The NYC digital Wired walkthough was cooler, because we got a demo on a humongous rotating touchscreen:

Wired’s demo is slick indeed: It’s got the beautiful design and typography of the publication’s dead-tree incarnation, but you can swoop through it with your fingertip, watch embedded videos, and (surprise!) interact with fancy ads. But it leaves me with as many questions as answers:

• Aside from the iPad, are there going to be many tablets that are outstanding digital reading devices rather than sad iPad clones?
• Can Wired publisher Condé Nast (or, for that matter, any publisher) produce an e-magazine as slick as this one on a monthly basis, if its goal is to make money rather than lose it?
• What happens to the wealth of original material on Wired.com–good stuff which, in volume, dwarfs the contents of the print magazine?
• How about reader comments and other interactive features?
• Do readers like the idea of a publication that comes out once a month, or is it actually just an artifact of the impossibility of releasing a magazine that evolves continuously, as Web sites do?
• How many people will (A) buy a device optimized for reading magazines, and (B) pay for magazines to read on it–especially when magazine Web sites are deeper, more interactive…and free?

Prototypes like the Wired one can only tell us so much about how magazines might evolve for the digital era. Real people reading real magazines on real devices will tell us a lot more. And with the iPad arriving in a couple of weeks and digital-magazine launches imminent, we shouldn’t have to wait too long for answers. (TIME magazine’s Josh Quittner and Sports Illustrated’s Terry O’Donell were at the New York publishing event; both said that true digital versions of their publications are coming along very shortly.)

Of course, as a guy who spent twenty years in the magazine business and who still runs an (itty bitty) media company, I may not be in the best position to judge digital magazines through the eyes of a consumer. What’s your take? Can you see yourself reading them? Paying for them?

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The newest of these is a reference design for a 10.1″ Android-based color tablet that Marvell just finished putting together. Here it is:

As a reference design, this (rather chunky) tablet is mostly about technological guts rather than industrial design: I’d expect the companies who build devices based on it to make them sleeker and sexier.

Marvell says that it expects tablets based on this design to go on sale by the end of this year. It’s not talking about pricetags yet, but with the iPad starting at $499, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the starting price for tablets from other companies will be substantially lower. Manufacturers should certainly be able to sell an Armada-based tablet running the free Android OS for less than a “Slate PC” running full-blown Windows 7.

Marvell’s version runs Android in a form that looks pretty much like the Android on phones such as the Nexus One and Droid, only on a bigger, higher-resolution display. Assuming that tablets are here to stay, I hope that Google–or someone–builds an Android interface that was designed with big touchscreens in mind. Despite the theory that the iPad is merely a big iPhone, the most interesting thing about it is that Apple went to the trouble of designing a new interface tailored to its needs. I don’t think tablets running a stock copy of Windows 7 or Android are going to be anywhere near as interesting as ones that rethink the experience for a new class of gizmo.

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Until now, there’s been no evidence that Courier was anything more than a slick idea that might or might not ever turn into a product–sort of like Apple’s Knowledge Navigator from 1987. But Engadget’s source talked about details that, if true, mean that Courier is indeed in the works. It’s supposedly based on Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and will show up in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

If so, neat–but for now, Courier doesn’t feel very tangible. The videos are animations that look like they were done in Flash; the screens don’t look real; even the photograph might be a mockup of some sort. Until Microsoft says something or more solid materials leak out, it’s tough to know what to think.

I’m a fan of genuinely new ideas in user interfaces, and Courier is full of them. I’m intrigued, however, by the fact that the whole idea seems to center around the idea that folks want to create handwritten digital notes. That was also the theory behind the Tablet PC, a product which Microsoft thought would come to dominate the notebook market–but which never really took off.

I remain skeptical about there being a critical mass of people who want to take notes with a stylus and then look at their own handwriting forever after. Of course Courier, in concept form, looks to be about a hundred times more elegant than the Tablet PC, so maybe it could be the breakthrough that the Tablet turned out not to be. I hope we get the chance to find out…

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(Apple didn’t say when the 3G model will go on sale, but based on the original timetable and barring any delays, it’ll presumably show up in late April or early May.)

