If only the new iPad could be so lucky to be so well protected. We’ve been using the tablet since its release, but nary an update is to be downloaded to advance the device’s security.

The 10.6.4 version of Snow Leopard, which is a 17-minute download on a middle-fast DSL line, introduces new protection to prevent back door attacks on Macs through the iPhoto software that ships with every system. A new feature called XProtect gets an update that keeps hackers from installing malware by fooling users into thinking iPhoto is at work, when damage is being done.

An update of a Mac’s operating system for security reasons — that’s a good idea. But Apple doesn’t have a practice of identifying security holes they patch with a new release. And sometimes a new OS version will make software stop running on a Mac. This is why backups are a vital complement to any security updating.Apple has brought out four updates to the Snow Leopard version of its OS now, updates that cover just a nine-month period. Not every one had a security benefit. But the state of security is so tenuous now that your Adobe PDF software, browser, and OS should be considered at risk if you haven’t seen an update in 90 days.

Browsers and Adobe software are the chief targets for hackers, since they cover so many more victims than just Apple’s products. More than 360 million people are using Firefox as a browser, for example, on both PCs and Macs. Adobe’s Flash and Acrobat readers run on hundreds of millions of systems. Adobe just introduced a 9.3.3 version of Acrobat to improve security.

As diligent as Apple and Adobe might be (some say Apple’s sluggish at best about security plugs), the vendors can’t do a thing to help secure your business if you don’t install updates. The rule of thumb was once “don’t install if you don’t need” an update. But security issues are much more serious by now. You can balance the time spent downloading and upgrading, the checks of your applications afterward, against the dangers of running an unprotected system.

About 30 minutes of downloading and watching mysterious messages — things like “optimizing” or “unpacking packages” or “moving items into place” or “registering components” — plus a reboot, and my iMac was running 10.6.4. I did the usual first step after an upgrade — started all the apps that matter to my workplace.

The Apple apps don’t need checking — Apple’s done that in its own labs. But the likes of Adobe CS apps, QuickBooks 2010, Microsoft Office apps and even reliables like Eudora, an antique mail program. 10.6.4 updates Apple’s Mail, as it turns out — so my add on Mail Tags software needs to be updated.

Mail checks get easier

Apple’s Steve Jobs waltzed around onstage for more than 90 minutes this morning, much of it showing off the soon-to-be-shipping iPhone 4 at the Apple WorldWide Developers’ Conference. While the new phone is 24 percent thinner than the current iPhones, the most impressive business feature comes from the new iPhone OS. Apple has renamed this operating environment iOS, because it runs the iPods, iPads, and the phone.

iOS 4 makes a distinct difference to Apple’s Mail program on the iPhone and the iPad and Touch iPod. Instead of breaking down your mail checking into multiple tries, Mail now consolidates your different accounts into a single “All Inboxes” menu item.

The current state of affairs is frustrating if you use more than one mail account, which is the case for so many small businesspeople. Your personal email goes to a separate account — or at least a separate email address. The new iOS 4 understands that you’ve got multiple personalities for mail.

The iOS 4 will be available to the iPhone and iPod Touch users later this month. The new environment brings things like a $4.99 iMovie, a choice of search engines including Microsoft’s Bing (take that, Google) and a PDF viewer that’s going to make long documents easier to read on Apple’s mobile devices. The Reader will be worked right into the iBooks application.

Oh yeah, and there’s that multitasking thing in the new iOS4, too. Palm hammered Apple on it all of last year until the Palmsters had to sell themselves off to HP. It was not a big enough deal to save the Pre, but Apple’s got the feature now. It’s probably best used with the newest Apple mobile devices, though — for reasons below.

Using iOS 4, there are now folders to organize that mess of apps so many of us have on our Apple mobile devices. But perhaps the best news of all for business phone users involves battery life. The new Apple chip just made things last a lot longer.

The Apple A4 processor made its debut on the iPad this spring, and for us it’s made battery management while surfing the Web a non-issue. Of course Apple’s made the A4 a crucial part of the new iPhone 4. Jobs claims 7 hours of talk time (3G), 6 hours of Web surfing (3G.) And 300 hours of standby.

