It’s a beloved bromide that you shouldn’t buy a 1.0 version of anything computing-related. Some say that you’re only helping the manufacturer iron out the bugs in such an early version of a product. Apple has fired a warning shot across the bow of us eager sailors, cresting into the uncharted iPad waters. If your iPad develops a charging problem, the vendor advises, it will only be $99 to replace the battery. Yeah, an extra $99, plus tax and the pain of parting with your new tool. Apple will give you a refurbished model as a replacement, so you need to have dumped your data into your Mac before the pokey iPad goes into the post.

Us early adopters take such arrows in the back as an expected part of being the first on our block. Apple enjoyed a healthy 1.0 release of the iPod (I owned mine within the first month in 2001), while the iPhone was much better on second and third releases than the $599 rollout model. (We added ours last year, about two years after the intro.) But we invested in the 1.0 iPad because it might move the needle a lot for quick computing, the kind that a small business needs to keep up with a jammed to-do list. That’s an experience we want to share first-hand, instead of repeat from others.

One of our allies, Bruce Hobbs of Engineered Software, is developing iPad applications after decades serving the HP enterprise business community. Hobbs is enlisting other software writers with experience in COBOL, a bedrock business language, to create something new for the iPad.

I’ve been reading books about and working through tutorials on Objective-C, Xcode, Interface Builder and iPhone and Mac OS X development. Michael Watson and I took a two-day iPhone development course back in November. I’ve also been attempting, with limited success, to lure a couple of other HP 3000 COBOL developers into a joint effort. Not sure yet exactly what we’ll put together, but I’m still hoping to have something in the App Store before Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

There are a generation of good developers out there who have 30 years of business program creation in hand, talking to users and creating software that helps businesses small and large and in-between. Hobbs has been working in the HP 3000 heartland for decades, a place where both 10-person companies and Fortune 500s use that enterprise-grade computer.

It is probably too early for the average business to expect much from the 2010 iPad except a new user experience and advanced mobile computing productivity. The hardware will have its flaws, bad builds and disappointment. The software will probably only start to mature this fall, after Apple has released the 4.0 version of the iPad’s operating environment. (It ships with 3.2 early next month.) But developers like Hobbs and his colleagues, whether beyond age 50 or not yet 30, are excited about the prospects over the long term.

Hobbs pointed out an inspiring and pragmatic post from another iPad developer about the device’s potential. We like these lines best from Andy Hunt, who bills himself as Pragmatic Programmer:

We’re looking at the beginning of the true direct-manipulation interface.  No more wiggling a spatially disconnected mouse or scribbling on an eternally blank tablet with no feedback.  I think the effect of such an immediate, in-your-face interface will be pervasive and long lasting, in ways that we’re only just beginning to imagine.

It’s an exciting time to be using Apple products for business, as well as being in the business of testing, analyzing and reporting on Apple’s products. You will see the news, good and otherwise, up here once the FedEx fellow drops off that box next month.

Hobbs is also soliciting ideas for business apps for the iPad. Well, apps of any kind, but there’s nothing like asking a business veteran for a tool to make work a little easier.