iPad is shipping. Civilization about to change.

Yes, it’s true. Apple’s latest and greatest is now shipping. The Twitterverse is all abuzz with anticipation. They’re set to arrive on Saturday, but if UPS manages to deliver any early, I’m sure the news will be all over the Internet within hours, if not minutes.

It seems the demand for these is strong enough that analyst Katy Huberty with Morgan Stanley now believes that Apple will ship between 8 and 10 million iPads in 2010. I think that’s a stretch, but even a number half that size is still significant for a brand new product that is essentially creating its own market category. The Kindle and Nook, two devices that also (largely) invented a new product niche, have had modest sales volumes but nothing even remotely like this (to date, Amazon has declined to release sales figures for the Kindle, which means it’s a relatively small number, probably a few hundred thousand). Though Barnes & Noble sold out of the Nook ereader over the holidays, they didn’t release actual numbers either.

True, the iPad is a multi-purpose device, which I’ve already argued is going to either kill the Kindle and Nook and their ereader brethren or force them to (a) reduce price to an almost throwaway point or (b) incorporate additional functionality (i.e., iPad-ize them).

My own take on this? Despite my wife being out of work since last fall (because the owner of the business she worked for was a complete fucking sociopathic asshole) and the corresponding knee-capping our income has taken, I’m going to get one sooner rather than later. Probably before the end of the summer, but before then if I’m comfortable managing it.