The multitasking becomes possible because of A4 — which is not inside your 3GS phone, or the 3G, or the Touch. The new iPad’s got the A4, though, and multitasking is headed there, too.

Apple is hitting the Android/Google competition in the most vulnerable spot. Android phones roll kill off their batteries in under a day’s Web use. The ability to take a phone on sales and client calls, use it without regard for performance, and return to base at day’s end without a recharge required in an automobile charger — well, it’s going to take a specialized chip in Android phones to match that. Even with the latest Froyo version of Android’s OS.

FaceTime between Steve and Jony

There’s a front-facing video camera for conferencing over 3G on the new phone, FaceTime video calling. The app only works over WiFi connects for now, something of a black eye for ATT and its 3G network. It works with both front-facing and forward-facing cameras; you can see an Apple demo of it around the 45-second mark of this video on YouTube.

FaceTime was the “one more thing” that has become a trademark of a Jobs keynote. It’s the most forward-leaping feature of the new iOS 4, but it was demonstrated calling top Apple designer Jonathan Ives, as well as a video between family members. Not strictly a business feature, but expect it to be used for more business two-person meetings and face-time. Thus the name, of course. FaceTime requires the new iPhone 4.

The iOS 4 becomes available June 21, and it’s a free upgrade to users of the iPhone all but the oldest iPod Touch devices. (No word on the iPad availability, but expect it to be simultaneous.) The iPhone 4 goes on sale June 24, and ATT will let anyone with a contract that expires during 2010 upgrade their phone.

And that 3GS, still the leading iPhone lineup until the 24th? Starting that day, the device introduced just last year sells for $99 — and you don’t have to buy it at WalMart to get that price.

A slide-by-slide summary of the Jobs keynote at the conference is online at Engadget’s website. CNET has a darn good summary with pictures, too.

That includes the iPad as well as the iPod Touch. Take Control Books, edited by Mac veteran Adam Engst, has a new PDF book title out to maximize your use of Mail while mobile. Take Control of Mail on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. Written and edited by Joe Kissell and Dan Frakes, the 96-page book promises to make Mail more useful on these devices.

This new ebook takes a practical look at using the Mail app on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. It explains various email account options, helps you develop a real-world mobile email strategy that integrates with your Mac, explains the mechanics of sending and receiving mobile email, and provides essential troubleshooting advice.

Mail is one of the most useful things on the iPad, in part because you can create something in it — an aspect of the iPad that’s still gaining credibility. Even over a WiFi link, it’s become a ready tool in my business belt. Take Control has other Mail training aids as well, if your exposure to Mail is limited to your desktop.

We just got a free update to the Take Control of Apple Mail in Snow Leopard ebook, which covers plenty of nuances but is written for the first-time user of Mail. That’s been me, until recently, because I’m making a transition away from Eudora. (Odd behavior in Eudora under Snow Leopard. Beware.)

Engst’s group even has a special anti-spam edition of a book for Mail. These three titles are available in various bundles at a 30 percent discount. You can even download them for reading (using the EPUB versions) on your iPad.

That doesn’t mean the product isn’t worth the $4.99 it costs at the App Store. Bento arrived with a one-page home screen meant to serve as a manual, a handful of database templates (these are called Libraries in Bento) and three skins to style my creations.

But say, for example, you wanted to assign several attributes to an item in an inventory. iPad Bento doesn’t get the idea of multiple tick boxes for one record. It want you to create a field for every attribute like overseas item, tax free, custom sized and the like.

As a database Bento has gotten so minimalistic in its mobile versions that it seems suited only for a very personal information manager. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s good to know going on how much you can fit into this Bento’s box.

What works in Apple’s favor it that the iPhone has plenty of competition, but no direct knock-offs. It’s the Apple product most likely to introduce the company’s computer solutions to a first-time customer. The second most likely product? The Mac itself. Apple said about 300,000 Macs sold at the Apple retail stores during Q2 went to customers who had never owned a Mac before.

