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OK, I will admit it.

When I first read the reports about the iPAD in January, I thought, "Who would want a big iPhone?"

I confess, Steve, that I just didn't get it This is despite, I might add, being totally in the tank for Apple as evidenced by my 2 MacBooks, a MAC mini, and my 2^nd iPhone.

But over the past few weeks, I have been thinking about my patterns of content consumption and creation, and I am now fully on Board. The Apple marketing department can now rest, secure than I am on Board.

A lot of this came about as I prepared for my keynote at AIIM On Demand this year - 8 disruptive forces that will transform the content management industry. One of the key forces I talk about is the impact that mobile technologies will have on the evolution of content management and E20 in the next few years.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that there is a place for an iPad-ish device.

And then I totally bought the farm when I got custody of an iPad for the weekend before the AIIM Show. [A note: we purchased 3 for the booth at the Show because they were way cheaper than paying the pirate rates for a 3-day rental of a flat panel.]

My reasons for bullishness on the iPad are as follows…

My content usage typically falls into 3 main categories.

1. Pure content consumption. Clearly the iPad is a huge winner in this category. I do this kind of content work almost constantly.
2. Modest content interaction. This would be things like dealing with email, tweeting, commenting on blogs, taking notes, short articles - you get the idea. The iPad is great at this. I am even in a brief window in which going through e-mail is actually enjoyable (I am sure this will fade). Ditto #1, I do this kind of work almost constantly.
3. Intense content creation. This is creating complicated spreadsheets. Multi-page word docs. My super fancy presentations. This type of work is very "peaky" for me. It clearly is something the iPad is not good at.

So… 2 out of 3 ain't bad. And as time goes on, two things will happen that may even tip things further: 1) other players will enter (Google reportedly has a Pad coming, as does HP); and 2) Apple will inevitably improve this device little by little by little, just like they did the iPhone.

So I am in.

To add to the above, here are a few other things I like.

1. Carrying one makes you feel super cool. People have tech envy.
2. Graphically intense books will be beautiful on this device. IBooks includes a free illustrated Winnie the Pooh. Take one look and you can see how this will blow Kindle out of the water. The bookmarks thing is much better than on the Kindle. For both the Kindle and the iPad, I want to export my bookmarks/highlights - why can't I?
3. I can read my Kindle books here as well as on the Kindle.
4. Power situation MUCH better than I thought. Way better than the iPhone. Makes me wonder why the iPhone power situation is so bad.
5. The dude in front of my on the plane can't slam his $%%^&*# seat back and crunch my screen.
6. Watching a Netflix On Demand movie on it is pretty cool.

Here are some things I don't like.

1. You can't read it in the sun. Advantage, Kindle.
2. The whole Flash thing.
3. Give up the iPhone apps on the iPad thing. They open up the same size as on the iPhone and just look plain stupid.
4. I wish it was a little lighter.
5. I wish I could access some sort of file system.
6. The screen gets messy pretty quickly when you are using it a lot. And on a device this beautiful, that is much more noticeable than it might otherwise be.

So...if I could hazard a prediction, I predict that within a couple of years we will be doing most of our E20 kinds of interaction on a device like this. What do you think?