The real iPad breakthrough: as a spoke, not a hub

And it's a spoke of genius, pardon the pun.

My iPad is due to arrive in about 30 hours. Apple's embargo on reviews ended the evening of March 31st, most of them are favorable.

But there are still whiney blogs out there. "What? No USB?" "What? It won't shine my shoes?"

These people just don't get it.

Here's the real deal: as the NYT's David Pogue has pointed out, the iPad is going to be a profound game-changer in consuming content. It's not so much about creating content.

Though I'll have the iPad keyboard dock, that'll be mostly for light iWork and email. Primarily, the iPad will be the web browser I've always wanted to have with me everywhere in the house at all times when I'm away from our other three Macs.

And its magnificent screen is so liberating that it'll really make me dip into electronic books and periodicals.

But for major work and heavy-duty applications, that's why my G5 tower, 30-inch screen, and extended color-coded keyboard exist. With a terabyte of storage and another TB of backup, that's where all my writing, photos, videos, and web content will be managed and manipulated. Afterwards, syncing what I want onto the iPad swill be as painless as my iPhone.

The device's only serious lack is Flash. If HTML5 can't fill that void, you can be sure a subsequent OS update will take care of the problem.

I'll post my first review within 48 hours. It'll be floating out there with about 10,000 others.