The surprising (yet somehow inevitable) success of the iPad

The only thing more surprising than the wide adoption and overwhelming praise garnered by the Apple iPad is that every previous effort to introduce new tablet-based computing forms failed so miserably.

Was it just the Steve Jobs magic touch? Was the timing – building on the success of the iPhone and other smartphones — just right? Yes, on both counts.

Recent days have only reinforced the iPad’s promise. Wired magazine sold 24,000 copies of its $4.99 iPad app/magazine in the first 24 hours after its release, heralding the promise of a whole new class of high-end mobile apps. Global sales of the device kicked off with reportedly long lines in Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, the category as a whole is suddenly red-hot with companies from Google/Android to Microsoft aiming to copy Apple’s success.

But I’d argue the real driver of the iPad’s success is its focus on simple, straightforward values like mobility, connectedness and media consumption versus the wonky write-on-the-surface and flip-out-to-reveal-a-keyboard wonkiness of past tablet efforts.

I particularly like this first-person description of how one skeptical user was won over by the device, from venture capitalist Fred Wilson. I think it captures the promise and delivered reality of the iPad pretty well (reflecting how I think it would fit into my own life if I had the spare change to pick one up):

I like the way it sits on our kitchen counter and gets used for all sorts of little things. I came home last night and my oldest daughter Jessica was making guacamole and using the iPad to display the recipe. She was getting lemon juice on it and I thought that was so cool. A baptism of sorts.

We use it for our sonos remote, to do crossword puzzles, play games, pull up menus to order in, read techmeme and hacker news, and watch the occasional youtube video. It's replaced our kitchen computer on our kitchen countertop. It's become a member of our family. And when visitors come over, they love to use it. It's great at a party.

Our iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries are our personal devices. We wear them and they are with us everywhere. Our iPad is our family computer in way that the kitchen macbook never was.

What’s perhaps most interesting is the case that Wilson makes for not one but TWO types of mobile devices that he feels he can’t live without: the casual computing of the iPad and must-have personal urgency of the mobile phone.

If more users feel that to be the case, the mobile industry is in for an even further proliferation of devices and even greater growth as consumers look for mobile apps, content and services – not to mention raw 4G bandwidth – to feed their new habits.

Is it just me, or does that potentially lucrative trend-line somehow feel both surprising – given past tablet and alternative form-factor failures – yet equally inevitable – given just how compelling the use cases that Wilson (and others) are reporting with the iPad?

What do you think of the promise of the iPad and casual, table-based computing? Is it the next big thing in mobile, or a blip on the Apple fanboy product road map?