I’m still not sure whether the arrival of the iPad will inspire large numbers of people to show up at Apple Stores at four in the morning. We also don’t know whether there will be enough iPads to go around. (For what it’s worth, there’s never been a shortage of iPhones on their launch days–in fact, the most efficient way to buy one has been to bide your time until late on the first sale day, and then stroll in and pick one up with little or no waiting.)

In Apple’s press release about the on-sale details, it calls the iPad “magical and revolutionary” not once but twice, including one such reference in a Jobs quote. The more the company repeats this mantra, the more I think of this guy, the product he promotes, and the catch phrase he’s been using for several decades:

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Now Europe is targeting Google.

And Italy is punishing YouTube.

Apple to bring sexy back?

Get ready for 8GB netbooks.

The sleazy world of MicroSD.

Ten really weird social networks.

This Nintendo DSi is huge.

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When Apple finally announced its iPad tablet computer at a San Francisco press event last week, we learned that it was “magical.” And “revolutionary.” And that the price was “unbelievable.”

That’s the truth according to Steve Jobs, at least. As usual, the facts are a bit more complex. The iPad is an ambitious product that’s hard to sum up in a few words, or to assess at all until it’s actually available for sale, which won’t be for weeks. Herewith, some early answers to major questions about the device, based on what I learned at Apple’s launch and the hands-on time I got with one after the great unveiling concluded.

What’s the keyboard like?

Better than I expected. It looks like a jumbo version of the iPhone keyboard, but the keys and the space between them are so much more roomy that tapping the right character is much, much easier. You’re not going to want to write a novel on the iPad, but quick bursts of text, such as e-mails, should be simple enough.

The iPad will also work with Bluetooth keyboards, and Apple will sell a charging dock with a built-in keyboard: That’s good news, but you’ll want to try out the on-screen keyboard yourself if at all possible before plunking down any money.

What’s the software situation going to be like?

The iPad will run “virtually” all iPhone applications without modification, which means that it’ll work with more than 150,000 programs on the day it ships. But that’s a stopgap, not a long-term plus: Unaltered iPhone programs will run on the iPad either scaled to fit its larger screen (with correspondingly chunky text) or in a tiny window. If you invest in an iPad, you’re gambling that developers will write their wares to take advantage of its larger screen and richer user interface. Many will, but it may take a while before true iPad apps are as plentiful as iPhone ones.

What are the device’s biggest limitations?

The blogosphere is rife with debate about the many things the iPad doesn’t have and can’t do. There’s no camera (which would have been cool for video chat) and no support for Adobe’s Flash technology (so many video sites and most online games won’t work). Only Apple’s programs can run in the background — so you can listen to music while browsing the Web, for instance — and all applications run only in full-screen mode.

Oddly enough, these gotchas don’t bother me as much as two less-discussed omissions. The iPad comes with a splendid photo viewer, but it doesn’t have a USB port or memory-card slot; if you want to import your digital camera photos directly into it, you’ll need to buy a clunky-looking external adapter. And even though Apple showed off nifty-looking versions of its iWork word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program at the iPad launch, there’s no way to print from the device. The best you’ll be able to do is create PDF files, move them to a PC or Mac, and print from there.

[UPDATE: As several readers reminded me, there are several third-party iPhone printing apps which will presumably work on the iPad. But they've all got their share of limitations and aren't a full substitute for built-in printing capabilities.]

Is the price really as unbelievable as Steve Jobs thinks?

A. The iPad is a lot more reasonable than pundits were expecting — the conventional wisdom was that it would run $1,000 or so. Instead, the iPad starts at $499 for the version with 16GB of solid-state storage and no 3G broadband, and tops out at $829 for one with 64GB of storage and AT&T 3G. Apple is pricing its tablet to move — which is presumably why it lacks some features that most people expected it would have. But with its aluminum case and high-end display, it outclasses similarly-priced netbooks from the standpoint of pure aesthetics.

