When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in 2007, it drew loud cheers and applause from the audience.

Then, the iPhone’s role was immediately obvious. It combined three much sought after functions into one mobile device: a music player, a phone and a web browser.

Of course, devices that have all these functions (and probably a dozen more) already existed before the iPhone, but none were able to deliver the kind of satisfaction as a decent mobile web browser until the iPhone came along.

It is also important to note that the original iPhone shipped with just 14 applications (and you couldn’t add more because there was no App Store), and that 14 applications include the essential phone and SMS function, as well as boring apps such as Stocks, Weather and Calculator.

Guardian technology columnist Stephen Fry wrote that because “first release of iPhone was 2G, closed to developers and without GPS, cut and paste and many other features that have since been incorporated… [nobody had] predicted the “game-changing” effect the [original iPhone] would so rapidly have as it evolved into a 3G, third-party app rich, compass and GPS enabled market leader.

I disagree with that. Just watching the recorded stream of the iPhone’s keynote announcement, I knew I wanted one, and I knew many of my friends were clamouring for one as well. And even without the 140,000 third-party applications and games available to iPhone users today, GPS or cut and paste, it was enough to drive the audience into a near frenzy.

Clearly, the iPhone filled a void that many people were looking for.

When Steve Jobs unveiled the widely anticipated iPad some three years later on January 27th 2010, the reaction was lukewarm. There weren’t as much cheers or clapping, and reverse shots of the audience showed them mostly looking bored.

So what went wrong?

I think it went wrong seven minutes into the keynote, where Mr Jobs preceded the introduction of the iPad with the opener: “The question has arisen lately: is there room for a third category of device in the middle, something that’s between a laptop and smartphone?

“In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks,” he said. “Better than the laptop, better than the smartphone.”

And the tasks Mr Jobs outlined?

“Well, things like browsing the web. That’s a pretty tall order. Something that’s better at browsing the web than laptop? Okay. And e-mail. Enjoying and sharing photographs. Videos, watching videos. Enjoying your music collection. Playing games. Reading e-books.

“If there’s going to be a third category of device, that’s going to have to be better at these kinds of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone. Otherwise, it has no reason for being.”

This is an excellent thought process, and various technology pundits have correctly asked themselves this question before the announcement of the iPad. John Gruber from Daring Fireball wrote in December: “If you already have an iPhone and a MacBook; why would you want this?

“Successful new gadgets always seem to occupy a clearly defined place alongside, or replacing, existing devices,” he wrote. “But how much room is there between an iPhone (or iPod Touch) and a MacBook (or other laptop computer, running Windows or Linux or whatever)? What’s the argument for owning all three?”

Mr Jobs went on to dismiss existing solutions such as the netbook.

“The problem is, netbooks aren’t better than anything. They’re slow, they have low quality display, and they run clunky old PC software,” he said. “So they’re not better than a laptop than anything, they’re just cheaper. They’re just cheap laptops. And we don’t think that they’re third category device.”

Great, so far so good. Sure, many people own netbooks and like their netbooks, but the fact that an Apple’s tablet was so widely anticipated clearly shows their dissatisfaction with these sub-notebooks, and the desire for something better, something like what the Apple did to mobile phones with the iPhone.

And then there was the question about what kind of ingenious solution Apple might offer with its tablet to solve the problem of holding up and interacting with a relatively heavy device for a long period of time.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Andy Ihnatko wrote before the iPad was announced: “You want to try to figure out the UI of the [Apple tablet]? Go get yourself a comic book, or any other rectangle that measures roughly 10” on the diagonal. Hold it as though you’re reading what’s on the surface.

“While you’ve got it in your hands, imagine that it’s a sheet of thin steel. That’s heavy, isn’t it? Hard to hold up for long periods of time.”

Of course, everyone was confident that Apple would deliver the perfect solution by the time the tablet was announced, given that they’ve been at it for allegedly four years.

And then, Mr Jobs whipped out the iPad, and sure enough, the design was gorgeous. But how was he going to use it? He couldn’t possibly have used it standing, given the weight and size concerns that Mr Ihnatko had brought up. Placing the device flat on the table is an option, but it’s an inelegant and non-ergonomic solution.

