Glad to read this kind of analysis. I would add another type of customers interested in the Ipad: ourselves. Aunt Edna is definitely the first target, but let’s look at what we do as an heavy user.

I consider myself as a heavy user: I play games, do some editing (photos and videos) and at work, I have at least 10-15 docs open all the time (–> multi tasking). So you would think the Ipad is not for me.

However, I think it is. When I am at home, i realized that 80% of the time, what i do is “easy / light computer” as you say: browsing the web, going on facebook / twitter, listening to music, etc…

If apple can provide me a device that will improve my user experience 80% of my time, I will buy the Ipad. Of course, it won’t replace my main computer i use for heavy computing, but I will buy the Ipad and will enjoy a better experience than using my desktop computer (use it in bed, on balcony, better battery life than my laptop, i can take it in the plane easily, etc…) for 80% of my time.

This creates a new market segment, and that’s what apple intends to do

I’ve found most of these from reading John Gruber’s DaringFireball.net, who’s been making blog entries about who “gets it.” The least of which is not his own take: “Used to be that to drive a car, you, the driver, needed to operate a clutch pedal and gear shifter and manually change gears for the transmission as you accelerated and decelerated. Then came the automatic transmission.” ( http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/various_ipad_thoughts )

Jim Stogdill also uses an automotive metaphor and compares the iPad to the Prius: “It’s been a long time since most of us have used our computers to do anything approaching ‘computing,’ but the iPad explicitly leaves the baggage behind, leaps the conceptual gulf, and becomes something else entirely. Something consumery, media’ish, and not in the least bit intimidating.” ( http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/01/the-ipad-is-the-iprius-your-co.html )

Fraser Speirs wrote an excellent item under the heading of Future Shock: “I’m often saddened by the infantilising effect of high technology on adults. From being in control of their world, they’re thrust back to a childish, mediaeval world in which gremlins appear to torment them and disappear at will and against which magic, spells, and the local witch doctor are their only refuges. With the iPhone OS as incarnated in the iPad, Apple proposes to do something about this, and I mean really do something about it instead of just talking about doing something about it, and the world is going mental.” ( http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html )

My favorite, so far, is Steven Frank’s untitled blog entry. He writes, “The thing is, to talk about specific hardware (like the iPad or iPhone or Nexus One or Droid) is to miss entirely the point I’m about to try to make. … So, I’m going to try to completely avoid talking about those sorts of things. Let’s instead establish some new terminology: Old World and New World computing.” ( http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been )

I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of these in the next two months, at which time we’ll begin to see if the iPad is successful or not based on sales. Let’s hope so, because if the iPad dies on the vine, other manufacturers might not want to create their own “simple computers” and we’ll be stuck doing our Aunt Edna’s tech support for another decade, at least.