The author holding an Apple iPad at today's event. A couple of days ago, I wrote a short piece for this site about what I expected the then-mythical Apple “tablet” to be. In a nutshell, my prediction was that this would be not an earth-shattering device but rather a familiar, logical, and surprisingly handy compliment to your existing technology setup. And that you’d want one. Well, I wasn’t far off. One of the biggest surprises turned out to be Steve Jobs’s acknowledgement of the feverish rumors surrounding today’s announcement. Upon taking the stage at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, and following a brief introduction covering Apple’s iPod sales and recent rise to $50 billion status, Jobs displayed a giant slide depicting Moses and his tablets, accompanied by a quote from the Wall Street Journal’s Martin Peers: “Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.” Thanks to 250 million iPod sales, the huge success of the iPhone, and the fact that most Macs sold today are notebooks, Jobs was able to claim that Apple is now the largest mobile device company in the world. “Bigger than Sony, bigger than Nokia, even.” Today, he said, it would take that a step further. So what exactly is the iPad, and why might i want one?

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