Q. I like the idea of a tablet, but I want a real PC. Will be I be able to buy an iPad-like gizmo that runs Windows?

A. Sort of. At last month’s Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer previewed devices he called “slate PCs,” including a model from HP. They’re all screen and no keyboard, like the iPad. But the single thing about the iPad that’s most impressive is that Apple came up with a user interface optimized for a touch-centric, no-keyboard computer. Microsoft, by contrast, says it has no plans to tweak Windows any further: A slate PC will simply be a Windows 7 machine with no keyboard and no mouse.

Q. Will the iPad be a satisfactory substitute for a PC or Mac?

Absolutely not, if you’re talking about making it your primary computer. For that, you want something that can run a wider variety of software, and work with cameras and printers and other devices. You may also want a machine with enough storage to hold a bulging collection of music, photos, and videos — even the most-capacious iPad has much less storage space than the skimpiest current netbook. And you almost certainly want a system with a bigger screen than the iPad’s 9.7-incher.

Q. Speaking of netbooks, should I buy an iPad instead of one?

A. That’s not as much of a slam-dunk as you may think: A lot of people are going to be more comfortable with something that looks and works more like a traditional PC than the iPad does. But I think that others who might have bought a netbook in the past as a secondary computer will buy an iPad instead, and be pleased with the purchase — especially if they’re primarily interested in consuming music, movies, e-books, and Web pages. Netbooks are notoriously sluggish when it comes to video and graphics, but from what we’ve seen of the iPad so far, it’s a zippy little beast.

Q. How about getting an iPad instead of Amazon’s Kindle or another e-reader?

A. That’s going to be a decision that many people will be confronted with from now on. The Kindle certainly isn’t going away anytime soon: It costs only a little more than half the price of the cheapest iPad and runs for days on a charge rather than the iPad’s claimed life of ten hours. It boasts an impressive collection of books, plus lots of magazines and newspapers; the iPad will have to scramble to catch up with Amazon’s book selection, and Apple hasn’t said anything about its plans for periodicals at all.

Despite everything, though, the iPad is going to be a formidable Kindle rival. Amazon’s e-reader is a one-trick pony (albeit an impressive one) with a screen in dull black and white; the iPad is in glorious color and e-reading will be only one of many things it’ll let you do. If Apple can ramp up its content offerings, its gadget promises to be a treat for people who like to read — as long as they’re willing to charge it up frequently.

Q. So should I buy one?

A. Make no decision until the reviews come out at the end of March, when the first units ship. (The Wi-Fi only models, that is; the 3G version will arrive a month after that.) At that point, if the iPad sounds intriguing but not utterly irresistible, bide your time. If the history of the iPhone is any example, Apple will announce a second-generation iPad in 2011 that fixes most of the biggest gripes and packs more features at a better price. And many of the smartest tech fans I know are unapologetic late adopters who’ll consider the device seriously only then.

As for me, getting my hands on gadgets early — sometimes too early — is what I do for a living. Stay tuned for further thoughts on the iPad once Apple ships the thing.

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Sales will begin moderately. The anticipated spike in sales will occur after “the arrival of a catalyst,” but the report did not specify what that incentive would be. The iTunes store worked before, and it may work again.

That is evidenced by reports of interactive textbooks headed to the iPad. The iPad also could appeal to people who have light computing requirements such as seniors.

In comparison, the iPhone was much more mass market. Over 1 million iPhones were sold within 71 days of its introduction, and sold over 8 million units last quarter. The iPhone has contributed remarkably to Apple’s revenues–without massively cannibalizing the sales of iPods. The iPad could be viewed as a substitute for the iPod Touch.

The thing to keep in mind is that this is only the first iteration of the iPad. There’s no shortage of speculation about what Apple may or may deliver when the iPad ships – from evidence of a camera to an “intelligent bezel.” We don’t know the entire story of what “it” is yet, or what it will become. The iPad could very well end up carrying other Apple products.

Whether those reports are accurate or not, they do prove one thing: there is no shortage of potential for the tablet category. Even if Google enters the market, increased category awareness and growth should only support Apple’s sales.

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