With the iPad launching tomorrow I thought it appropriate to finally get my thoughts down on the device and it’s relation to gaming & MuseGames.com. I’m a lifelong Apple user (started by my father) and have always watched the growing popularity of their products with a keen interest. I can’t say I predicted the swirling shitstorm created by the web’s top notch rumor mill, but there’s is no question the products themselves have a near mystical quality. Their hard won design speaks to the user is such a subtle, intimate way, it’s like an implant – creeping into your daily life, quietly, assuredly, until it’s part of you.

The iPad’s value, large iPod and all, was apparent from the beginning. As technorati, this is a product to which we are not intended to relate. Sure it’s a fun toy to us, but it certainly couldn’t be taken seriously by a demographic that survives on what it creates using a computer. The iPad (god that is still a terrible name) is a consumption device. A laptop and a desktop are a consumption AND creation device.

Think of it this way – you know those giant button calculators? The ones made for old people and children? That’s what the iPad is. Can you imagine, after spending years slagging through endless windows dialog boxes; driver installations; excel documents; text formatting and the countless other exhaustingly unintuitive parts of using a computer, what an epiphanal breath of fresh air an iPad would be?
Could you imagine how pleased your 60 year old mother would be to finally have a device she could “just touch?,” that would “just work,” and would hold her hand through even the simplest of behaviors? We forget, being the cutting edge, that the user adoption curve is a bell, and our user group is merely the short tail to the right. There’s an entire generation of baby boomers and older, not to mention the rest of the world’s possibly even less computer-savvy groups that this device is perfect for. Forget the details for a second – people get used to things like typing on a keyboard (even if its going to be the biggest bitch of owning one) – the advantages for your 60 year old mother far outweigh those hiccups. What does she want to do after all, mock up and code a website or show her friends photos of her granddaughter on a big glossy screen they can pass around?

This is Steve’s netbook, except it doesn’t suck. Stack a cramped keyboard, windows OS, an annoying nipple-like mouse nub, and a dim little screen against the shiny brilliance of an iPad, price them the same, and I’d bet my Apple stock a baby boomer would pick an iPad over and over.

For part 2 on the iPad and gaming, click here.