The tech world worked itself into a frenzy as it anticipated the unveiling of Apple’s new tablet device, and rarely has there been so much fuss over such an incremental change in technology.

At least that’s what it seemed like when I first started reading about the new iPad during and after Steve Jobs’ press event Wednesday. After all, the iPad looks an awful lot like an iPhone or iPod Touch – only bigger – but it doesn’t make phone calls or take pictures. It will surf the Web like a personal computer, but, well, it’s not a PC.

Oh sure, the iPad will be easy to use like an iPhone. And it will do a great job displaying photos, video and other Web or electronic content, but so does any computer with a decent monitor. So the hoopla over the arrival of the iPad has me puzzling about a couple of things. First, why am I going to need (want) one? Second, how the heck is this not-quite-phone-not-quite-computer going to save the news publishing industry?

If you’re a gadget freak, an Apple fanatic or a serial first-adopter, you already want (need) one. But as with its other revolutionary products, Apple isn’t after you. It’s after the rest of us. (For the record, I’m not an early adopter. I never had a personal cell phone until I bought my iPhone in December 2008. I bought a MacBook Pro in June 2009 because my 5-year-old PC just wasn’t fast enough. And just this week I finally replaced my 11-year-old tube TV with an LCD, high def TV).

Honestly, I can’t think of many reasons I’d want to buy an iPad. I love my iPhone and some of cool applications I’ve acquired for free from the Apple App Store. I’m fond of my MacBook, which handles all of my personal and professional needs very well. What would I do with a device that doesn’t quite work as well as my computer or my phone?

I used to wonder why I would need a mobile phone. After all, I’ve always had a landline in my home. Now, however, I wouldn’t go anywhere without my iPhone. And it doesn’t have much to do with calling people. It has more to do with access to maps, e-mail, Facebook, the electronic notepad, weather forecasts, and the camera. It turns out, it’s a handy gadget, and it’s made my life better and easier in ways that I didn’t expect when I bought it.

The iPad will win fans and customers in the same way, especially after software developers start building applications and utilties that some of us can’t yet imagine.

And that leads me to some of things folks are already imagining for the iPad, like, for example the salvation of the newspaper and magazine industries. The logic seems to be that newspapers can once again be paid for content if they push it onto iPads and then charge folks for downloading it, a la music from the iTunes store, or perhaps an app from the App Store.

As a journalist, I fell in love with the World Wide Web because it offers multiple ways to tell stories – words, sounds, pictures, animation and video. But after more than 10 years of exposure to the Internet as a story-telling tool, most newspaper companies are only now beginning to take advantage of the multimedia possibilities of the Web. What makes anybody think that newspapers will suddenly see the light and generate multimedia content that people will PAY for on a tablet device like the iPad?

Granted, there’s a glimmer of hope. If you’ve not seen this demo of an issue of Sports Illustrated issue made for a tablet, you need to check it out. It’s brilliant. But it’s just a demo, and it’s not the kind of thing newspapers are likely to produce day in and day out. There’s not much point in rehashing the arguments about why newspapers are failing in a multimedia world. It’s simply enough to note that they’ve failed.

Really, the future of the iPad doesn’t depend on what content producers – newspapers, magazines, television studios, movie makers and musicians – want to put on it. The future depends on what iPad buyers want to do with it. And that remains to be seen.

What might you want to do with an iPad? Write a comment!