WordPress worked up an app ready for Day One that taps the internal keyboard

Of all of the surprises in the first two days of using an iPad, the biggest one may be the easiest to put my finger on. The keyboard built into this tool is good enough for a first draft at touch typing speeds. That Apple would have been able to concoct such a thing, when others have failed at including such a fundamental, says a lot about the creative utility of this device.

The paragraph above would have taken so much longer to draft on an iPhone, and would have been torture on a OLPC portable computer. I compare the iPad to the OLPC because the latter’s designers believed children would create music, stories, art, even programs with it. Apple hasn’t mounted a big push yet for creating via the iPad. It’s positioned this year as a tool to consume. But give the market six months to fire up the tools and attachments like mics, cameras, input devices and more extensive editing, and this might become the most mobile of workbenches.

The debate around the iPad has included questions about what it might kill, or just replace. These are the wrong questions, but it’s no surprise to hear them. Very new things rattle most of us. We need to find a place for them and so we compare. Like a Kindle? Not exactly, but you can read business books on it. Like a laptop, then. Not so much either, since local file storage and attached things like disks aren’t there yet. Like a netbook, maybe? The iPad might look the same size, but it won’t run several programs at once. Its Safari browser won’t even let you keep multiple pages open using tabs.

All such features that prove to be important to new users will surface. And some tools for existing Macs are already on hand to help. The Bluetooth keyboards and headsets, and a Mac app called PhoneView, are examples of how the demand will create tools for creation. Read the rest of this entry »