Apple cites a “stronger product mix” including more iPhone sales while explaining how it beat analyst estimates by more than 2 percent for margins. Then there’s the $47 billion in cash the company reported for the period ending March 31: A lot of clams to toss at whatever research and development opportunities emerge.

Apple pointed at its “first mover” opportunity with the iPad as one place where it intends to exploit its advantages with fresh investment. Apple expects to release iPad units in 9 overseas countries by the end of May and ship the 3G versions by the first week of May.

One analyst said the iPad has a chance to become “the Mac of the masses.” In the 1980s Apple called the Mac “the computer for the rest of us.” Many analyst questions during the Q2 conference Q&A covered the iPad. As of this week, one tracking site estimates more than 1 million iPads in use: An introductory rate that outstrips the adoption of the iPhone in its first quarter of sales. Perhaps what the iPhone has done for Apple is a sign of what the iPad might add in several years.

Complete instruction and training, but O'Reilly offers a better deal

An iPhone problem led me into my library of O’Reilly Missing Manuals, an ever-growing sheaf of pages that’s approaching one full foot of dandy advice and training. A Missing Manual for Apple products is often likely to have the crack advice of David Pogue among its authors, making them a pleasure to read and a complete resource. (Pogue created the Missing Manual series.)

But a Missing Manual book is also bound up by the Curse of the Index. Nobody can reference every entry for every word in a book made of paper. The index would run longer than the content. You can spend awhile searching a handful of entries in a paper book, and even if the advice is inside, locating it among 600-odd pages takes time. You might be at deadline on a project and wish there was a faster method to solving a problem — so you can avoid the line at the Apple Genius Bar at the retail stores (if that’s even an option.)

O’Reilly’s got a shortcut for your fixit dilemma. Today the solution is e-books, editions of these Manuals you download and read on a Mac, an iPhone, a Kindle or yes, even the new iPad. Today, all e-book purchases are half-off, in celebration of Earth Day.

I already had the iPhone Missing Manual in my library last weekend, when my iPhone refused to sync up and cough up its photos. I wanted to push a new album onto the phone to show some images to a client. The new iPad was in use elsewhere at Bites HQ. The solution to the iPhone problem was inside the Missing Manual. I might have found it faster if I owned an e-book version instead.

The knock on e-books, if there is one, is that an online manual makes it less easy to browse. That used to be true before readers like the Kindle or the iPad. By now it’s just a memory, so long as the publisher can give you the e-book format you need.

O’Reilly is thorough about this selection. You purchase an e-book and get download rights to the .mobi, PDF, Android and ePub versions of your book. Two of these can be viewed on an iPad, and the PDF is viewable anywhere.

My problem needed an iPhone “restore to factory settings” solution. I take a deep breath when I do something like reset any device. You worry about losing your contacts for the iPhone, or apps you may have purchased, even things like the Marketplace podcasts or my favorite, On the Media. Nobody wants to reorder or reload such stuff.

Guess what word does not appear in the iPhone Missing Manual index? Yes, it’s “restore.” You can track it down under “resetting,” which leads you to saying aloud, “page 375″ while you turn to the page and start scanning it.

This whole process is so direct with an e-book. You type “restore” in the e-book viewer of your choice — Preview or Adobe Reader on the Mac, iBooks on the iPad or the ultra-fine PDF Reader Pro ($3.99), or GoodReader on the iPhone (99 cents) — and all those references pop up.

So I learned that a restore is not as scary as it might seem, because even if your iPhone has been acting up awhile — and backing up troubled files — you can go to the location of your last good backup and replace it with what iTunes offers you as a backup.

(If you’re wondering, those backups live in the user/library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup folder. So you just go to your daily or weekly backups from Time Machine, because you back up every day, and swap in a clean backup. Before you restore.)

Although I love paper and the browsing of it, I find it harder than ever to justify a purchase of a training book (that’s what I call manuals) that takes up space on my sagging shelves or cherrywood desk. Pogue’s iPhone book is a great resource, complete and written so even a beginner to the Apple product can extend the phone’s use as a mobile computer.

