What is the iPad? Who knows.

So I bought an iPad. Yippeeeee. Okay, moving on.

I’m in the store, and it’s MADNESS. SF Apple store is like Mecca. Sure, NYC is a glass cube, but SF is insanity. I’m asking questions of the kind employee even though I already knew the answers. I’d read about the product from every direction, so at this point I’m questioning so I can stall and mull over the decision.

And then he asks “So, how do you plan to use the iPad?”

And I was stunned.

He looks at me and I’m speechless for a moment.

“What do you mean I asked?”

He wanted to know how I suspected I would use it relative to past paradigms.

Would I be using it for email, internet, news, photos, music, videos, etc.?

Silence on my end.

He was so kind I couldn’t bring myself to ask “How am I, new consumer, supposed to know how I am going to use a product your own CEO declared a ‘new category’ - a 'game changer' ?”

“What new applications and uses will be invented for this new platform in the coming months?” I was tempted to question rhetorically.

“In what ways do you suspect social use behaviors will coalesce around content packaged in an entirely new (beautiful) form?” I wanted to pose.

But I didn’t, because no one knows. Not yet.

And that is why I left it at “I’ll take one.”