It’s always been a peculiarity of prediction making that we frequently hear the boasting over accurate guesses but rarely hear of the admission of (more frequent) bad bets. I thought I’d start the New Year (I intended to write this post last week but was distracted) by acknowledging a bad bet in my own blog going back a couple years. Back in October 2009, my longtime friend Brad Kay posted on his blog how he believed the combination of iPad and Bumptop would “forever change the computing experience as we know it”. You can view the exchange on his blog here.

I pounced on the statement for a few reasons. One, those kind of grandiose statements are always suspect to me. They roll off the tongue easily but often without  definition or context. I took issue with Brad’s statement on two fronts:

What does it mean to ‘forever change the computing experience as we know it’?

Change it how? Would we all be using iPads in two years? What percentage of the population needs to own iPads and use them a lot to constitute ‘changing the computing experience as we know it’? The statement sounded suspiciously like ‘paradigm shift’ talk and I found that hard to believe given the two-year event horizon. Paradigms don’t shift, they drift. Change happens slower than our sensationalistic media would lead us to believe.

For what it’s worth, I still stand by this point, but the more important piece is what I wasn’t seeing at the time. That brings me to the second issue I had with Brad’s prognostication.

What is the functional role of the iPad in a world of iPhones, laptops and desktop PCs?

I had trouble understanding what the iPad was going to be used for. Like many other nay-sayers at the time, I was trying to understand where the iPad fit for those of us who had an iPhone and a laptop. In several blog posts I tried to imagine how people would do much of anything productive on the iPad. I argued that most folks would not give up their laptop as a work tool. Conversely, in terms of checking email, visiting Facebook, watching YouTube and tweeting, my iPhone seemed sufficient. Why would I elect to lug around yet another device in my already heavy satchel?

And that’s were I was mistaken. I was assuming two things. First, that it was a zero-sum choice and second that productivity was the driving force behind acquiring an iPad. What I was missing was that the iPad, unlike any device before it, fits in a novel modern need set – one that has never existed before because we didn’t have the surrounding backbone and opportunities to warrant it. That need set is of the small task producer-consumer role we all play in varying degrees. In our multitasking lifestyle we now are rarely ever in a purely consumptive or purely productive mode. Instead we do a little of each which is a relatively new behavior pattern for us. We post to Facebook while watching TV and we check and write emails while reading magazines. We flit from production to consumption and back many times each day as we dart from small task to small task and short burst of content to short burst of content.

The other piece I wasn’t getting at the time was the important role of the app developers in defining the iPad’s utility. The device itself didn’t really need a purpose so long as it was sexy and desirable (it was and is) and the developer community could imagine uses for it. Developers have certainly seen uses of the iPad that I’m sure Apple didn’t anticipate. Instead Apple built the device with hooks that allowed it to crowdsource uses. And unlike tablets in the past which were made with productivity in mind, Apple focused on consumption foremost leaving productivity to the app developers to dream up.

In hindsight, Steve Job’s description of the Pad as ‘magical’ was spot on. With magic, no one knows exactly what’s going to happen. The delight in magic is that it is surprising – exactly the joy the iPad delivers to owners who find uses for it they never expected.

I finally got an iPad2 this year (I skipped the first version) and have fallen in love with it. I use it for simple tasks and simple consumption. It doesn’t replace any other device I have, and I suppose in a pinch it is something I could live without, but it has changed the way I experience computing and I’m guessing it has done so for many other owners too. It isn’t in enough hands to be considered paradigm shifting in my opinion. Once you’re away from urban commuters the sightings of iPads drop precipitously, but its heading in that direction and if prices drop as usual, eventually iPads and their like will find their way into more classrooms, offices and homes.

So while today tablets are a long way from being the dominant form factor for digital experience, they are a consideration on the minds of anyone making anything in the digital space from new products, to new marketing, to new tools, to new operational procedures in business, to new entertainment distribution systems, and on and on and on. In that sense, its influence is certainly changing the computing experience as we know it.

So Brad Kay, I owe you a beer. You were right.

That said, the other half of your prediction – that Bumptop thing – not as much traction on that front. Maybe we can buy each other a beer?