iPad sets me free – that is the revolution

Maybe I’m the slowest guy in the western world, but I haven’t been able to explain the feeling that the iPad is great and a revolution. Even though I’m not an Apple fan boy, I’ve felt that this is huge. But now I know. It’s the location that is the key.

Until today, we’ve seen two types of computer usage – one in front of a laptop, usually at a desk, and one where we use a small iPhone or Android device. The laptop situation is good for working solitary, but you are very limited in what you can physically do – leaving your desk is not an option.

The iPhone situation is almost reversed. You are free to do anything you want, but then you have only a fragment of a real computer experience. The simplicity of popular iPhone applications have shown us just that – Twitter, short messages, geo location games are small, simple and perfect for a small device.

So when Steve Jobs showed a picture of the iPhone as filling a void between the laptop and the iPhone he certainly had a point. But his graph was very misleading. The void should be much, much larger than the iPhone and the iMac squares. By making real computer usage possible in many more aspects of life, such as in the living room, on the subway, around a table, in the kitschen, the car, etc, he makes the computer a lot more important.

The iPad and the tablet means mainstream usage of computers in every aspect of your life. It’s impossible to know what the killer app of the 2010:s will be, but I bet they will be tablet based.