Apple Releases iPad!

This morning, I realized a little late that the State of the Union Address was today. For those of you that follow me on twitter, you might have noticed my tweet somewhere around 9 am this morning that read as follows: “LOL! comment on engadget: “I’m more excited about Job’s state of the union address than Obama’s… What does that say about us?” This was promptly picked up by the Obama twitter bot. The reality is that I realized that the state of the union address was today when I read that comment on Engadget.

In reality, I could care less about the State of the Union Address. Today, my attention was fully focused on Steve Jobs.

It was the only thing that I cared about.

When Jobs walked out on that stage and started talking about all the company updates this morning, I was disappointed. I wanted him to just get on with the show. The entire geek world has been hanging on the edge of every single whisper that has come out of the Cupertino campus for the last month. The fervor only got louder when Apple released it’s somewhat innocuous invitation to this morning’s event which read simply, “Come see our latest creation.” We’d heard that they were going to unleash iLife ’10 on the world this morning, there were rumblings of a possible update to iPhone OS.

Then Steve said, “So let’s get to the main event.”

I had chills running up and down my spine.

When I saw the device and that it was everything I thought it would be, I was actually kind of disappointed. I expect so much more from Apple. I expected Apple to think of the things that I didn’t think of. An hour into the introduction to iPad and I found myself tweeting, “Okay Steve. We know what iPhone does and that iPad does what iPhone does. Show me what it does that iPhone does NOT do.”

Well he showed me.

Big things that I want that iPad does:

iBooks app. Kindle, I have loved you for the year that I have owned you and my love affair with you is now officially over. It was fun while it lasted, but the iPad’s iBooks app just blows you away and makes you look like you belong on the scrap pile. If iBooks is everything I want it to be, and I am sure that it will be, I will be sending my Kindle to my mother, or selling it on craigslist.

It has a bigger typing surface for sending email. Now, sending email from my iPhone on the fly is great, but I’m a fairly fast typist and I’m more comfortable using two hands, instead of two thumbs. I’ll be happier with a bigger typing surface and while I might not write the great American novel on it, that’s what I have a Macbook for.

News feeds through NYT and Magazine subscriptions. Now this is something I haven’t bothered to do on the kindle because it wasn’t worth it to me. But if I can go download an app that will let me have access to those things easily, without having to wiggle my way around a cumbersome menu, I’m all over this like a bad shirt.

Portable video that kicks the ass of any portable DVD player currently on the market. Need I say more?

And at 499$ for the entry level device, which is most likely all I will need, it replaces a kindle. It replaces a dvd player. But really, it boils down to one thing that sets this device above the rest. It uses iPhone OS. That means:

“There’s an app for that.”

Enough said.

Where do I pre-order?