Last week’s most read post on DJ was about no other gadget than iPad. Apart from being the most read, we got a lot of questions, comments, critics and arguments about it.

Before moving ahead, one thing that most of us would agree on is that, Apple’s tablet was definitely overhyped. There are more than one reason for this. I would try to list a few of them over here:

1. The first and foremost reason is Apple iPhone. When Apple came out with iPhone, they did something so phenomenal that most of the mobile manufacturers could never thought this could be done. It’s popularly known as “Jesus Phone” for a reason. Apple iPhone was such an amazing piece of design and engineering, that it entirely redefined the industry standards.

When people thought of touch screen phones in the past, they used to think of stylus, hard to select menus, and non-responsive touch screens. But Apple changed everything and showed its competitors where they were failing.

Similarly, when people thought about tablets, most of the computer manufacturers had already attempted in this domain, but none succeeded. Thus, when people came to know about Apple doing a tablet, they thought that it would reinvent the industry in the same way.

People were waiting to see a complete new way of using a large touchscreen and filling that gap between the smartphone and computer. But did Apple come up to the expectation? I would leave that for our readers to answers and put in their views.

2. Microsoft‘s flop show at CES’10. Year 2009 was tough for Microsoft, but they still had few very unique and interesting innovations going on, Surface, Project Natal and Courier tablet.

While at CES this January, geeky world was really waiting to see what MS would do to dampen the Apple’s launch a few days after the event. But all MS had to show was HP’s slate, which even Steve Ballmer had problem running while on stage, due to regular desktop UI.

This event killed all the hopes, the MS would be able to give any competition to Apple’s tablet, at least this year. Thus, the expectations from Apple’s tablet grew even further.

3. E-Book readers. Even Steve Jobs acknowledged that Amazon’s Kindle was a pioneering product. It really was an awesome gadget and created its own niche in gadget domain. But what happened after Kindle, surely it improved over the years, but none of its competitor really tried to innovate a new product, rather all of them tried to copy the Kindle.

Over the years, Kindle became the best friend of frequent travelers, but they still wanted something more intuitive, something that would give them a better feel of the real book, and may be would even overcome the slowness of the E-ink.

When Apple’s tablet rumor mill came up, these group of people started looking forward to it.

Apple did come up with a unique, interactive and great interface for ebooks, but left most of the people complaining about the battery life, inability to use in sunlight and cost factor. Would Apple be able to conquer the fort pioneered by Amazon? Time would tell, but readers are most welcome to put in their thoughts.

4. Netbooks. The users of the netbooks domain want something that is light weight, has small form factor, and can sync the stuff they care about with their mainstream machine. When Asus came up with the idea, it didn’t look very promising, but over the years, we have seen pretty much every computer manufacturers jumping into the scene.

Netbooks are interesting, but are very slow and UI has not been improved for small screens. Steve Jobs, last time rejected the idea of netbooks, but Apple was definitely targeting Netbook users with iPad. Also, the Netbook users had their own share of expectations from Apple’s tablet.

Apple provides iWork along with the new iPad and it looks promising, especially considering the fact that it will be compatible with Microsoft office as well. But, are Netbooks users getting more than what they currently have? Multitasking? Listening to Pandora while working?

5. iPod Video. There are a huge number of people who love watching videos on the go. iPhones, iPod touches, and iPods supporting video were great for them, but still a bigger screen could have overjoyed them any day. iPad certainly gives them a bigger screen, but thats pretty much about it as you still can’t watch the most widely used format, i.e. flash.

Even though Apple says that flash is buggy,  still it is the standard as of now, and we can only imagine how great it would be to stream any type of video on iPad. But as far as Apple’s comments go about it, I think we will have to wait for HTML 5 to show its colors.

Related posts:

1. The iPad Launch: start of a new era?? It’s a netbook, no it’s a tablet PC, nope it’s...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.