This third edition is the latest, having been printed right as Apple brought out the 3GS phones last summer. Until the rumored 4G phones emerge this year, it’s the best you can buy for a complete lesson on the iPhone’s power.

I just don’t know if I need to make any more space for the paper here at HQ anymore. At least not if the publisher keeps offering e-books at discounts. O’Reilly even has a print+e-book offer at its own store. And the e-book versions are not sold at Amazon.

Today I bought a CSS Missing Manual (for WordPress blog designs) and the Photoshop CS4 Missing Manual, both as e-books. Total cost under $34. They’d be twice that as paper books. Get your discount before tonight and help out the Earth and reduce your recycling load.

The latest rattling of cyber sabers comes from Apple and Adobe, with Apple’s insistence that Adobe Flash be banished from Jobs’ walled garden of iEverything.  Certain slurs have been sounded, including an odd instance by Jobs proclaiming that Adobe Flash was bug ridden. (Jobs is obviously not a Windows user, for he does not know the true meaning of “buggy.”)

Such bogus blusters are convenient covers for real issues. Flash currently commands a huge share of the Rich Internet Application market by virtual of antediluvian virtualization.  Long ago, Flash did what people wanted, which was to add value to surfing the Web while eliminating cross platform/browser/religious sectarianism.  Want to watch videos of cute kittens or suicidal teenagers on motorcycles, or listen to the latest excuse for music coming out of Nashville on the Web, regardless of  whether you are on a PC, Mac, Linux, minis, odd ducks, occasional mainframes, virtual desktops or smart phone?  Adobe Flash made it happen by bundling [the player] for free into everything. Except iPhones and iPads.

[To be accurate, Flash is only bundled long enough to force you to update it via download, to combat the latest malware and virus attacks. Much of the bundled Flash is already out of date by the time a new Windows or Mac system boots up. But Guy continues on eliminating Flash from Apple's most mobile devices.]

Therein lay Apple’s finest error (aside from the Newton).  As any performer will attest, you give the audience what they want. Putting Snoop Dogg on stage at a cotillion is an error.  So is creating an information/media device that does not deliver information/media.  Since so much of the world’s content is and will for the foreseeable future remain in Flash, and since Adobe is not sitting still in extending Flash for ever better uses, banning it from hardware is inane.  It goes directly against what the audience (market) wants and thus gives them the motivation to consider alternate venues.

First, the Apple devices deliver information and media. Plenty, just not that written to run on Flash Player. To the resulting consideration of alternate venues, I say, “So what? Assume that happens — then what?” So then I’m buying an HP Slate to run Flash? “So much of the world’s content is and will for the foreseeable future remain in Flash,” that’s a real longshot. The key to track the Flash future is the phrase from above, “Long ago, Flash did what people wanted.” Long ago, people watched cable TV for the latest news, too. And Seinfeld. And modems that winked up when you got connected to the Internet.

I disagree with Guy about the iPad’s need for Flash, in part because between the two of us only I own an iPad, and so and have the same 10 days of experience as every other owner. (Perhaps not exactly the same experience; I didn’t buy the $49.95 OmniGraffle app for it [think Windows' Visio planning]. On the other hand, I wrote most of my reply to Guy off an Apple Keyboard Dock, and plenty of people are still waiting for that marvel.) I haven’t missed Flash more than a handful of times out of hundreds of media and content deliveries.

I told Guy he simply needed to see the iPad in action to observe how a Flash-less experience means less than you’d think to business content today — and perhaps little to nothing once content providers adapt to millions of iPads joining the 85 million iPhones and iPod Touches out there. The only difference is that Apple has decided to make a stand against Flash now, after selling 85 million devices that don’t use it.

I have never been a fan of Flash, although I’ve employed it. Many times I’ve met Web designers, clever software developers, or business owners, all of whom were in love with the ox cart that is Flash. You can browse to Nike, big companies, TV networks. Every time I ran one of these apps within a Web site I remembered the advice from a Web site pioneer from the mid-90s, Bob Green of Robelle. As one of the first software companies to offer a Web gateway to his company, Green gave me advice about the design of the 3000 NewsWire, our first Web site and blog: keep it simple; think about the reader who doesn’t have a fast pipe or a fast machine; or does not run a well-ordered system, immune to breakdown.

