The moment I pulled out my iPhone and scanned the denture cleaner (for retainers, I don't wear dentures) to get price comparisons I got wows. There are augmented reality apps like Gunman. You can find your friends with Loopt or Foursquare. These things are really what's revolutionary. A barebones iPhone is no more than a cellphone + gps + compass + camera + accelerometer. Each of those features by itself is nothing close to revolutionary. They've been done. And together it's still quite lifeless. With the iPad sans apps, this is an expected reaction. Who cares about a compass app. The Google maps with GPS is pretty lacking. But when all these physical features are amalgamated into a single and standardized mobile device, and a software layer is applied to bind their functionalities together, you get a shitload of new possibilities. Each of those features adds a whole new dimension of possible use scenarios when placed in the right minds. And then those minds who dream up the real magic fascinate the rest of the doubting crowd. Compass + Camera + 3G allowed for augmented reality. Camera + processor + 3G allows for RedLaser. GPS + processor + 3G allows for location tracking. When the iPhone first came out, who really was thinking about how many barcodes you could scan? We're stuck to thinking about how things will do what we already do, but what about things you've never imagined before?
And so we have an iPad (I preferred iSlate). It's a few inches bigger, but with a lot of things you can really feel a few inches of difference. It's slightly bigger size actually puts it in a whole new product category. No, it's not a mobile device like your iPhone any longer. No, it's not a laptop computer (or netbook). It's everything that made the iPhone successful, but now at the size of a casual use computer (as opposed to a mobile device).
Don' think of the iPad as a fancy new computer that "just works", because the Mac already did that. Don't think of it as a bigger iPhone, because it's not a phone. It is what iPhone did to the mobile phone industry, but doing it now to the personal computing industry.
If you believe the iPhone was revolutionary, then you have to believe the iPad is too. The iPad is adding yet another new dimension: size. And size might be the biggest improvement to date. Why do you think iPhone development was seen as a goldmine? It's because it opened whole up whole new types of innovative products and ideas. People could finally pounce on them.
Personally I would wait until iPad second gen comes out. The camera was a crucial component and I believe it is inevitable for it to be released. But mark my words, the iPad is opening a whole new world in how we use computers in our daily lives. It's going to be magical, and the apps will be the magic.
I can't wait to see what people dream up with a few more inches of screen size and all the existing innovation from the doodads of the iPhone.
