DesignAxiom acquired a few iPads last week and I’ve had one to play with since then. I’ll admit I’m having a lot of fun tinkering, downloading Apps, and generally trying out the idea of an Etch-a-Sketch as my newest computer. Yes, there’s an App for that.

It’s not just a Personal Computer, it’s a Very Personal Computer. It has a unique interactive stance. The physical size and shape of it, the “form factor”, suggest a book or an agenda. But it’s also a TV screen. Or a game screen. Or a big visual trackpad. Nothing is settled yet.

Whereas the iPhone perfected the mobile phone, the iPad is an altogether new kind of computer. Which is exciting. Not “Avatar” exciting. But maybe “Netscape” exciting. It’s giving people new ideas about what the Internet can look like.

It’s also an attention getter. I was at a restaurant showing my partner pictures on my laptop. Realizing that all the same pictures were sync’d on the iPad, I took it out and handed it to him. The reaction in the restaurant was almost creepy. The waitress came over to fawn. “Is that an iPad?!” came out in the same breathless tone as “Is that Justin Bieber?!” People at other tables stared. Relentlessly.

That’s the hype, but it’ll die down. I am getting less afraid to use the iPad in public.

And as the hype dies down, it becomes apparent that the firefight between Apple and Adobe, Flash and HTML5, is largely irrelevant. Whether you are a true believer in Flash or in the messianic HTML5, it just doesn’t matter. The iPad displaces both. Native Apps are the place where the Internet shines on the iPad. The browser is just another App doing what it was originally intended to do: browse hyper-text.

And Flash, well, the loss of Adobe Air (Flash) for developing Apps is not helpful, but on the other hand, as I’ve mentioned before, the iPad doesn’t need Flash to enhance its interactivity, the way a browser does. So the loss of Flash is a loss of convenience, but not a loss of capability.

For DesignAxiom, the iPad is a welcome step in the evolution of interactive on the Internet. On the iPad, just showing up in the browser will not be good enough for companies that take their interactive presence seriously. They’re going to make sure that their customers can access their services with an App. And the bar for the quality of those applications is set very high, because it’s primarily set by Apple.

It remains to be seen how all our clients will react to the debut of the iPad. But those that have thought about it, think of it as an opportunity. Not a fad. And not a threat.