In other words, try to need as little flash (little F) as possible to spread your content. We’ve toyed with Big F Flash while trying to embed video into the NewsWire’s TypePad blog posts, and it works to the same degree as designing for Explorer: unexpected, corner-case results abound. Web designers I know and have employed get all Yosemite Sam in the face when I ask why our site’s Explorer’s pages look so different, and what could I do about that.

The App Store as Apple’s walled garden is a good metaphor I have seen in many places. Writing in the New York Times tech section over the weekend, Steven Johnson makes a case that given the right conditions, an Apple-controlled store goes from garden to rich rainforest.

The App Store must rank among the most carefully policed software platforms in history. Most of the development tools are created inside Apple, in conditions of C.I.A.-level secrecy. Next to the iPhone platform, Microsoft’s Windows platform looks like a Berkeley commune from the late 60s.

And yet, by just about any measure, the iPhone software platform has been, out of the gate, the most innovative in the history of computing. More than 150,000 applications have been created for it in less than two years, transforming the iPhone into an e-book reader, a flight control deck, a musical instrument, a physician’s companion, a dictation device and countless other things that were impossible just 24 months ago. Perhaps more impressively, the iPhone has been a boon for small developers. As of now, more than half the top-grossing iPad apps were created by small shops.

Those of us who have championed open platforms cannot ignore these facts. It’s conceivable that, had Apple loosened the restrictions surrounding the App Store, the iPhone ecosystem would have been even more innovative, even more democratic. But I suspect that this view is too simplistic. The more complicated reality is that the closed architecture of the iPhone platform has contributed to its generativity in important ways.

The decision to route all purchases through a single payment mechanism makes great sense for Apple, which takes 30 percent of all sales, but it has also helped nurture the ecosystem by making it easier for consumers to buy small apps impulsively with one-click ordering. People don’t want to thumb-type credit card information into their phones each time they download a game to distract the kids during a long drive in the car. One-click purchase also supports lightweight, inexpensive apps, the revenue from which can support small software teams.

The fact that the iPhone platform runs exclusively on Apple hardware helps developers innovate, because it means they have a finite number of hardware configurations to surmount. Developers building apps for, say, Windows Mobile have to create programs that work on hundreds of different devices, each with its own set of hardware features. But a developer who wants to build a game that uses an accelerometer for control, for example, knows that every iPhone OS device in the world contains an accelerometer.

Apple took a lot of heat waiting a year after the introduction of the first-generation iPhone to open the App Store. At the time, it contended that it wanted to ensure that the development tools it shipped met its standards. The success of the App Store suggests that this patience was well worth it.

I’ve lived in this Apple garden, but I’m not locked in. If Mac users want to run Flash applications, we just pick up our MacBooks. But there’s a torrent of testing and reporting out there that says Flash is a pig, backed up by a feeling on my thighs. I hold that MacBook on my lap and play Farmville — which you may know is the most widely-used Flash app in existence. 34 million people a day, and it’s all Flash. And before I can get my sunflowers all planted and my goats milked, my thighs are hot, because Flash has pegged the CPUs off the scale on the late-model MacBook.

What’s easy to forget is what wooly, overwritten lashed up life rafts the Adobe products have become, on balance. I have used them since 1987, starting with Illustrator. Rife with potential, essential to creation, and so very full of just-missed opportunities. On acquaintance  of mine is is now a VP of Quality Assurance over at Adobe, and I can’t help but wonder how he doesn’t go to bed planning to get up and suck on a gas pipe to avoid the stall-mucking he must oversee each day.

It goes too far to say that Flash is essential to good content on mobile devices. It’s just plain wrong to say, as Guy does, that Apple won’t entertain any content delivery it can’t tap for a few bucks. Netflix and Zinio are just two that come to mind. The former delivered 7 hours of Dexter episodes to my lap less than 24 hours after the iPad arrived. (And on a single charge, too, because Flash wasn’t involved.) Apple got nothing out of that 7 hours but the cost of the iPad. Zinio delivers 2,000 consumer magazine titles to computers, mobile and otherwise. Big publishers, too, like the ones that print Popular Science and Esquire and Oprah. My Popular Science magazine on the iPad via Zinio is fun and interactive and costs less than the paper issues that I have to throw away. And Apple gets nothing out of that reading, either, except the iPhone or iPad sale.

