I was just as confused as you when I woke up yesterday at 1PM, turned on my computer and the first thing I saw on MacRumors was a picture of a full-screen (4:3) ratio “iPad.” It bothered me for several hours until the official iPad page came up on Apple's homepage, and was even clearer when the Keynote was released later that night.

In truth: the iPad is a “Jack of all trades, master of none” device, and because of that it doesn't have a clear “who is this for?” answer. It's for everyone, really. Apple isn't the type of company to create a product to target a specific market. Sure, they could make the most bitchin' netbook ever.. for a grand and a half. Or, they could make the best eBook reader you'll ever see, or an epic portable game killer. But, they wouldn't because it would cut out the other markets.

Steve Jobs started, and ended, the Keynote by talking about the middle of the product line — between the smartphone and notebook. In his criteria for what needs to exist for a product in the middle he stated that it needs to do some key-features better. That means it doesn't have to be the BEST at everything.

The iPad is a jack of all trades because it can do it all: music, movies, apps, internet, mail, books, zomgwtf… but it doesn't do any one specific thing better than a device in either of the two categories. The smartphone is more portable, the notebook is more powerful, has a larger screen, real keyboard, yet the iPad fits right in the middle with relatively light weight, large-enough screen, and a feature set to keep it a useful gadget in your man purse.

With blabbering aside, here's how I see this being a useful device for some people:

A) Business person – Lugging around a laptop, 15″ or even 13″ is a pain in the arse, as you may know and like Steve Jobs said, the netbook doesn't do any particular thing well. Now, take this scenario with the iPad in your life. Get up in the morning, and headout to cafe for some coffee in the morning. Open up your iPad, and while connected to free wifi check your calendar for the day, email, etc. Hop on the train, and pull out your iPad to read the latest news in the NYT and WSJ.

Then, lets say you're the manager of a company and you walk into work. Your secretary says your client forwarded the latest copy of a contract and would like to meet with you. You whip out your iPad, setup a meeting in Calendar, and head off to the airport. While on your plan across country you watch a few movies you purchased on the iTunes store. Maybe even did some final touches on your Keynote presentation?

You arrive at the meeting to discuss the latest contract, and because everyone has an iPad in the meeting you simply forward the document to everyone. I can ramble on, but you get the idea. Sure, all of this can be done with your existing iPhone, or even a netbook/notebook but it would be more cumbersome to carry around a notebook and reading on the iPhone's small screen isn't very fun.

B) Student – Similar to the above, except instead of having to carry around a few dozen pounds of textbooks you've got a slim device that has 'em all. We don't know all of the iPad's iBook features, but we can hope there is support for searching as well as highlights/notes. And, possibly there could be a deal with textbook publishers that, if you bought the iPad via student discount you also get a discount on textbooks, etc. We of course can't forget about the suite of iWork apps.

C) Average Joe – Running low on ideas here, but I'm sure there's something here. It basically is a jumbo iPod Touch (with optional 3G data). If you're out often, books, movies, games, etc. are always good to have.

At the end of the day, the iPad isn't all that expensive compared to what it could have been. In my opinion, it's cheap enough (relatively speaking) that it could be a “why the heck not?” purchase. Sure it's missing a number of things like camera, multitasking, flash, etc. but that's only the main arguments against it because people need something to bash.

In reality, when would Flash on a mobile device actually be useful? You already have games that run natively on the device, and there is even a YouTube app. The only thing people could say is they can't watch Hulu.. But would you really watch Hulu on the go? In either case, Hulu and even Netflix can write their own apps (if they haven't yet). Plus, Hulu wouldn't want their content viewed on any other medium other than their website. They pulled out of Boxee, so I would be surprised if they wanted to even be on the iPhone/iPad/iTouch.

Multitasking is nice, but I don't see how it's useful other than running pandora + an app, in which case iPod + app works. Apple is too concerned about the user experience to let you run more than one app, really.

And the camera? Wait a generation or two after apple makes some cash off of this iPad. Everyone knows how Apple is. You'll see a camera very soon. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they include an SD card slot in a generation or two either.

At $630 for 16GB + 3G, or $730 for 32GB + 3G, it's not a bad value. It's relatively cheap enough to buy and see how it fits into your life. I'll surely be getting one, for the hell of it.

Anyhow, that's my rant.

-robodude666