iPad - What's the big deal?

I tried to get the iPad for my mother-in-law for Mother's Day. The stores are completely sold out. If you order one you might get it in a week or so. Of course, I have had my 64GB 3G for almost a week now. Opening the box was like the Hanukkah when I got my radio flyer red wagon. Wow, did that feel great!

I can now attempt to explain what all the excitement is about. Plain and simple, the iPad is a fine piece of high technology. There is no instruction manual in the box, just a card with 4 simple to do items listed. If you are one of those (many) people who are computer illiterate, you will find the entire experience foreign. But if you use a PC or a MAC and you have connected a printer or a camera or a hard drive or an iPod, this should be a piece of cake.

There are many things to list that make the iPad the big deal that it is. So, I have tried to think of the one thing that really puts it over the top. It was not hard to think of it. The iPad is fun to use. I have used it for both pleasure and for work. I enjoy using it. It is fast and responsive the way a computer should be and it gives you a feeling of control. As with any computer program, I discover new and better ways to use it and that is always a pleasure. I am not really talking about that. From the moment you turn it on and slide your finger over the beautiful backlit screen you take a certain degree of joy in it's response.

It is certainly a winner. Apple has made another big step.

iPad -This is how it should work

I have never pre-ordered anything. Until now that is. There has been about as much hype for the iPad as you can get. Perhaps more than the hype we saw for MS Windows 95, 98 and XP combined. Of course, hype is growing at about the same rate of acceleration as technology. Much of the hype is always the same.

• This will change computing as we know it.


• This will change society as we know it.


• This represents a paradigm shift in the cosmos.

Yet there is a new flavor to this hype that we have not seen before. It has been brought to us by the quiet and almost humble sincerity of a man coming from his sickbed to make yet another product that seems to hit the "sweet spot". That is the difference here.

All the critics and reviewers will tell you the pros and cons of this new device. However, only a few (i.e. Leo Laporte) actually get it. After all of the analysis, it is not about the pros and cons. It is all about doing what it does, flawlessly, easily, intuitively and any other word that means anyone can do it. This is the device that will bring the power of computing to the masses. It certainly will up the ante for the likes of Microsoft, Google, HP and ???

Just as in life, it is all about choices and when you have to make choices you must aspire to having good balance. For now that is what Steve Jobs has succeeded in doing with the iPad. It is designed so that everyone from the most techie tech to the casual cell phone user will love it almost immediately.

I pre-ordered a 64GB 3G 2 weeks ago. No balance here.