If Apple wants to kill Flash, the only thing it can do is to keep it off their most mobile devices. Adobe is going to continue to write it and sell it for every platform that it can, because Adobe follows the Intel and Microsoft mantra of “include everything for everybody.” Making choices about what to include reflects more mature insight than “support it all.” It’s almost old-guy thinking, really. People who code for a living, administer systems, review software, design their own Web sites — yeah, they’re appalled at the absence of Flash on the iPad, the draconian Apple rules now in place for writing Apps. Consumers don’t care, or if they do, they can buy an HP Slate. Meanwhile analysts are now dreaming of Apple shares hitting $300 (after 12 months of having increased their value 50 percent during one of the hardest years business has seen.)

I wrote most of a 2,000-word reply on a mobile computer I bought sight unseen. A first for me, in 30 years of buying them for business and pleasure. I have experienced the Apple QA first hand for a few decades while working, and I believed my experiences of Apple’s product build post-2001 would be extended. I don’t miss Flash, and I don’t see how keeping this pig out of a sleek taxi is going to do anything but prop up sales of MacBooks and make Adobe’s tech managers swear out loud on public blogs that embarrass the company. But there’s always the “we can sell you one cheaper” argument to hear from what’s sold outside of a rich garden.

Now Jobs and Company are worshiping at the same altar, and the heretics at Google and the old priests at Microsoft are ready to exorcize a snake from the garden.  Microsoft has a tablet in ready mode, and by stealing (again) some Apple innovations, will serve the market with something cheaper … and with Flash.

It’s always about cheaper, isn’t it? Until you buy a BMW or a Mossberg shotgun and discover that spending more, in the right places, feels so much better. For the Cheapers, they just shuttle from deal to deal and hope to get lucky. My brother is a Sprint customer who argued with me all last summer how hot the Palm Pre would be when he got one. Apple better watch out. But he wasn’t buying on Day One. He was waiting for the cheap deal that would give him a $99 handset when his contract turned over and he got his biannual replacement credit. He misjudged, like a lot of the cheapers, the effects of the garden’s walls. By the time he got his free Pre, Palm was so desperate it was selling the smartphones for $79 on Amazon, contract-free.

Or just go ask those people how it feels to adopt “better” technology that cannot get traction because it’s not popular. Having a tablet is the first step. Selling it as a profitable item that generates content revenue is a much bigger step. The HP Slate will take off and the Flash-lovers will buy it, maybe. Or maybe they’ll carry netbooks instead. What I can count upon is the Adobe “we’ll get to optimizing Flash performance soon” response is gonna have to become more of a promise and less of a tease.

Anybody who believes they can kill one product with another is a grandpa who’s staying up past their bedtime. Markets and consumers and financials kill products, for reasons that sometimes none of us can forsee.

The help-we-need-Flash argument overlooks HTML5, or the industry’s distaste for needing a vendor-controlled element like Flash to deliver content. Flash was running about 97 percent of online media services, last I checked. That number can only go down from there. Zinio’s CEO Jeannie Mullen told me that “we’re de-Flashifying as fast as we can,” and they rebuilt their Web site in a matter of months.

To be fair, Apple makes mistakes and stretches the truth, too. iPad 1.0 WiFi reception, and fooling people into thinking the Macs have no viruses, are examples of each. But Apple has always played to the congregation, because the IT experts and Windows promoters hated that little rebel outpost called Apple — how dare they step away from a Windows tune? Oh, that iTunes thing won’t amount to much, Napster is a better deal, too many people can make a bit of money on an MP3 music player, nobody can just jump into a phone market and succeed, yada, yada, yada.

