Lightweight and powerful, the iPad is Steve Job’s perfect amalgamation of the laptop and the smartphone. Jobs argues that netbooks, which claim to draw from the benefits of both devices, can’t do what a laptop does best, and can’t do what a smartphone does best. Thus, replacing the netbook in its specialty niche between the two, Jobs markets the iPad for its capacity to browse the internet, send emails, share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, and read ebooks, ALL better than both the laptop and the smartphone. As Jobs said in Apple’s January Event, “Netbooks are slow, have low-quality displays, and they run clunky, old PC software, so they’re not better than a laptop at anything. They’re just cheaper.”

And while I appreciate the $500 price point for a 10-hour battery 16GB non-3G iPad, I don’t necessarily buy Jobs’ pitch for the iPad.

Essentially, I see the current first generation of iPad as an overgrown iPod Touch (with the capacity for 3G if you want to pay up). Obviously its robust hardware and what looks to be a beautiful screen beat out the iPod Touch irrefutably, but the iPad does not revolutionize the netbook market- an evolution perhaps, but not a revolution. And it’s not that I don’t love Apple products. Unfortunately, I too have fallen prey to Steve Jobs, the quintessential snake oil salesman, and I’m sure by the time a few revisions are put into the iPad I too will be cradling my beautiful tablet. But, as my primary gripe about the current iPad, without the capacity to multitask, the iPad is just a nice paper weight. Without the ability to go to on the web to stream music on Pandora while reading my ebook, or going over my PDF’d notes while buying songs off the iTunes Music Store… well, the iPad is useless.

So, while I don’t see iPad sales bolstering Apple’s stock price any time soon with this current generation, like I said, Steve Jobs, the quintessential snake oil salesman, always seems to make people need things they didn’t even know they wanted. In fact, I’m sure my first, second, and third generation iPods can speak to that fact…