the web and in email for the most part. They listen to music, watch movies or TV shows and even listen to or read books. I imagine this was the basic requirement set that Steve Jobs laid out before his team when the concept of an Apple Tablet was put out there.

My wife doesn't need a MacBook pro, aside from browsing the web and checking mail she just needs to remote into her company to work off of her Desktop machine doing all of the heavy lifting. iPad could be perfect for her outside of the office or when she is traveling. My parents don't need an iMac or a Dell desktop computer all they do is play Solitaire, surf the web and occasionally check their email. My guess is that there are many more people in those categories out there than those in the Forums and Blogs debating the validity of an iPad just because it doesn't have the specs that they would need.

Even I found my self coming to the realization today that I wouldn't have a need for my 15" MacBook Pro if I had an iPad. I have an iMac for my heavy lifting and an iPhone for my cell services. The iPad would fit nicely in between the two and I would be writing this on that right now as I sit on my couch in front of the TV. In short, my MacBook Pro is overkill for the type of work I am doing right now.

In my day job, I spend a lot of time breaking old habits and thought processes of people. We refer to this as a "cultural shift" in the way that people think about how we do a certain type of work. The same could be said for how people are defending a computing culture that is at the precipice of change. A computing cultural shift if you will.

This leads me to an article I was reading by one of the Co-Founders of Posterous, Sachin Agarwal entitled: "The Finder is dead. Soon, a PC won't have files, folders, or documents. It will have "apps" like an iPhone" A wonderful piece that demonstrates further where many are failing to see the vision of where computing is going. You can't necessarily defend a vision, but you can paint the picture of the future, or as is the case with Apple, begin to move beyond the vision and start to drive change. Remember the death of the Floppy Drive introduced in the first generation iMac? What about FireWire's introduction in the same product? "Crazy" is what the industry called it. But now, I haven't touched a floppy disk in years.

Sachin's article helps support a vision of the future I have been trying to explain for months now which began with people telling me that the iPad without USB ports was just stupid. How would people get files on and off of the silly thing? Truly destined to become a failure without it. I simply countered with facts like my iPhone having the DropBox application or MobileMe application to access files from the cloud so why would I need a USB port? Uh.... EXACTLY!

The iPad is Apple's appliance for cloud computing. High-speed and low-drag. It will become the interface to the cloud. Rumors indicate that we could see Music and Movies purchased through the iTunes Music store being stored on the cloud. The days of believing that because you purchase and download music that is essentially code makes it tangibly yours is going to change. You are not paying for the CD or the Code, but for the RIGHTS to own that music. Where it is stored becomes pretty much irrelevant as long as you have the receipt that gives you rights to that music.

So, if all of your digital assets are in the cloud, there becomes no need for local storage on gigabyte drives, USB drives or even the device itself. If it is connected via WiFi, 3 or 4G or even synced for when you are not connected, then there becomes less of a need to carry Laptops, NetBooks or external drives around.

So yes, I believe the iPad will be a hit. Possibly a HUGE hit that will re-shape the future of computing and what we know and do with it today. What that ultimately will be, we don't know right now, but the Vision looks bright for where we are headed and once again, love them or hate them, but Apple is once again leading the charge into the future, with or without you.

A couple of interesting things occurred to me at work today. I was attending a regular weekly meeting and due to various issues, I had not been able to attend this meeting for one reason or another. That is what made today quite interesting.

You know how you don't see someone for a long time and when you do you notice everything different about them? Kids grow, people lose or gain weight that goes un-noticed if you are around them on a daily basis. Well, today I was in this meeting when I began to notice that I was no longer the odd man out with my iPhone. I began to see a visible change in the mobile devices strewn about the table. Some had only the iPhone and others had both the company issues BlackBerry laying next to their personal iPhone. Of course there were those BlackBerry only owners, but that number appeared to be dramatically declining. The iPhone was slowly creeping its way into the Enterprise one way or another.

Anyhow, I digress. The meeting finished up about 20 minutes early and several of us were killing time until our next meeting at the top of the hour. The topic on the lips of many these days came up. The iPad. It was a discussion around how those who had not seen the point of an iPad or Apple for that matter just weren't buying the hype or the reason for why this "tablet" would be any different than any other "tablet" released over the last 5 years. It was not a heated discussion mind you but it did highlight to me a very important point. No one knows.

I mean really knows. I have written previously on the one major way in which the iPad is different and it is that it is neither an iPhone, iPod touch or a Laptop. No there are no USB ports for transferring of files or anything else that puts it into direct competition with a NetBook or a Laptop. Again, the question was posed "So why is it so special?" Truth be told, there is no clear answer to that question. As a matter of fact, it could be said that no one fully understands the true purpose of the iPad. The only thing that can be clearly supported is its form factor and the value of the eReader functionality. Even that is unproven territory. Traditionalists will still want physical books, semi-techno-heads will still opt for the simplicity of the "one-trick-pony" eBook readers out there today.

I listened for a while before simply saying that anything hardware related will not define the iPad. What will define the iPad's popularity or value will be the simplistic platform Apple has designed, the creativity of development for the iPad and the distribution mechanism that Apple has also developed to deliver those applications to the iPad. Keep in mind that many of the debates between the Apple "Fans" and the Apple "Haters" occur in the Technology realm, I continued. To the average non-technical individual, the iPad will be everything they ever needed and then some.

[to be continued...]