The iPad is Apple’s reconceptualization of what a computer is to a regular person.

Therein lies the challenge of todays event, and one of Apples two biggest failing with the iPad launch. First off, in the iPad, I feel even more strongly than I did Monday that what Apple has on its hands the 2010 vision of the 1997 iMac, or the 1984 Macintosh. It is basically the computer most people should own. It’s Apple’s first computer in a long time targeted at regular people with average computing needs, and the price really drives that home.

But that was also the first hurdle they needed to get over that they didn’t. Today’s event was the first time in a long time that Apple has launched a product that not just not targeted at core Apple customers (the kind that watch these events), but actually the type of product that the core would be predisposed to both not understand and not like. If you work all day making videos, working as a photographer, making websites or designing products, the current interaction models for computers either works pretty well, or you’ve invested so much time in learning it, that it’s hard to see another vision of a computer. But for most people, the metaphors a lot of us take for granted are not just non-obvious, they’re downright confusing.

As I pointed out Monday, something as seemingly basic as the file system is a total mystery to most people. And forget keyboard commands. For the vast majority of computer users, keyboards are for typing and nothing else. In the iPad, Apple has a product that addresses the idea that in 2010 everyone has – or needs – a computer in their lives, but almost all of the interaction models we have are based 30-year-old concepts of keyboard and mouse as primary input devices. Why? Keyboards are, again, really about making words, and a mouse is a legacy pointing device that is mostly not ideal.

So, Apple has this device, this “new” computer.

This fresh way of seeing the world.

This third option.

And what do they do?

They spend the entire presentation NOT saying that.

This was, without a doubt, the single worst product drop I’ve ever seen from Apple.

I came into this morning so clear on what the iPad could be, and by the time the event was over, all I could think was “Jobs did everything he could to make this sound like a giant iPhone.” In my mind, what he needed to do was come out, explain the issues surrounding computers in 1984 and how the Macintosh overcame them. Talk about the issues facing computers in 1998 and how iMac overcame them. Talk about the issues facing computers in 2010, and then spend the rest of the presentation explaining how this is the new Mac, pounding the message: “if you need a computer for your LIFE, this is the one.” The price should have come much earlier, and should have been much more tied to the product’s reason d’etre. “Thinking about buying that shitty Acer laptop for $700, let me show you this Apple for $500.”

This needed to be an event about the concept of the iPad, not the specific features.

Maybe he’s been pitching to fanboys for too long, I don’t know, but this is most assuredly NOT a spec sheet device. From that point of view, it is basically an over sized iPhone. But in re-concpetualizing the computer, size matters. Simplicity matters. Access to both content and software, easily, matters. iPad is about the computer in your life, just like the Macintosh, just like the iMac, and I feel that Jobs totally failed to bring this concept home.

Literally nothing else mattered…

…and he missed.

He set out to reintroduce a product category – the computer designed for home life – and he failed to bring that single point home.

What makes this critical is that while you can rev the hardware and software feature set, as we saw with the iPhone, you can’t rev whether or not people believe in the idea. The brilliance of the iPhone introduction is that while people could and did rip on the initial features, or lack thereof, every single person knew exactly what the iPhone meant conceptually. That didn’t happen today, and I’m worried it may be fatal. If the average person – not the person who watched today’s event, but the person at whom this device is targeted – can’t understand why this for them, they’re probably not going to come back to it. At the very least, that is a profoundly more steep hill for Apple to climb than explaining or revving the object specifications.

The second huge flaw, and single point that broke my heart about the device itself, is that for everything I just stated above, Apple seems to also view this as an accessory. What this needed to be was a computer. A new, better, more relevant computer, but a computer. That Apple expects people to sync this to another computer is either profoundly short sighted, or just stupid. Neither of which feels like the Apple I know. By positioning the iPad as peripheral, Apple took what should have been a really cheap, amazing computer in a world of terrible cheap computers, and instead positioned it as a really expensive toy.

My mom, my dad, Megan’s mom and step-dad, they all want Apples, but always felt like they were too expensive. To be fair, you have to either buy into the Apple aesthetic or understand computers in a deeper than average way to justify a $999 13 inch MacBook in a world of $700 17 inch Toshiba’s. But with the iPad they have a chance to charge right into that space. It’s the exact same price point, with a totally different, and in my mind, clearly better experience. That concept has been severely damaged by leaving the Mac as the center of the Apple universe. Im guessing that you may not need to sync the iPad, but it says a lot about how Apple will position this and it feels like a terrible choice: it reduces the importance of the device, and again, muddles the ecosystem for the average person.

Anyway, it’s done with now and we’ll see how things shake out. I still love it, and I’ve talked to a number of people who are genuinely excited by it. At the same time, I can’t help but feel that today was a critical day for iPad, and what should have been easy, breakaway slam dunk, instead put up as many obstacles as it took down.

It’s not an answer to ultra-portibles or e-books or any of that. It’s an answer to what personal computing should be now.