It’s fun to be contrary, but the Apple monomanical drive is necessary to swim upstream, I believe. Il Duce made the trains run on time, and if Il Jobe makes Adobe’s Flash less hot on my thighs, I won’t care what else the war has to cripple. I’m a consumer of information like that.

So Guy and I will disagree on this: Sometimes you have to deny your market’s wishes. Not never, because your market sometimes wants exactly what will cripple you. They don’t care if you survive or thrive to think up something that somebody else will steal. There’s not much to steal from the iPad except for the idea that a better tablet will sell, given enough push from a company with $30 billion in cash. Apple is only keeping Flash content from its iPhone, Touch and iPad customers at the moment — and check back with us in one year to see how Hulu and the like are responding to 3 million new devices that can’t use Flash. The iPad is still a few years away from being a creation tool as competent as any laptop. But look who’s kicked open the door to the future again, eh? Who in Hoboken cared about tablets before January? If Mr. Black Turtleneck wants to war with Adobe over Flash, let the bodies fall. As a consumer I don’t want to support any software that looks like it’s built to make my hardware feel feeble, or my thighs feel hot today. A better Flash, plus a rich walled garden? I think I win on both fronts in this empire’s battle.

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.

Phoneview is a gem I discovered during a Macworld 2010 session. You install it on your Mac, then tell it to talk to iPhone devices that plug in to your laptop or desktop. Phoneview knew how to let me move files between iPhone and Mac, giving me storage access to the iPhone’s disk. When I plugged in my iPad yesterday, PhoneView popped up, ready to let me swap work to and from Apple’s newest device, too.

That’s a sign that the future for this device’s creative powers will arrive sooner than later. Phoneview worked straight-off because the iPad shares its software with the 40-million-strong iPhone/Touch world. Some companies are rewriting software this week for the iPad, having just gotten their hands on a real one instead of a simulator. But for other tools, the leap is effortless.

Bluetooth keyboards work today. Phoneview is waiting. Editing software for video and photos is going to be arriving very soon, because there are millions more pixels of screen real estate to use than on the iPhones. (And make no mistake, there are already a raft of media editors on hand for the iPhone.) Dragon Dictation lets me cut a first draft without even using a keyboard, just by reading in an idea and then pasting it to the clipboard. Dragon’s a free app, somehow — just like it is on the iPhone.

Will any of this emerge so fast to kill off the existing tech business tools? Not this year, not even next. Change from the foundations up happens slowly, because the older tech hangs on so much longer than some mavens expect. Kindle, a great resource for reading business texts, won’t be killed off by an Apple iBook store that looks overpriced and understocked today. Amazon has too large a lead in titles to be overtaken on e-books, and the book vendor has already embraced the iPad as a supplementary reading device, if you own a Kindle.

The death of laptops and netbooks is a ways off, too. But for the most innovative — and, this year, stubborn — creators of content, a 24-ounce device that cooks up writing and ads and flyers and even blog entries over WordPress, plus runs for a full business day and a half between charges, the point of replacement, when their laptop gets old is the inflection point. Maybe I can get an iPad instead, just try it out. If that point is after the end of this year, they’ll enjoy a rich shed of tools. In the meantime, this Little Keyboard That Could again proves that Apple’s minimum standards will press the limits of expected value.

Once the brown truck rumbled around the corner and the brown box was opened, the iPad demanded that it be linked up with iTunes. I’d read ahead enough to have the 9.1 version ready, and even downloaded and bought some iPad apps the night before. (Apple opened the App Store’s iPad wing on Friday. In anticipation of a first-day rush, I downloaded 27, including some fun as well as the requisite work tools.)

That meant that the bill for the download, including a $14.95 Major Legue Baseball app, was $40-plus including tax. One thing to understand about owning an iPad, or an iPhone: it’s a device that carries a cost of ownership bill, because you will want tools and toys to use on it. The App Store bill arrived this morning with a handy list of the initial apps. As you can see, much of the programs useful to small businesses to keep in touch are either free (news service feeds, social networking) or included.

But Pages and Numbers made their way into my budget, because Apple’s got $9.95 versions of the word processor and spreadsheet. More on those a bit later, but this note: the keyboard included in the multi-touch screen will be just fine for short drafts. Apple has moved up its promised date of delivery for the combo keyboard-dock I ordered March 12. Originally set for April 20, now it’s coming on April 8.

