1. How (not ‘if’) cool will it be?
2. When can I get one?
3. How much?

If I’m honest, No.3 was largely redundant as I was expecting it to be pricey and have stashed the pennies away accordingly. No.2 was a pleasant surprise – no 6 month wait to get my paws on the goods.

The answer to No.1 was, in my mind, “not all that”. A first for an Apple product (I even admired the reworked Apple Remote yesterday in-store and the fact that I have 5 of the previous white ones barely kept my cash in my pocket).

In summary, it’s a mega-iPhone and not a tablet-ised MacBook. It feels like a safe and scaled-back toe in the waters for Apple who usually lead from the front.

Steve said they are creating a ’3rd category’ of mobile device. I know they can create a 3rd category but they’ve given us a variation on 3 existing categories. That wouldn’t have looked as good on a slide so I know why he plumped for his description, but saying it don’t make it so. I know nobody promised a Tablet MacNetBook but I think that is what is needed.

Here’s my issue:

I have an iPhone.
I have a MacBook Pro.
I have a lightweight/powerful PC laptop (XPS M1330).
I don’t have a Kindle.

So what am I going to do with the iPad?

It does more than the iPhone (bigger screen, more usable as an input device, more powerful) but I use MacBook/laptop for that stuff.

It does less than MacBook/laptop OR iPhone (no phone calls, no SMS, no camera, no GPS – OK, the 3G version will have “assisted GPS” which is probably code for mobile triangulation which can be fairly inaccurate).

It completely replaces the Kindle. Great – but I didn’t need one of those before. I have an iPhone and laptop options. And I like paperback books (they weigh less than the Kindle/iPad). And I favour RSS feeds over newspapers and RSS feeds already work very well on iPhone and laptops.

It does less than a netbook. I don’t need a netbook but I’d probably persuade myself I did for the iPad. But it runs iPhone OS so I can only run my existing iPhone apps on it and I can’t use any apps that third parties might develop outside the iTunes App store (as I could if it ran Mac OS, or Windows, or Linux etc.). So I still need my laptop/MacBook. Steve was keen to avoid the comparison based on how weedy netbooks are versus the beefy iPad, but so far its beef is going to be woefully underutilised.

OK – I’m ignoring the obvious – developers will make some AMAZING new apps for the App Store that are iPad specific and will start to make some of my laptop/MacBook software redundant… not anytime soon, I don’t think. The App Store approval process has already proved that it shuts out apps that compete with Apple’s internal aspirations and yesterday’s AMAZING app showcase comprised some games scaled up to the larger screen (underwhelming) and iWork. iWork was keenly priced but it isn’t going to replace MS Office on my laptop anytime soon.

Hang on – can I tether the iPad to my iPhone and make use of the iPhone camera, GPS and data plan? Now I’m getting excited! Maaaaybe – but Steve would have said so if it were possible on day #1 and the existence of a 3G iPad and AT&T iPad data plan would tend to suggest not.

Ummm – could it replace the Wacom tablet I use for graphics apps? It could be a really cost-effective Cintiq! Nope – capacitive touchscreen means using your sausage fingers not a stylus and even my dainty digits are too porky for this kind of work.

So…. where does this leave us? It leaves ME waiting for version 2 (hardware and/or firmware). I know Apple are smarter than me, so they know all the above as well.

I think this is a punt to flush out fan-boys, early adopters and people who DO need the iPad (no iPhone, no netbook, don’t want to carry a laptop – how many of those are there out there?!). A new category it isn’t. Yet.

——

By the way, while I’m waiting for version 2 I’m sure I’ll buy version 1. It’s very pretty to look at, I’m a geek and I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. I’m glad it’s only 1.5lbs, though, as it’s going to have to join an iPhone, MacBook AND laptop in my backpack.

Not so with Apple. The ‘second coming’ Jobs years have brought strategy and focus. This is not necessarily to say they are winning the war against the mighty Windows-based PC, but they have retained and expanded their fan base (we ‘fanboys’ as you see us referred to) with insightful products and services that now go way beyond the desktop.

It is this focus, strategy and approach that allow us to see into their highly secretive world. Not by looking at what IS there, but by looking at what isn’t. Yet.

