iPad, iPad iPad. iPad? iPad... iPad!

As the title to this post might suggest, the iPad has been on my mind, and if Techmeme is an accurate zeitgeist of the webernets, it’s on everyone else’s mind too. As I write this, 10 of the top 12 stories on the Techmeme are about the iPad.

So I got one on Saturday. In fact, I got one for my girlfriend too. Rather than contrib

ute to the rash of hands-on reviews and pontifications that are littered across the Techmeme homepage, I’ll keep this brief.

All I have to say is that the iPad is a gorgeous device, a hunk of aluminum and glass that lets you reach out and grab the Internet by its dots and @s and manipulate it to your heart’s content. More specifically, Mobile Safari is awesomely responsive. I mean it’s literally awesome. And I mean “literally” in the literal sense, not in the figuartive sense in which the word “literally” is often used.

I don’t want to start continue gushing, nor ignite any flamewars or clichéd arguments about “walled gardens” and car analogies.

All I’ll say is this. Apple has another winner on their hands, period. And just as they did with the personal computer in 1976, and the GUI in 1984, the music industry in 2001 and the mobile industry in 2007, Apple is showing the world where we are headed.

I’m not saying that Apple will take over the universe and we will all have iPads by 2011–Apple’s closed software and hardware business model isn’t made to scale for mass adoption. But I will say that the industry will trend towards simple, task oriented tablets made for the masses. Others (maybe Microsoft, maybe Google, maybe not) will do it cheaper and with wider adoption, but Apple will make the best tablets–at a premium price. Kind of like the age old Mac vs. PC scenario or the new iPhone vs Andoid one.

We will always have some form of bigger work and content creation machines, but as far as 90% of coumputer users are concerned, the desktop and its baby brother the laptop will need to step aside for the tablet, who is currently being matriculated in Cupertino.