One surprise comes in seeing how smooth the device is: I’ve adopted a knees-bent posture on the sofa to type and enter long data. The third party market will do very well in selling cases for these. I’ll be reviewing some from ColaSac and UNIEA as soon as they get them into our hands.

Zinio will offer 2,000 issues for purchase (and another 400 back issues) through its free app, something the company designed as soon as Apple released the iPad’s software development kit. The company knew that a digital reader with full motion and interactive hooks would be a lure to readers who expect more from a publication than just words and static pictures. As of Thursday the company wasn’t sure if it would make the initial April 3 iPad app rollout lineup that Apple controls, but the CEO was certain that Zinio was going to deliver business magazines like Smart Money (from the Wall Street Journal) MacWorld, Kiplinger’s, US News & World Report — even Oprah, Yoga Journal and Esquire. All will enjoy the full-screen experience of the new Apple tablet, she said.

The Zinio catalog has been available for reading on iPhone as well as the Mac and PCs, but the Mac version runs on Adobe’s Air platform. Zinio has been working on removing such technology that doesn’t run on the iPad, substituting HTML5 and XML.

“We started to look for opportunities to optimize our iPhone app for the iPad, and have been feverishly de-Flashing our [magazine] files and our reader,” Mullen said. “We’ve been rebuilding our infrastructure to support the non-Flash environment.”

Small business owners won’t see many focused titles that have been optimized for the iPad’s features this weekend other than MacWorld. But Car and Driver, Dwell, National Geographic, Sporting News Daily, Spin and Zinio’s own Viv magazine are coming online first with video features and slide shows that take a reader beyond a magazine’s traditional graphics and text. It’s going to add a new dimension to showing off a publication’s article during a presentation. Publishers will have the chance to create animated, interactive graphics that might bridge the gap towards a need for skills in Keynote, Apple’s presentation app.

Any magazines you can buy from Zinio.com today and through the iPhone — all but Apple’s restricted adult content titles — can be bought and read on the iPad at launch, Mullen promised. A Zinio version of a magazine enjoys special navigation through a table of contents page. All Zinio titles can tie a reader closely to online content through active Web links. And the most amazing part of the Zinio offering? Apple hasn’t insisted on a way to collect any part of the subscription fees that Zinio’s publishers charge for issues or year-long subs.

As of late Friday before the iPad’s launch, the Zinio app for iPhone was the only download available from Apple’s App Store iPad section. But Mullen was confident that the company, which distributes some of the better-known titles in the magazine world, has permission to act as a newsstand. Zinio is already selling magazines through the iPhone, after all. By moving away from Flash, it’s shedding a light on new display technology. leading publishers away from Flash, admittedly hearing some grumbling, is going to be another force for change in the way graphic content — live and interactive — is presented. Flash is becoming a second option alongside the HTML 5 format that Apple wants to succeed.

“We redesigned the Zinio Web site for a shopping experience on the iPad,” she said. The magazine readers shop for titles outside of iTunes, and Zinio redesigned its readers for all magazines so it drops Flash. A good deal of the debate over the iPad’s chances to be an information hub surrounded the lack of Flash support. Zinio is following two paths: eliminating Flash and providing the publishers’ design teams with a Zinio software kit to create iPad-ready interactive content.

“It will help publishers understand exactly what they need to share with their media buyers, planners, ad agencies and their creative teams so they can start to design and include audio and video for a non-Flash environment.”

Magazine purchases through Zinio are handled via credit card in local currency. The company claims to have 80 percent of the consumer magazine titles available in its newsstand. Magazines are not mentioned in any of Apple’s iBook details, so perhaps Zinio will get the head start on selling some of the best-designed visuals and compelling writing available from traditional publishers. It also looks like those publishers will now have a guide to help them along the path to making research through a magazine an experience closer to TV, a movie or even a video game with interactivity. All this transfomation will take is a publisher’s touch, and the touch of hundreds of thousand of fingers.