The most active Apple rumour mill surrounds the will-it-won’t-it tablet (insert suggested name here: iTablet, iTouch, etc.) device. In truth, even the better informed pundits either don’t really know what is really there, or isn’t, or could even be spreading the traditional Apple smokescreen at the behest of the Infinite Loop HQ itself. But let’s look at what ISN’T there for clues…

The iPhone is the world’s most popular ‘smart phone’ at the time of writing. It has introduced us to a vision of mobile gaming, communication and working that has overshadowed other mighty names in this arena by gathering market share faster than its competitors and has even kept powerful pretenders to the throne such as Google/Android out of the game almost entirely to-date. Personal users are very happy. Some of us even use the iPhone as a mobile office, albeit with a feeling of last resort (laptop out of juice, no bag to carry one, caught without one) or to-see-if-we-can.

So why hasn’t the iPhone killed the Blackberry yet? What happened to all that talk of Enterprise users and usage? The iPhone, unlike its MacBook laptop brethren (consider me very unhappy that the OS Snow Leopard proudly announced its ability to connect with only the latest and less-available MS Exchange Server 2007 and not 2003), connects seamlessly with MS Exchange amongst a host of other office-based server solutions and it offers VPN access. It has a far superior screen and more software options than I imagine that RIM have even dreamed up yet.

But it has two flaws: one critical and one less-critical-but-obvious.

It has no physical keyboard and it has a camera and video capability but the camera is on the opposite side of the device to the screen. So… it takes a while to get accustomed to the keyboard and, even then, the lack of tactile feedback on the keys means slower and more difficult typing that on the physical keyboard of the Blackberry and we can’t do video calls.

No optional Bluetooth keyboard or add-on camera has been released. Surely not as a result of lack of consumer demand? There are even manufacturers with these products ‘ready to ship’ but they have been locked out by Apple’s own Terms & Conditions and/or firmware restrictions. I can envisage several products that would slake the thirst of gamers, typists and business users everywhere – how about a hard protective clamshell iPhone case boasting a keyboard/gamepad/both on the opening case? With an iSight-esque camera peeking over the top for video calls? Or a Bluetooth (or even wired, for goodness’ sake!) folding version of the beautiful Apple keyboards currently on sale? Or a portable dock that mimics a desktop laptop dock with outputs for screen and audio with inputs from keyboard, microphone etc.? I’m sure the product innovators could go mad with brushed aluminium and aesthetic minimalist design.

Why aren’t they there?

I imagine it’s because we are describing the tablet.

Write a list of all the things you wish the iPhone had that would make it a viable contender to a 13″ MacBook as a portable office solution and I imagine that you could draft a pretty good spec to send to the Apple pundits.

Why would I want to clip and PRINT areas of my screen?

Clip and copy into a doc, turn into a PDF, put into a blog post, add to Evernote, sure. But PRINT?

Surely printers (as we know them) are in their twilight years – just as Adobe have offered the ‘print to PDF’ functionality to be used in mainstream software for years, we should be able to ‘print’ directly to iPhone, laptop, social media location, other network user, etc.?

The Kindle has made inroads into replacing books and paper publications with a device designed to read from… and, as soon as tablets finally find their useful niche in our lives, these will be perfect for transporting documents around in a format where they can actually be read, referred to (without switching between screens and apps) and shown to others. And e-Ink will nail the coffin shut for good?

I’d be very happy to get rid of on of the boxes under a desk, the bills for ink, the bills for paper… and I dare say Carly Fiorina might have a chuckle to herself while patting what’s left of her $20m severance cheque from HP.

Save a tree today – send it via 1s & 0s.

A couple of weeks ago I happened to be in the living room when an edition of the BBC regional news programme “Inside Out” was on. One of the items was [yet another] study of ‘what consumers concentrate on’ using special glasses that show where they are focusing in a real-life environment. What I saw was truly amazing: some vast amount of money had be ploughed into a study showing that consumers notice things that are colourful. And that move around.

I’m paraphrasing, but not significantly (honestly). Various talking heads, including the head honcho of the large outdoor media firm that bought the study (I’m mentioning no names), a retail head from a large national store brand and an agency Creative Director eschewed the benefits of this survey and what it meant for “the advertising of tomorrow”.

The fact that my 3 and a half year old son understands that things that are colourful and move around are noticeable is evident from the fact that he often waves gaily coloured toys at me to get my attention. He also makes lots of noise, which must have been a sensory element beyond the scope of the aforementioned research project.

Combine the above with the fact that the Creative Director was clad in a purple suit and, if I recall, shiny red shoes and sat in an office with a mixture of glass and primary coloured walls (with, no doubt, nothing but a solitary chair stuck to the ceiling to demonstrate just HOW far out of the box they think) and I should be more surprised that people don’t throw stones at me when they find out what I do rather than just rolling their eyes.