OK so we all love cool gadgets, I certainly do, and possibly one of the coolest gadgets due to hit the shops in the US at the end of March is the long awaited iPad from Apple.

Much anticipation preceded the launch on Wednesday as consumers world wide waited to see if Apple were set to reinvent the market.

Of particular interest was the iBooks store which could see Apple corner the market in digital book distribution much like it did with its iTunes store for music. We have learned from the iTunes experience, if you give consumers an ultra easy method for getting the content they want onto the device they use every day then you can take over that market.  Price becomes less of an issue, and we even forgave the DRM on our music for a while too.

I was an avid Napster user, subscribing to their £10 per month service.  I had the Windows Media Centre version rigged up to my TV for unlimited streaming of music to my front room.  I wanted my music on a portable player and took the decision to go away from Windows based devices and opted for an iPod, I had arrived at the Apple music revolution!

The problem with this was that I could not get Napster music on to the iPod because it was DRM so I needed a separate Windows DRM supported device, my second portable player arrived shortly after this discovery.

So now I had Napster on my PC, TV and my portable player, great but a nightmare to sync up, often taking hours to download and sync enough music for a weekend away with many failed attempts.  This is when I dusted off the iPod, ditched Napster’s £10 per month unlimited music service and never looked back, well until Spotify arrived a few years later but that’s another story!

The point I’m making here is that I had a great setup, it was cheap and it was legal but it just was not that easy to get my music out and about with me.  This is where Apple was able to corner the digital music distribution market by making it easy to get your music where you wanted it.  Putting the iTunes store on the iPhone and iPod Touch was another genius move and just keeps making it easier and easier to buy music from Apple.

This is what is promised with their iBooks store and the iPad.  The iPad isn’t digital ink and they will not be launching with as many titles as you can get at Amazon but if you want a real easy method of getting your book onto a digital device that you want to have with you all the time then the iPad is surely going to set the standard.  More titles will follow and the digital reader industry will wonder what hit them.

My guess is that if consumers are going to purchase a third device for their digital reading they are going to opt for a super sexy, full colour, multi functional device that could replace their netbook or ultra portable laptop, not a monochrome e-reader with limited functionality, and we’ll forgive the digital ink – for now.