John Siracusa of Ars Technica has written a compelling post on why the hype over the tablet is overblown with regard to its technical capabilities, and why we aren’t likely to be blown away on that front.

The biggest reason John is right is that many of the futuristic ideas being written about ignore the wisdom of versioning strategy.  Sure, some of them will make it into the product eventually, but they likely won’t (and should not) be in version 1.0

When developing the iPhone, Apple had a lot of the ideas that didn’t make it into the initial version.  If they had wanted to, Apple probably could have released the iPhone with the App store from the beginning.  But just because you can do something technologically doesn’t mean you should.  The market needs to be ready to understand and assign value that technical achievement in order for it to succeed (in order for people to buy).  Even if Apple had the technical capacity to release the app store then, it wouldn’t have made sense strategically because the market was not yet ready for it, and needed time to absorb the rest of the iPhone capabilities first.  So Apple waited until the following year, and by then the market understood iPhone 1.0 and was ready for the 2.0 version

With most technology products, it takes a while for the market to absorb the new ideas and functionality.  If a manufacturer includes too much stuff in a new version, the market tends to get confused.  Confusion over what a product is supposed to do (its value proposition) is the leading reason that people choose not to buy: they don’t get why they should want or need it.

Apple is masterful at making sure that its audience—consumers and the consumer media—gets it.  By that I mean that these constituencies are able to digest and understand why they should want or need the product.  In the case of the tablet, while some of the ideas being put forth are certainly interesting, they might simply be too much too soon.  The market first needs to absorb version 1.0 of the tablet before it can be ready to absorb versions 2.0 and 3.0.