I was listening to a netcast this morning (This Week in Media) and the host Alec Lindsey put forward the suggestion that many content related businesses were planning on developing specific content for the iPad.  I had a couple thoughts…

• Why would you funnel development dollars into creating something for a single platform, when that platform has not yet been released.
• How could you develop effectively for a platform, when that platform has not yet been released.
• The suggestion was made that there would be 5 million iPads in the wild within the year.  Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on that…and even at that, 5 million is a mere drop in the bucket compared with the internet at large.
• Specific versions for ANOTHER platform?  C’mon, we’re back to the old Mac vs. Pc, Netscape vs. IE battles here.  We have a common mode of delivery for these types of devices, it’s HTML, have you ever heard of it?

If the iPad becomes wildly popular, I’ll have a look at developing specific content for it, but for now, I’ll expect users with that device to fire up Safari and visit the old fashioned way.  We’ll get an idea today as preordering started about 9 minutes ago for the wi-fi version of the product.