And so, he went on to sit down in a strategically placed sofa, legs crossed, with the iPad resting on his crossed leg.

That was disappointment number one for me. If you’ve watched the promotion video by Apple, you’d realise that the model who was using the iPad was yet again strategically positioned, this time lying inclined on a sofa with his knees drawn upwards to form some kind of rest for the iPad.

It was thus ironic when Apple’s design chief, Jony Ive, said in the promotion video that “I don’t have to change myself to fit the product. It fits me.”

He was of course referring to how you could hold the tablet in any orientation you want, but not how you could have hold and use the tablet comfortably in a more common situation such as on the train or on the bus, unless of course you wish to cross your leg like Steve Jobs (which might seriously piss the person sitting next to you off), or sit reclined on the floor like the model in the promotion video.

Putting it flat on top your legs is not an elegant solution. Just look at how Mr Jobs had to crane his neck downwards as he placed the iPad flat on his legs to type an email. Perhaps that is why except for the brief moment where Mr Jobs sent out an email, the entire keynote mostly avoided typing on the iPad altogether.

And notice how awkward it was to do multi-gestures involving both hands? When Apple’s product marketing chief Phil Schiller demonstrated a multi-gesture in Keynote, he had to interrupt his original way of holding the iPad—holding it up upright with his left hand, and touching the screen with his right hand—and place the iPad down flat on his lap, all the while trying to make sure the few hundred dollars device doesn’t slip from his legs.

Ergonomics aside, Mr Jobs continued to demonstrate the features of the iPad to an unimpressed audience. Why were they so subdued this time round when they were cheering during the iPhone’s demonstration?

Well, I’m guessing none of them were really buying it when Mr Jobs said the iPad is far better than their iPhone or laptop at the key tasks. Could a device that does not even appear ergonomic to use be really better than their iPhone at any of the tasks, which is so intuitive to hold and could navigate even with a single hand, or a laptop which could do everything?

And let’s remind ourselves of the tasks that the iPad is supposed to be far better at doing than both the laptop and the iPhone:

1. browsing the web,
2. e-mail,
3. enjoying and sharing photographs,
4. watching videos,
5. enjoying your music collection,
6. playing games,
7. reading e-books

Let’s start with e-mail. Since keying in text on the iPad does not seem any easier than the iPhone (in fact I believe it’s far more difficult given the way you’d need a flat surface to be able to type on the iPad), I can’t imagine e-mail being far better than either the laptop or the iPhone.

Enjoying and sharing photographs? Perhaps, I could imagine it being useful to show potential clients my works.

Watching videos, well this one probably has some truth to it; better than the iPhone with the bigger screen, and better than the laptop with its lighter weight. But again, due to the fact that we folks in Singapore cannot buy videos off iTunes, and that the iPhone/iPad only plays video encoded in specific formats, it might be easier to play non-compatible videos via VLC on the laptop than to spend time encoding them to be able to play the videos on the iPad. Further, because the iPad doesn’t do Flash, it will not be able to play web videos from any online video sharing site other than YouTube. That locks the iPad out of many videos that aren’t available on YouTube. So I won’t say that the iPad is far better than the laptop in watching videos.

Enjoying your music collection? Thanks but no thanks. I don’t need nor want to carry a 9.7″ device that weights 700g to enjoy my music. I’d use my iPhone any other day. Far better at listening to music on the iPad than the iPhone? No way.

Playing games? Again, the larger screen would probably help. But looking at the demonstration of Need for Speed Shift on the iPad, I couldn’t help but think that the larger screen is going to make touch controls even more difficult than on the iPhone. Notice in the demonstration that changing the view of the driver (which involves touching the car located in the centre of the screen) requires the player to extend his thumb all the way into the middle of the iPad, which is four times larger in size than the iPhone.

Reading e-books, however, seems like the biggest draw. Apple’s implementation of its online bookstore, and its well-designed native reading application makes the iPad a serious contender to Amazon’s Kindle. The store and its larger screen will make the iPad a better reading device than the iPhone, while its more compact size, the vertical orientation and lighter weight will make it a better reading device than a laptop.

