“There are still many people, perhaps even the majority who still behave in traditional ways.” Um, it’s definitely the majority. IoF was full of i-phone toting outliers who are convinced the i-phone changes all our lives forever. No, it’s changed *their* lives forever. We need to consider the 99% of people who don’t have an i-phone or an i-pad. Yes, they really exist!

And the other one is that all those people who you support because they’re doing events, are doing them for charities. Someone has to support something somewhere. A significant minority will want to change the world without an organisation getting in the way, just as some people cut out supermarkets by growing their own veg and baking their own bread. But not the majority, and not for a few years yet. That’s my guess.

The underlying desire here is that we want to have all that’s great about computers and the internet with us at all times – while travelling, while socialising, while sitting in front of the TV, or anywhere else we are away from a desktop computer but would hesitate to lug a laptop with us.

The result of this desire is that the two devices closest to it have evolved to meet that desire – laptops evolving into netbooks, mobiles evolving into smartphones (and the iPhone in particular).

The pad/slate form factor seems designed to jump straight to the point both of these trajectories are trying to get to, without any of the hangups of the previous architecture – keyboards on netbooks, the tiny screen on mobiles.

The strangest part is that this form factor might actually be most useful to a traditionally late-adopting audience, but they tend to only try something once the early adopters have forged the path. Can a device for later adopters ever succeed if early adopters don’t like it? The Apple catnip is actually a very plausible way to cross that obstacle.

The key thing to watch will be the ‘second generation’ purchasers – the people that buy an iPad after being shown one by an early adopter. Who are they and what will they do with it? I think that is what will determine if this is a viable form factor.

I’d also prefer there were dozens of competing devices on more open standards that did an equally good job of thinking about user experience as Apple has with this device.

I also do believe that the medium is vital. Marshall McLuhan would probably agree too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan) – the message is the medium and all that. I wouldn’t go quite so far. But a harmonious marriage of message and medium is IMHO the most compelling experience – it’s why moleskin notebooks are so popular for example.