I don't think there is anyone who hasn't heard something about the iPad this week. Whether it was heard from the many technology writers who have bashed it for the things it lacks, to mainstream media, to an endless stream of love and hate on Twitter. I'm not quite sure why there has been so much pessimism focused on Apple's latest creation. I understand their competitors, Microsoft, Google (yes, they are a competitor now), Nokia, and even Nintendo, putting on an unimpressed face. They have to. You can bet they are all working on some way to copy it though.

To be fair, Apple isn't the first company to have a touch-based computer/tablet. Many PC companies have tried... and failed. Apple seems to be the only one to understand that you have to have all the pieces of the puzzle to make a picture that works in the end. You can't just bolt on a touch interface over an operating system or applications and call it a day. Apple has taken the time to rewrite not only non-touch enabled apps (iWork) but also apps that already are - all the Apple provided apps that are on the iPhone - to make them work better and more intuitively for the device it is running on.

Apple is the first company though, and I think the only company that could have done it first, to create the hardware, write the software that takes advantage of the hardware, build in an existing infrastructure for users and developers to create and purchase applications, extend their already market leading media store, and roll out a brand new store to take on a smaller yet fairly entrenched enemy on a whole other front.

What most of the iPad detractors seem to have underestimated, at least the ones I've heard, is the ingenious developer community that Apple has already attracted with the iPhone, and will surely grow with the iPad. What makes the iPhone a device that most of us can't live without these days and have a hard time remembering what life was like without one, is the applications. Not the ones written by Apple, but the ones written by both large and independent software developers. Their imagination and creativity is now free of a a small window with which to work. Most people see the iPad as a large iPod Touch. The smart developers know that it is so much more than that. Things that they could not do on an iPhone screen they can now do. I expect to see the iPad used in revolutionary ways because of this software.

For sure, as the iPad matures, it will gain some of the features that are missing today that the detractors have called out - multitasking, a camera (or two), and HD video output are the ones that immediately come to my mind. What is important is that the overall tool for change is there now. The tool that could change the way kids learn and how schools could work more efficiently, the tool that could change the way we consume all forms of media and news, the tool that could put technology in the hands of people that were intimidated by regular computers, and the tool that could change how jobs in so many different sectors are performed, will be available in 2 or 3 short months.

The iPad is a tool like a hammer. A lot of people are seeing it only as a hammer, complaining about the color of it, what it is made out of, the shape of it's head, and the fact that there are other things out there that can do the same job as it can, as well as many other jobs. I see it as a tool that can build marvelous structures and tear down walls. In the hands of the right people, they will create wonderful things that we will all benefit from.