Apple’s keynote is not over for 5 minutes and the WWW immediatelly starts discussing (best case) and bashing (worst case) about the new alpha dog in digital media: the iPad. I spent a couple of hours over my decision whether to write an article about the iPad or not and – most obviously – decided to do it. In case you wonder why, you might have to wait for my last paragraph.
All this buzz about the iPad which is going on right now mainly is about its features/capabilities, its pricing, its overall “meaning” for our workaday life and most of all about its success or failure. You will find loads of blogs about technical details, also about the pricing policy and it’s predicted developement on the market. The issue I want to pick up in this article is the “meaning” of the iPad or – what fits my point more precisely – its “power“.
Even if the iPad presented yeste
rday is not the non-plus-ultra multimedia-device (infact there’s some important things missing: a camera, flash-support, maybe usb-ports and sd-card-slot, the often requested multitasking ability, etc.) it’s overall “meaning” and “power” is unfathomable! It’s nothing less than a digital revolution.
When you saw Steve Jobs sittng on his couch last night, holding the iPad in his hands it was crystal clear that this is the way we all are going to live out our digital lifestyle for the next 3-5 years (or maybe even beyond that). This is the way we’re gonna surf the internet, read books and magazines, check emails, watch movies, share photos, play games and do a little office work along the way. This is the future and it’s going to take place on our couches, yippee-ki-yay!! 
It may not be THIS iPad generation (the SDK already reveals some great features for future generations), maybe it’s not even a neverending “Apple only” victory like the iPhone (Infact the competitors have learned a lot from their past mistakes. The first “iPad-killer” was released even 3 months before the iPad itself) but three things are unquestioned:
- this is the way to go
- everyone will follow
- and once again Apple was the company who set the agenda
So why is the iPad relevant at all for a blog that is circuiting around music in general and detail. Well if you had read my postings about musicDNA, iTunesLP, the death of the CD and the argument over haptics, you would know!
