Will the iPad matter?

April 3rd is the big day, when the iPad finally hits the shelves and users can finally purchase it and finally really start to either love it, or hate it.

There’s been a lot of comparisons to Netbooks, specifically some nice ones that HP has come out with.

There’s also been alot of comparisons the iPhone and iPod, as everyone tries to figure out how this new device fits in.

With all the talk, most of the comparisons point heavily to the hardware, the memory, video, lack of USB support, etc. From a hardware standpoint, the Netbook wins.

But-as we’ve all seen from the iPhone, it’s not the hardware that makes the device great, it’s the applications.

The iPhone has some tremendous drawbacks (being forced onto AT&T’s network being the biggest) – but it thrived.

There’s no reason to think that people won’t make another 100,000 applications for the iPad, like they did for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

I like Netbooks, but I don’t remember any big rush of application development when they came out. We used the Netbooks to surf the internet and read Word Documents. The Netbook was a more convenient PC. It’s great in airports.

The iPad gives us the applications that we love from the iPhone as well as better screen real estate, in a device, application-on-demand fashion that everyone loves so much.

So give the iPad a couple of months. Wait a little bit for the applications to catch up with the device, and then see how the iPad matters.

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