So finally Apple announced their tablet device to the world on last week. Unsurprisingly the internet is full of reports, speculation, and people voicing their opinion on the device. I’m about to add to that collection, but before I do, allow me to digress.

Amongst the iPad talk, my life has had to continue as if nothing has happened, I’ve still had to eat, I’ve still had bills to pay, and therefore I’ve also still had to work.

I was asked a few days ago to brainstorm (I hate that term!) a few ideas for a major client that we recently produced an iPhone application for. Now the iPhone application is great, it functions perfectly and meets the specification by which it was designed, no complaints there – this was talking about the future. This needs to be the first to the market, are not sure what it should bet, but it had to be first, it had to be iPhone (or iPad ), and add some real value to their customers.

This is a tricky situation to be in, tricky but certainly interesting. I’m being asked to look into the future, find a little gem that no-one has discovered just yet, with very little boundaries.

After initial discussions based upon this task – suggestions were met with both positive and negative feedback. Some people were clearly of the opinion that this obviously wouldn’t work, because it isn’t already being done. Other people were willing to look at ideas with a completely open-mind, a mind that could see that maybe, just maybe, that we haven’t discovered everything that there is just yet.

I come across this issue time and time again when discussing iPhone applications with people, they believe that there’s already “an app for that”. While it may be true that the AppStore is full to bursting of fart apps, flashlight apps, and some truely compelling gems of applications. It’s very naive to think that everything’s been done already. Recently, I suspect there is very little money to be made in the classic gimmicky applications, and the AppStore is filling with quality. That quality should, over time, drown out most of the crap.

Coming back to Apple’s iPad – it was certainly an underwhelming keynote, with the rumours of fingerprint/facial recognition, and other “cool” technologies, it was bound to be.

However the people knocking the iPad just because it’s a big iPod Touch, aren’t really looking at the big picture, and aren’t really looking at the reasons the iPod Touch really took off. Maybe a big iPod Touch is exactly what people actually wanted. An appliance that 99% of the internet want actually have a use for.

A device that just works, no more having to help the parents with their machine getting full to the brim of crap, because they couldn’t resist clicking that flashing banner at the top of the screen.

This isn’t designed for people like me, a developer, it’s not aimed at these of us who “produce” the internet, it’s aimed at the huge market that merely “consume” the internet.

Whatever happens – imagine a future where maybe, just maybe, Apple have hit it right on the nose. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

Today is January 27th – this day won’t mean a lot to most people at the moment, but if you’re an Apple fan it’s a very special day.

Recently Apple sent out press invites to a select few.

“Come see our latest creation” was their only tagline/clue.

As usual, Apple remain tight-lipped, however their “latest creation” is heavily rumoured to be a keyboardless device, larger than an iPhone. Looking to take a piece of Kindle’s cake, you can expect Apple to try and do for publishing, what it’s done for music over the past few years.

If Apple can pull it out of the bag, like it did with the iPhone, we could have another digital revolution on our hands. With developers and business’s trying to get a piece of the early action.

Whatever is launched, here’s hoping we get an SDK update this evening and we get to play with some new API’s.