In a lot of ways, the original Macintosh from 1984 is a better model for the type of paradigm shift I think the tablet will be. But in one critical way I think the iMac is still the logical successor: in 1984 you didn’t need a computer, by 1998, the computer was becoming inextricably tied to society. It wasn’t just something you had at work, or something you noodled on at home, it was becoming a critical part of peoples lives. The iMac, in my mind, represents a branch in the linage of computer evolution, a branch says not just that the notion of computing at home is fundamentally different than computing for work, but that this home version needs a fundamentally different tool.

In 1998, issues of approachability, simplicity of setup, connection to the internet, and the role of the computer in daily life were all at the forefront. Apple solved each of these largely by taking things away from the product rather than adding more. The original iMac had a total of 5 pieces if you include the power cord and phone line, and was advertised as have “no step 3″ in the setup process. Accessibly to hardware, and compatibility to legacy systems were all shed in exchange for simplicity and stability. But the industrial design was maybe the most important aspect of the iMac. It’s design, both technically and aesthetically, worked to fulfill on the idea that a computer could and should be something you engaged with for fun, something that was part of your life; and that this paradigm would require a different set of features than a work computer. In this world, issues of simplicity, clarity, stability and approachability were more important than power, compatibility, or customizability. So much has already been written about the design of the iMac that it seems pointless to add any more, but the importance of the iMac being “friendly” and approachable can’t be overstated. Even that awful puck shaped mouse was important. The “toyness” of the whole package presented a computer that was non-threatening, non-technical, and didn’t need to be figured out, but rather, to be played with.

My feeling is that the tablet is the next evolution of this branch.

In spite of the groundwork laid by the original iMac, computers are one of the last places where we see little differentiation between products designed for professional work and those created for home life. When it comes to listening to music, no one would expect home audio equipment to be the same was what professional audio technicians use. While I can’t imagine a better camera than my DSLR, my mom would get nothing out of it. Her point and shoot if far easier for her to use, and because she can understand it, it makes better pictures for her than my camera ever would. In both cases, we happily exchange power and absolute quality for something we can understand and use easily. But when it comes to computers, even though my mom and I have radically different needs, hers is the same as mine.

Why?

My feeling is, when it comes to feature set for the tablet, what it wont have is as important as what it will have.

Things it wont have:
A built in keyboard.
A visible file system.
A way to add applications outside an app store.
A way to customize the interface.

Things I think it will have:
A dock allowing it to be stood up in either orientation
A USB port
A Mini-display port
A Webcam
Enough processing power to handle new versions of iPhone and iMovie

I agree entirely with John Gruber’s assessment of the tablet:

“And so in answer to my central question, regarding why buy The Tablet if you already have an iPhone and a MacBook, my best guess is that ultimately, The Tablet is something you’ll buy instead of a MacBook.

I say they’re swinging big — redefining the experience of personal computing.”

It’s the home audio system or the point and shoot camera of computers. This is the computer people will buy when they don’t want to buy a computer. In my mind, the tablet’s mantra is: simpler is better than faster, stability is more important than openness, accessibility is more important than compatibility.

And this is all true. For the vast majority of people, the ability to access their RAM is of no consequence. Why does any one other than a programmer need access to the file system? Why does anybody at all need the convoluted system of keyboard shortcuts developed in Photoshop over the last 20 years? Those only exist to support the input systems that were available at the time. Even the concept of application versus website is becoming increasingly arbitrary. A recent conversation I saw on Twitter about whether or not people would pay for the service went on for about an hour before someone pointed out that most of the people in the conversation were working in applications they had paid for. The service and applications that support it had become completely synonymous to everyone.

We know that most people put all their files on their desktop because its the one file system metaphor they get. So much like the iPhone, the file system in the tablet will be gone from the users perspective. Photos and videos get stored in a “gallery” app, media is in “iTunes”, and anything else is accessible from the app that made it in the first place. Not that there will be a ton of documents to manage anyway outside photos and videos, and media. I think the tablet, like the iPhone and like the iMac will take a hard line on making things simple. It will not be a work machine of any sort. Sure, people will make spreadsheet editing apps, and apps to expose or create a file system, but that will be functionality you’ll have to explicitly add. Apple is going to take the stance, and correctly I think, that people who will be upset by the closed nature of the device, both physically and from a software point of view will buy a MacBook instead.

For all the complaints around the limitations, both functionally and technically, of the iPhone when it was launched, the fact remains that it continues to be the pinnacle of taking an incredible amount of functionality, and packaging it in a system that everyone from children to seniors can understand nearly instantly. It’s not the right device for everyone, but it is the right device for most people. And I suspect the tablet will be same thing. I’ll still need my MacBook, as will my designer and programmer friends. When people are at work, they’ll still need a specific type of tool. But for most people, most of the time, this small, closed, simple little device will be the computer they’ve been waiting for. This will be the beginning of the end for everyone having essentially the same computer at work as they do at home, and in less than 10 years, probably less than 5, it will seem stupid that for 30 years people had to use the computing equivalent of a hollywood movie camera when all they wanted to do was make home movies.