I pre-ordered the iPad via the Apple website.   Even though the Apple site mentioned the Saturday April 3 delivery date, I was really expecting it on Monday.  On Friday, I tracked the package via the UPS site in the style of NORAD tracking Santa.  This was yet another reality check of where these beautiful electronics are manufactured. The package was still in Guangzhou, China.  Our UPS guy generally doesn't even attempt deliveries in the weekend to our business address, so I called UPS. Before I could get through to an agent, an automated message preempted me.  It announced to all impatient kids waiting for their iPad (or something like that) that it was going to get delivered on Saturday.  Indeed, it even arrived in the morning.

Once in possession of the device, the crazy idea of taking a golf club to it before even turning it on like Daniel Tosh did in this clip flashed through my head. But that would have been a really stupid thing to do.  Minutes after using the device, it became obvious--this device stands up really well to all it was hyped to be.

 

Even though many people have said that this is all about the irrational culture created by Apple's marketing genius, I have a perfectly rational explanation for the popularity this device is having. Here it goes.

 

Evident by the basically unchanged Windows PCs many of us have been using for at least a decade now, the consumer is pretty tolerant to the often poor user interfaces of personal computers. After all, what choice did we have?  This has not been the case for cell phones. There has been a lot of choice of different mobile software platforms.  Since the first Motorola 3000 cell phone circa 1983, all the way up to today, if a mobile phone is hard to use, it will sell poorly and it will give the mobile operator a huge customer support headache. Since I started using a Blackberry 957, I have wished the same care for detail would be put into the user interface of an actual computer OS.

 

This is it. The iPad is a small computer with the well designed user interface of a cellphone--the iPhone.  I can find a large collection of content and software especially designed and optimized for this exact hardware. This is not the case on everyone's PC. In contrast to some PCs, it is a computing experience without the common frustrations of slow software, clogged menus or searing hot laptops with 4 hour battery lives.  Not surprisingly, it is individuals who have great computer skills who don't understand the hype about iPad.  They miss the point. They are often happy Linux users unaware of user interface obstacles common to software.

 

Users of the iPhone had seen what developers are capable of in terms of interactivity design on a constrained mobile device. Those are the same users who bought approximately 700,000 iPads over the weekend.  It's a great example of less is more.  I read a great blog post by Matt Gemmell on iPad user interface design here.  The more direct a consumer can interact with content the more fun they have.  So far, because of the large touch screen on a mobile 'always-on' device, the iPad allows more direct interaction with content than any other. The device is surprisingly fast thanks to the A4 CPU that can move data 64bits at a time.

 

Seeing the great full screen advertisements for Coca-cola, Oracle, Buick, and several other advertisers in between the content of great iPad optimized applications (like the WSJ and USA Today applications), I expect this device to be a darling of brand advertisers.   The combination of large full page interstitials with integrated video works really well. Advertisers finally have the tripple threat: size, interactivity and measurability.

 

This is great news for those who bought the iPad. Your favorite newspapers, magazines and TV shows are likely to be largely free to download.  For mobile publishers, this is a chance to take more control over monetizing their content as well.  The ad network model that has been helpfull in mobile because of its efficiency, I expect to be less important for iPad apps.  Regardless what you call rich media on mobile (H.264, HTML5, JavaScript or Flash), the iPad can support more impressive advertisements than any popular mobile device.