Old man Jobs unveiling the iPad (Not actual size)

A lot of people have been making a lot of jokes about how terrible the iPad is. I personally like to joke that the iPad can’t run two apps at the same time, of course my jokes are usually more cleverly worded than this basic statement, but I digress. In case you haven’t heard, Pee-Wee Herman is back and even he is in on making fun of the iPad. Check out this hilarious video where Pee-Wee gets his iPad. Again, I digress.

At this point in time, the iPad is a toy. There is probably very few people, if any, that use the iPad for business. And that’s fine. Think about the similar devices to the iPad. The iPhone and iTouch are basically strictly for entertainment. And, in fact, the iPhone, iTouch and iPad all run iPhone OS. But with the release of iPhone OS 4 right around the corner, the iPad might get a lot more useful. From what I understand the developer edition has been released so app builders can update their apps before the official release. The main feature is “mutli-tasking”. Plus 6 other features (Apple calls the new features “tentpoles” for some reason) that will actually make the iPad a lot more functional. I imagine all these “tentpoles” will be geared towards the iPad, but the iPhones and iTouches will see some benefit to this update. Probably some ported down application of the same features.

From the sounds of it, the “multi-tasking” will not truly be like the mutli-tasking you have on your desktop or laptop, but will allow more apps to run in the background. There will also be a new feature that allows the user to switch between multi-tasked apps quickly as well. After reading that last statement back to myself, multi-tasking doesn’t sound that impressive. I’m sure this feature alone will take the iPad a step or two forward though. And if you look to the horizon, you can see the slick, intuitive touch screen interface of the iPad, iPhone and iTouch taking computing to its next era.

When I first saw someone use an iPhone interface it was like something out of a Sci-Fi movie, like when Tom Cruise is moving windows/objects/applications around on that strange, transparent computer monitor in Minority Report. I personally didn’t enjoy that movie, but that’s just an example of technology. Anyway… with the current interface of the iPad, or even the iTouch or iPhone, it’s not that hard to imagine a desktop computer with a large monitor that has a similar interface that Tom Cruise is using that movie.

So maybe it’s the iPhone that set everything into motion initially, but the iPad takes that to a bigger screen and it’s no stretch of the imagination to picture that on a bigger screen in a couple years. Maybe the high-end model of the next new iMac or MacBook will have some touch screen features. I think that would be amazing and I’m looking forward to Apple revolutionizing personal computing.