1. It’s primarily a content delivery tool…

A lot of people seem to be having trouble imagining themselves getting work done on an iPad. But they’re forgetting it’s more or less a content delivery tool for consuming content, not producing it. You’ll still be able to equip an iPad with some great productivity apps for doing serious work if you have to, but the iPad shines at delivering content. The iPad’s a quick and easy way to view your photos, watch video, read publications or surf the web. Imagine trying to do all those things on a clumsy little netbook :S …and yet netbooks still sell like hotcakes.

2. The trendsetters can’t put 2 and 2 together…

Apple manufactures a lot of stylish, highly functional products. A lot of people feel like they’re buying into that sense of style when they purchase an Apple product. But the lukewarm response has a lot of people questioning how trendy the iPad’s going to be when it hits store shelves… what’s the point of buying an Apple product that’s not at least hip or trendy right? Easy there Tiger, before you get ahead of yourself about deciding whether or not its going to be popular, lets not forget the iPad’s nestled right between some of Apple’s most popular/ best selling products; the 13-inch MacBook(Pro) and the iPhone. For a lot of people, the iPad represents some of the best features from both worlds. Considering how well those two other products sell, it’s hard to imagine why the iPad won’t.

3. Freedom from contracts…

More than anything, I want to be able to take the internet with me wherever I go. Some days I want an iPhone and mobile internet so badly it hurts. The only thing holding me back is the thought of becoming tangled up in a long term/ expensive contract. Even usb internet sticks require cumbersome contracts that worry me about penalties for going over data limits. Which is where the iPad’s implementation really impressed me… hassle free “pay-as-you-go” 3G connectivity. Going on a road trip for a couple of weeks, but can’t be bothered with long term data plans or hotel wi-fi? No prob, just pay about $30 for 30 days of unlimited data while you’re away. I’m personally looking forward to being able to rent movies through my iTunes account the next time I bike up to the B&B for the weekend.

4. It makes the Amazon Kindle look like a kids toy…

’nuff said.

About a year ago at WWDC ’08 (Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference) they announced something special; they were working on the next version of their operating system, called “Snow Leopard”. Without being specific, they briefly mentioned some of the new technologies they were developing which would tap into the power of the GPU (graphics processing unit), greatly enhancing Snow Leopard’s performance. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs said it would be out in about a year (*wink* the upcoming WWDC ’09), and the company’s been tight lipped about it ever since.

Now I know what you’re thinking – just about every technology company out there says they’re going to deliver increases in performance. But I’ll get to what makes this announcement particularly important in just a moment.

Many computers contain both a CPU (central processing unit) running the vast majority of their operations, as well as a GPU inside a graphics card which accelerates anything graphics related. The CPU contains 1, 2, 4, and sometimes 8 cores capable of running several applications at once. Your GPU on the other hand, has dozens, if not hundreds of cores! The problem is, unless you’re doing something like playing a video game, all those GPU cores sit idle in your computer. Completely untapped processing power.

Granted, each GPU core isn’t as powerful as a main CPU core, but they don’t need to be for a lot your everyday computing tasks. Tasks that the CPU finds intensive, like editing/ rendering HD video for instance (which can take your computer hours to complete) are really just a lot of the same simple operations (algorithms) being performed over and over again, until the video is finished. This is where harnessing the potential of the GPU and its parallel processing abilities comes in handy. Instead of having 1 or 2 CPU cores running the same simple algorithm over and over again for hours (nearly dragging your computer to a halt), why not divide the task up and hand it over to the hundreds of GPU cores! The Mythbusters demonstrate an interesting way of showing how the CPU & GPU differ from one another in the embedded video below… its quite entertaining!

Nvidia, a GPU manufacturing company partnered with Apple, has already demonstrated the parallel computing capabilities of its graphics cards using an architecture called CUDA. Inexpensive Nvidia graphics cards coupled together, combining several hundreds, even thousands of cores, are able to reach near supercomputer performance in a single desktop unit. Researchers using Nvidia’s CUDA technology have reported being able to do things that used to take them several days, in just a matter of hours!

You wouldn’t normally find more than one or two graphics cards in today’s average computer, but the added performance of a few hundred cores from an off-the-shelf card should still offer substantial performance gains. Apple’s Snow Leopard is touting two new built in technologies, “Grand Central” and “OpenCL” which will utilize the Nvidia GPU’s inside Macs for general level computing, much the same way CUDA does. Who knew the parallel processing technology driving video games would some day surpass giants like Intel.

For Mac users, it’s going to offer a huge leap in performance. As someone who edits a lot of HD video, I can’t wait to be able to render videos in minutes rather than hours. When Snow Leopard finally hits the store shelves (which could still be a couple of months away), I think we’ll see Macs drawing in Windows PC users at an increased rate, or anyone for that matter who’s looking for more computing performance.

The keynote address kicks off WWDC ’09 next week on Monday, June 8th, where many expect to hear specific announcements about Snow Leopard, as well as the next iPhone & iPod Touch.