Apple’s latest product, the iPad, has hit the scene with a flurry of mixed reviews. In all honesty, if you follow me on twitter you’ll know, I didn’t like the iPad or particularly see the point in it at first. As everyone else is saying, I simply thought of it as “an oversized iPod Touch”. But once you get over it’s iPod-esque appearance, you can see what Apple’s thinking and why they chose to make their debut tablet the way they did.

“What a disappointment”

This seemed to be the overall verdict of the general public. You see, when they released the iPhone our expectations were pretty low. Most of the mockups looked pretty appalling.

See what I mean? No one knew that Apple had reinvented what we called the mobile phone (or cell phone for my overseas friends), the iPhone is more a personal computer than a phone. Who would have thought there’d be millions of apps (albeit eventually) and a gorgeous multi touch interface. Our expectations were low, the technology we got smashed every mockup out of the water. This, I think is why the iPad wasn’t as well received as Mr. Jobs might have hoped.

See now we’ve been given multi touch, millions of apps, beautiful aesthetically pleasing hardware and a perfect, easy to use interface we’ve forgotten all about how shocked we were when the iPhone came to light and we’ve taken for granted the technology we’ve been handed. Imagine if this thing came out before the iPhone? Personally I think we’d all own one and when it was demoed no one would have been able to believe the tremendous piece of hardware (for $499) that was before them.

Now users were a little more aware of what to expect, mockups were a lot more accurate this time and essentially portrayed a MacBook air without the keyboard. Users seemed to expect a full blown Mac OS X computer in a glorious touch screen mix up. The general consensus was shock at the fact it in fact ran what is more or less iPhone OS. But no one’s stopped to think about why they’ve done this.

“What do you mean it doesn’t run OS X?”

Because that’s what everybody wanted. It seems everyone thinks someone burst in to Steve Jobs office 12 hours before the presentation and screamed “Holy shit, we’ve forgot about the OS! We haven’t got time to get Mac OS X running properly with the multi touch interface, we’re going to have to slap iPhone OS on it with a dock!”.

I think the reason Apple decided not to put OS X on the iPad has nothing to do with hardware limitations or to make you buy a more expensive laptop or desktop. Far from it. You see when Apple launched the iPhone, our phones ran these things called ‘Apps’. We could have games, utilities, fitness monitors – you name it – right on our internet enabled, multi-touch phone. We essentially now carry around small computers in our pockets with phone capabilities.

The reason, I believe, goes much deeper than that. It seems Apple is slowly reinventing what we call “computer”. 15 Years ago a computer was a big beige box sat on your desktop with a CRT monitor perched on top, but it now seems we have a laptop, desktop and iPhone – three strikingly different computers. Because this kind of device isn’t really seen in the market nowadays, we tend to associate with a scaled up iPhone (or iPod Touch) or a scaled down laptop. It’s neither of those things.

The iPad represents a new era in how we perceive “a computer” and how we interact with technology in our daily lives. The iPad has a whole host of uses that just fit the device such as reading magazines, books, newspapers. But it’s more than just a Kindle killer. (Thanks to Mark Douglas for this analogy) If you’re a photographer speaking to potential wedding clients in your comfy office, rather than being sat on your sofa with the couple and your big laptop, scrolling through Aperture or Lightroom or whatever else you use for photo management, wouldn’t it be a lot more professional looking and well-suited to hand them a tablet of your best wedding shots. A simple device that feels natural, something they can flick through (literally) and that requires no training to use (rather than, push that arrow, oh no you’ve gone in to edit mode, one sec).

What about plane rides, sure laptops are great but let’s face it, the big screened ones can present a problem when there isn’t much space. Your wrists hurt from being cramped up at the back of the keyboard because there’s no elbow room and the person in the chair in front keeps moving, knocking your screen all over the place. With a tablet, you can curl up in your chair and watch a movie (for up to 10 hours) easily.

There’s a whole range of applications for this device that I’m not going to go into. What I’m trying to get in to here is that, it’s not just an iPod Touch on steroids or a MacBook air stripped of features, it’s a hybrid of the two devices. It’s something new. Something different. Something that is going to change what a computer “is” and something that’s going to find a range of uses in completely different areas.

“But it doesn’t do this…”

So far all I’ve heard is; “it doesn’t multi-task, it doesn’t play flash videos and there’s no camera!”. No it doesn’t. Because it’s not meant to. That’s what your laptop or desktop is for and if you want that functionality, buy a damn laptop or desktop! Apple isn’t trying to replace the MacBook’s and iMac’s we’re so accustomed too, if they wanted to do that it’d run OS X, come with a camera and play flash videos. By making the tablet a compliment to your MacBook rather than an alternative, Apple are cleverly ensuring the iPad isn’t eating up valuable MacBook sales.

Another point I’d like to touch on, remember how pissed people were at the lack of copy and paste on the iPhone? Or the original lack of 3G? Now remember when they added those features down the line? This is the first incarnation of the iPad, it’s highly unlikely this is how it will remain, features will be added, models will be altered and the device will evolve – just like all Apple hardware. When the device goes live (i.e. starts shipping) it’ll be obvious what users like and what users dislike, thus the device will evolve and evolve and evolve to meet the requirements of it’s (demanding) users.

It doesn’t do that because that’s not what it’s for.

So what do I think?

I think overall, I was too quick to jump out of my seat and fire criticisms for what at first appear to be flaws. Everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon of hating the iPad without giving it a chance, the thing hasn’t even shipped yet. Wait until you’ve had one in your hands and got a feel for the machine before you denounce it as useless. When I first got my iPhone my friends all said they couldn’t justify it’s price tag. I let them play with it. Most my friends now have iPhone’s.

Apple have created something beautiful and are changing how we look at technology, and  to that, I take my hat off.