The problem? Well, unless you live in the United States, there won’t be iBooks or the e-book store available on your iPad. So once again, Singaporeans will be left out in the cold, just like how we have not been able to purchase music from the iTunes store since eternity.

So out of the six key tasks that Mr Jobs has listed, e-mail and music are duds relative to the iPhone or laptop, it remains to be seen whether the larger screen estate (and heavier size) is truly a boon for games requiring touch, videos are probably a tie with laptops due to the concerns I’ve pointed out, e-books seemed to be better than the iPhone or the laptop—with reservations of course—and photos seemed pretty neat and is probably better than the iPhone or the laptop, but I’m not sure if that alone is worth the price.

So that leaves us with key task number one—browsing the web. Almost everyone who had used the iPad at the event raved about the speed in rendering webpages relative to the iPhone. Let’s assume that these people were right, the iPad is indeed a speed demon at browsing the web, and the larger screen estate is awesome. Giving the iPad the benefit of doubt since most of us have not used one yet, we assume that the iPad is far better than the iPhone at browsing the web.

But far better than the laptop? That’s a tall order indeed.

The laptop of course, cannot possibly be slower than the iPad, and it definitely has a larger screen than the iPad—both in terms of screen size and resolution. So what could make the iPad far better than the laptop at browsing the web? Ergonomics? I think not. Intuitiveness? Maybe.

But as much as I’d love to own the iPad so that I could replace my MacBook Pro aas a primary browsing device, I simply can’t. I just can’t access some sites that I need to on a frequent basis due to the lack of support for (1) Java and (2) Flash.

I’m not too sure about our friends in America, but all internet banking sites in Singapore require Java to log in, and Java is unlikely to be supported on the iPad. That means I still need my laptop whenever I need to check my transactions or make any bank transfers, which I need to ever so often.

Pundits such as Mr Gruber have again and again noted how the absence of Flash on the iPhone is a good thing due to (1) it’s poor performance on OS X, (2) poor reliability on OS X, and (3) the fact that having a de facto web standard based on proprietary technology is not a good idea. I agree with them all, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the absence of Flash support means that I can’t completely replace my laptop with the iPad as my primary surfing device.

So even if the iPad is more intuitive at browsing the web than the laptop as some who have used the iPad says, it is still an incomplete web browser. An incomplete web browser cannot really be far better.

I’ll excuse everything that the Apple bashers could come up with: no camera, no multitasking, no external storage, etc., because that was not what the iPad was suppose to excel at. Those features are purely secondary if the iPad could really be far better at the things it had set out to be, but it is not.

Towards the end of Mr Gruber’s piece on the tablet before it was announced, he answered his own question: “And so in answer to my central question, regarding why buy The Tablet if you already have an iPhone and a MacBook, my best guess is that ultimately, The Tablet is something you’ll buy instead of a MacBook.”

I had hoped that that was the case. But unfortunately, the iPad cannot replace the MacBook completely, but sits between the iPhone and MacBook. And because the iPad was not clearly far better than both the iPhone and the laptop at the key tasks that Mr Jobs had highlighted, he has failed to convince most people that the iPad has a reason for being.

All that said, until the masses can get their hands on the iPad, and when reviewers can really spend time using one, some of my observations—such as how ergonomic it is to hold and use in daily use—could still be proven very wrong. But others, such as being far better at playing your music, is just plain silly.

I hope I could be pleasantly surprised when I lay my hands on one in 56 days time. Like David Pogue says, “the iPad is really a vessel, a tool, a 1.5-pound sack of potential”.

Ironically, the audience seemed most excited when Mr Schiller demonstrated the iWork suite on the iPad, which was not even one of the key tasks that the iPad was supposed to be far better at. Clearly, there is a demand for the iPad to be as capable as the MacBook.

The iPad definitely has the potential to revolutionise mobile computing when more powerful apps are out—just think about the possibility of a decent mobile Photoshop with multitouch gestures—but the first version is unlikely to be the one to do so.

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