So at long last Apple today has finally revealed what everyone’s been speculating… the Apple tablet better known as the iPad. At the time of this writing (6 hours since it’s announcement) no one has used the device in any extensive fashion, but already I sense that most people have made up their mind that the device is not for them. Lack of multitasking, camera, it’s not a real computer, are some of the more common cited complaints.

I think a lot of people are perhaps missing the point. Apple’s release of the iPad is not to compete with the net book market or the Amazon Kindle but to introduce a whole other product which as of now stands on it’s own. This is a device to allow common and casual every day tasks to be performed on a platform where the form factor and computing power of a standard notebook disallows the intimacy of focusing on the application and media at hand. This device was not designed to be a PC or solely an eBook reader but a whole other way to share and experience your content and the web.

Unbeknownst to most of us as well… Apple has also introduced a GUI that most iPhone users are already familiar with but is now inadvertently becoming almost an evolutionary step up from the standard icon, window, scroll bar, click and drag interface that we have known since the dawn of the graphical user interface on the PC. The touch screen interface is starting to replace most common mouse related tasks and the concept of desktop and files and windows is now completely thrown out in favor of a more clean, simple and human interface.

Once the device is released in a few months I have no doubts it will be a popular product. And like all of Apple’s new products it will be improved over time and revisions, to satisfy a larger audience just as the iterations of the iPhone have made it the number one mobile platform in the world.

If you look at the bigger picture and it’s potential for this device to creep into industries that have as of now not been obviously revealed during it’s debut (medical, university, retail, marketing, publishing) you can see that the potential for this device to become as ubiquitous as the iPhone is not only a bit more obvious but downright exciting.