This weekend’s launch of Apple’s iPad in the US – with an international debut expected later in the month – will be a polarising moment. The television news will linger on the queues outside Apple stores, and fans will be seen drooling over these latest shiny objects of techno-lust. Doubters, meanwhile, will point out that general purpose tablet-style computers such as this have always bombed before – and if the touch-screen interface is so revolutionary, why is Apple going to sell an old-fashioned keyboard to plug into it?

To focus on issues such as these, though, would be to miss the point. This launch is about much more than just another piece of personal technology hardware, no matter how desirable. For the iPad is an extension of the most significant new development in computing since the birth of the personal computer. If it takes off, it would seal Apple’s rebound to the very top of the heap in the computing world. Starting with the iPhone in 2007 and followed by the iPod touch the same year, Apple has been changing the way people relate to intelligent portable devices. Touch has become the interface and connected “app stores” the new place to find services and content.

Between them, the iPhone and the touch already represent the fastest-growing new computing platform in history, according to Mary Meeker, internet analyst with Morgan Stanley. With the iPad, Apple is now staking out a big piece of extra territory for this platform. General purpose, tablet-style devices have proved a graveyard for technology companies before. But with a model honed on the iPhone, Apple starts with a better chance than others. And even if initial sales are disappointing – as they were for the iPod and iPhone – Apple has at least outlined the shape of a big new potential market for the army of software developers who have hitched their fortunes to its technology.

The iPhone/ iPod touch/ iPad platform is defined by a number of ingredients. Mark Rolston, chief creative officer of Frog Design, a design company with a heavy emphasis on technology products, calls this “casual computing” – a more personal and intuitive way to interact with intelligent devices, and the information and services they make available. Touch, the most obvious aspect of this new paradigm, is more than just an easy and direct way to issue commands. It also brings tactile pleasure: stroking the device to elicit the desired result is an important part of the experience.

Another aspect is the ease with which it fits into the flow of daily life. There is no need to boot it up, or even to flip up a lid: just look at the screen and tap a couple of times. The iPad may not have the same extreme portability as the iPhone, but it shares the same heritage.

A third important element of this new platform is its end-to-end nature. It draws information from closely connected services over the internet, turning a simple gadget into the delivery mechanism for a carefully designed experience. The venerable combination of iPod and iTunes, now seven years old, supplied the blueprint, but the iPhone and App Store and – this weekend – the iPad and iBook Store have extended the idea.

These characteristics are not unique to Apple. Others have been racing to copy it. Amazon, with its Kindle and connected book store, applied some of these lessons to the book world even before Apple. Google, with its heavy investment in online services, poses a particular challenge. It has already demonstrated internet-powered capabilities on Android, its own mobile software platform, that should make Apple blanch: an image recognition service, for example, that identifies a picture of any landmark taken on a handset, or an instant voice translation capability. The Google juggernaut is gathering momentum. It is preparing to launch a second software platform, called Chrome OS, later this year, with the aim of creating a more streamlined way of delivering internet-based services. It took less than a year and a half from the launch of the iPhone for the first smartphone built on Google’s software. A rival to the iPad may take half that.

With its mastery of creating end-to-end experiences, however, as well as the big early lead chalked up by the iPhone, Apple is still the company to beat. It is tempting to trace advances in technology by the higher speed, lower price or greater convenience they bring. But the real power of a new platform lies in the new forms of behaviour it makes possible, most of which cannot be anticipated.

John Seely Brown, a former head of the Xerox research labs that gave birth to much of the underlying technology of personal computing, credits Apple’s platform with changing everyday life in unexpected ways. He calls the iPhone, for example, a “curiosity amplifier” – any dinner-party conversation is liable to lead to someone pulling out their iPhone to resolve a dispute or check a fact, changing the direction of the discussion. The full impact of a technology that fits into everyday life like this has yet to be understood, he says.

It is not immediately clear how the iPad will fit this picture. It comes, at launch, dressed mainly as a media consumption device – a better place than the iPhone to read books, watch video, or flick through new electronic versions of magazines that offer video as well as text and pictures. But, as with the iPhone, the real story will lie in how it is taken up and used – and how quickly other application developers find ways to exploit its unique characteristics to create new experiences. There are certainly reasons for doubt. The larger screen may make it less portable than a smartphone, its lack of a built-in keyboard less useful as an input device than a PC or Mac. But the iPad’s 9.7 inch, high-resolution screen is about to become the virgin territory on which the computer industry’s next dreams will be sketched.

Source:-http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ddcc2c04-3cfd-11df-bbcf-00144feabdc0.html