In less than a year’s time, Apple has gone from offering the quaint, albeit entirely impressive, first-generation tablet device that was the iPad, to the beast of a machine we now know as iPad 2. Thinner and lighter than its predecessor, iPad 2 boasts front and rear facing cameras and nine times more graphical chutzpah than the original table. With specs like this and a massive library of applications to back it up, there’s no denying that Cupertino’s new sexy will reign long into 2011 as the once and future King of the Tablets. It might also become the ruler of our living rooms as well.

There’s no denying that the iPad 2 is a multimedia powerhouse. Like all iOS devices, the tablet has the ability to store and play music, movies, and run feature-rich applications. In short, it allows us to consume the stuff we like on the go.

Unlike other iOS devices, the sheer power of the iPad 2 also allows mobile consumers to finally become truly mobile producers of content as well. Sure, we’ve been able to peck out a story, draw, and even edit a few photos on the go since day one with the original iPad, but did you see the power of GarageBand running on iOS yesterday? It was truly impressive how fuild it was. What we saw at yesterday’s Apple Event wasn't just another set of powerful applications running on yet another more powerful piece of hardware. It’s a taste of the future. A future where the entertainment, art, and educational content in our lives won’t be confined to a computer or a connected home entertainment system. It’ll be portable and infinitely shareable.

Up until now, if you shot a movie, you’d have to haul your footage back to a computer to edit it in any meaningful way. Sure, our iPhones have had some sweet basic-editing features for some time now, but trying to hash out awesome footage on such a small interface? Please. You’d need the fingers of a toddler to be anywhere near successful. The same thing goes for making music. Yep, you can record on the go with an iPad or an iPhone, but when it comes down to brass tacks, you’re going to want to get back to a computer to clean those tracks up. From the looks of things, the iPad 2 could make this a thing of the past.

Creation, editing, and most importantly, sharing, all rolled into one powerful device. For now, content can be shared using AirPlay to fling music, video, and images over to other iOS compatible devices like the Apple TV and third-party speakers. On March 11, we’ll also be able to connect to HD television sets and monitors using an HDMI connection cable. We think that this is just a taste of things to come.

Think about it, the current generation Apple TV is so small that one could easily fit into the chassis of many of the HDTVs currently on the market. If one were to remove the Apple TV’s black plastic housing, fitting the device’s guts into the back of TV or monitor almost becomes a non-issue. The next logical step for Apple is to slap that puppy right into an HD TV. Were Apple to allow hardware manufacturers to bake the power of Apple TV right into their products, every TV they made would become AirPlay compatible. That means that every iPad 2 owner would have the ability to create, share and interact with content, no matter where they went. Whip up a vacation video on your tablet and show it off on the TV in your hotel room. That sort of universal connectivity makes the production of the Apple TV as external peripheral moot. It makes connecting to a monitor or TV via a cable seem barbaric. Mark our words, this or something similar to it will happen, and it is going to be awesome.

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