Well, Apple announced it's iPad yesterday. In the last 19 hours I have been reading and listening to many different people giving their opinions about the device. Here is my take.

My initial reaction was like many, underwhelmed. However, the more I sift through my thoughts, the more I am impressed. The problem many are having is that there was no WOW factor. But lets be honest here. Is there any room between the iPhone and the MacBook for an earth shattering device? What did everyone expect? There was so much hype to this launch that we lost perspective. If instead we look at it as an e-reader that is sooo much more, then perhaps we can truly appreciate this product. Now you might say, 'an e-reader? who cares?' Many people care. You will too in time. I liken this to back in the day when I was digitizing all of my 2,000 cds. Many of my friends, my wife included, thought I was nuts. Why would you want to do that, they would ask. I told them I was putting the music onto my computer so I could play them on a portable mp3 player. This was pre iPod and the device was as big as a cd player, if not bigger. 'Why not just bring a cd player and a cd case of your favorite 20 discs?' Today we are at a similar point in time with the book, the magazine, and newspaper. As many of you know, the publishing industry (Newspapers especially) is bad shape. The newspaper industry is on the brink of disappearing. They needed a new business model to make money in the internet world of today. The iPad is going to do that.

The e-reader component will be for books what the iPod was for music. I think the keynote was not great. They spent too much time trying to pump up things that were already mundane to most of us. Web browsing for example. Steve seemed a little lost when trying to hype it. But I can understand their strategy. Books are not exciting to this generation. Games, the internet, movies and music are what they care about. However, the biggest affect will be the e-reader. Everyone will be reading their books, magazines, newspapers with it in about 2 years. Can you imagine having any book, magazine or newspaper from any time period available in an instant? Just think of the possibilities for University text books. Highlighting, taking notes and researching all on the same device will be huge. The interactivity that will come to the text books is going to be unreal. On top of that, the revenue for publishers will be increased because they won't need to reduce the price really and yet people can't resell or give their textbooks away at the end of the semester. Just like the new parking meters, everyone is forced to buy new.

So once you get past the disappointment of not being wowed, you will see how important this device is going to be.