The actual Apple iPad may weigh only a pound and a half, but it’s got tons of hopes and expectations already weighing it down. The promise of a tablet device that would bridge the gap between an iPhone and Amazon’s Kindle reader is an intoxicating one for publishers desperate for a glimmer of good news. The New York Times did a piece on the iPad, and summed up the reasons behind the hype:

– Almost all media companies have run aground in the Internet Age as they gave away their print and video content on the Web and watched paying customers drift away as a result.

– People who have seen the tablet say Apple will market it not just as a way to read news, books and other material, but also a way for companies to charge for all that content. By marrying its famously slick software and slender designs with the iTunes payment system, Apple could help create a way for media companies to alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era.

Steve Jobs’ presentation of the iPad on Jan. 27 was one of the most-anticipated events of the year in the tech community, live-blogged so much that for most of the day, the word “iPad” was the most popular term on Twitter, surpassed only briefly by President Obama’s State of the Union address. Tech provocateur Jason Calacanis caused a stir amongst the fanatical Apple users when he claimed to have a special sneak edition of the iPad that he was playing with.

Now that the wait is over, and the device has finally been unveiled, the Web is full of reviews, opinons and arguments about whether or not the iPad is really a media  revoluation in white plastic, or is a big dud. A sampling:

– The tech blog Engadget was so overwhelmed by the contradictory discussions that they just let their writers duke it out in an extended “Point/Counterpoint” article. Mostly, they felt that it was just a big iPhone – but they all love the iPhone, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

– AdAge focused in on the consortium of News Corp, Time, Conde Nast, Hearst and Meredith building a storefront called Next Issue Media to sell versions of their content over the iPad and other table computers. They questioned whether publishers could adapt to the faster news cycle that readers are demanding, and worried that if Apple can corner the market with its new device, they can mandate pricing structures in much the same way they have done with music on iTunes.

– Tech blogger Rory Marinich, on the other hand, is in transports of ecstasy over the iPad, saying that despite all the naysayers pointing out the things that the iPad doesn’t have, “Apple’s not actually selling a computer. Or a flash drive or multitouch. They needed to make those things for their product, but that’s not what the product is. The product is, simply put, a magical screen that can do anything you ever want it to, no matter what that is.”

– Of more interest is the insight on journalism professor Alfred Hermida’s blog, where a commenter writes, “Anyone saying you can’t make money with digital content (RIAA, Hollywood, et al) is intentionally ignoring Apple’s iconoclastic innovation with hardware and software distribution methods. Apple shows the way on how to add value to digital IP in a serious way. They’re training us on how to pay for content again — that’s huge!”

Setting aside whether or not the iPad will be the turning point that will actually make it profitable for professionals to create high-quality content again, there are some technical issues which need to be considered, before we all shut down the printing presses forever and pin our futures on a single platform, no matter how magical.

The iPad, like the iPhone before it, still does not support Flash.

When Jobs navigated to a page with a Flash ad on it, there was the by-now-familiar error icon on the screen — eliciting groans and laughs from the crowd in attendance.

It’s been speculated that Apple, for technical reasons that would take several long blog posts to explain, is waiting for the next iteration of HTML so that it can display Flash without having to have the Flash plug-in installed in their iPhone/iPad browser software.

But until this issue is resolved, without Flash, a lot of the rich media ads that publishers rely on for revenue are not going to appear on this new platform. Which means that competing tech like AJAX or J-query (which functions quites well on the iPhone) is going to have to start taking over…

If this the marriage of text-and-video content to be sold via microcommerce out of the iTunes store (some are already predicting that there will be dedicated storefronts like iBook or iNews) does manage to produce a solid revenue stream for publishers, the challenge is going to be making the advertising that web publishers have developed work on this platform as well.

For more on the EPUB open publishing standard that is going to be used on the iPad to format and sell content, check out the Wikipedia article here.