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I know I am late on this but I have been waiting to get a clear understanding of the device before making any comment. Now that I have access to the SDK and I have been playing around with the potential of this device (even if it is just in a simulator) I truly believe that we are going to see a different thinking in terms of application development.

Apple iPad

iPad isn’t the first tablet to hit the market. There were many tablet laptops in recent years. Most of them ran Windows and had a full scale OS behind them. Compared to those iPad doesn’t have a full multi-tasking behind it. Has a closed appstore. Has exactly one connector port. Zero USB connectors. Yet I still think that iPad is going to be a great device.

To figure out why iPad is going to be a great device, let’s think about it from a non-techy, non-developer point of view. Imagine a person who doesn’t spend 16 hours of their day in-front of a computer screen. They are the casual PC users. Most of their activities during the course of the day involve: checking email, chatting, surfing, playing games etc. For all these tasks iPad fit perfectly. Most people use their computers to work on stuff in Microsoft Word, preparing their presentation in Microsoft Powerpoint etc.

iPhone revolutionized the usability of smartphones. For the first time an average consumer could simply browse to a store and buy an application which automagically downloads itself, installs and ready to be used without using any cable or wires or instructions for the users on how to install it. Magical! iPhone wasn’t about the device itself. Yes multi-touch was amazing, yes the screen was good and yes it had an apple logo at the back but what really made it amazing was the Appstore. For the first time a developer could push their work to the consumer in straightforward manner. If you have ever tried to find a decent Blackberry application and then download it and then install it you will know what I mean. It was a painful experience. With iPhone it was a pleasure. All information safe and secure, I don’t need to pull out my creditcard for the purchase, it is already there all safe and secure.

Now as a developer I know that there are issues with Appstore. It isn’t a perfect world out there. So yeah I don’t agree with some of the things Apple does with Appstore. At times their approval process doesn’t make any sense. But from a consumer standpoint, it is exactly what I wanted.

Over the past couple of days I have been having discussions with the team on what would be a great iPad application. We have already decided to create a Champions App for iPad. But we wanted to see how we can leverage that big multi-touch screen to create creative applications.

I am excited. Very excited. This is just the beginning.