iPad keynote is up (updated again)

The iPad Steve Jobs keynote speech is up.
(They keep calling them keynotes, even though there are no longer any convention for it to be a keynote for.)
(By the way, my first iPad post is bigger now.)

OK, I'll admit it, I'm sold on the iPad by now. I'm geek enough to like it, but not geek enough to hate its shortcomings too much. :-)
I never got myself an iPhone. I don't use phones much, and for most other uses, it's simply too small for me, it's no fun. I have an iPod Touch, but I barely use it.
But the iPad seems useful to me. For example, it seems to be what I wished for, for watching videos like this keynote. (What I do for now is use my Airbook with a Laidback stand.) And exactly the same goes for reading articles which are longer than a typical blog post. The office chair is not meant for relaxed reading/watching, it's meant for work.

There's also many kewl new apps which have only appeared because of the iPhone, such as certain painting apps, postcard apps, iTunes University, and so on. These will now be available on the iPad, and will surely soon optimized for its much larger and better interface also, but still with the appealing simplicity which was their raison d'etre in the first place.

Me, of course, I'll always need a device with a good keyboard too. But it just hits me:
most people don't write. Hardly even emails!
Okay, they fire off a two-line email to family twice a week and they answer work emails very briefly, but that's it, and a glass keyboard can do that. But they simply don't really need a keyboard that much, and that's probably over 90% of web users...
Also, most people don't touch-type when they write their occasional email, and if you're looking at the keyboard anyway, then the glass keyboard is much less of a disadvantage.
(I can also observe the fact that I sometimes get in contact with a person who tells me that they have been pleased visitors to the blog or to Domai for years... and yet they have never mailed me or even just put in a comment. I guess it simply is not something most people do.)

... The more I think about it, the more I think I could learn to love this kind of thing as my mobile device, only pulling out a bluetooth keyboard when I really need to type. For example, have the dock with the keyboard in my hotel room, and then take just the light and small device with me for lunch, for reading/viewing/browsing and checking if any important mails or work situations come in. Hmmmm, yeah...

Of course, I should remember that even with a keyboard and mouse, this thing is not a Mac, it does not have a windows interface, can't multitask, can't run my usual Mac apps, and so on. So if it's a working vacation, and I want to do more than pure writing or light photo editing, I'd probably like to have my MacBook Pro with me, upon reflection.
... Which makes it a little bit puzzling to me why they wanted the iPad to be able to run iWork. If you want to do desktop publishing work and such, would you not want to have an actual computer, at least a laptop?

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More observations: Joel Johnson. John Herrman.
And Stephen Fry. Who says:
There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: “Hold your judgment until you’ve spent five minutes with it”. No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects.

And of course Adolf weighs in.
And here's a thought about iPads and the older generations.

Update: the iPad has been underway since the nineties...

A hands-on article.