TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

TechCrunch is reporting that Jobs said that the tablet is the most important thing he’s ever done.

Who knows if the report is true or not, but it sums up people’s expectations for the tablet quite nicely. We are expecting the tablet to completely change how we read publications, or consume media, or… something. But we’re expecting it to completely change something on an iPhone-like level.

Leo Laporte was talking about this today, and said that Apple can’t just hit a double or a triple — it has to hit a home run. Everything less will be considered a failure.

I think the tablet is going to be much more difficult than the iPhone was, because it’s more ambitious in what it’s trying to do. We were expecting very simple things from Apple conceptually for the iPhone: make a better phone, and add in a good iPod. Apple delivered something much more of course, but the hurdle was a lot lower.

The tablet is different. The tablet is inherently something we don’t need. We can read news and magazines online, watch movies and browse the web on our iPhone or computer. We won’t buy it because it fulfills a need, but because it’s so much better at doing these things.

Those are tough expectations to meet. But only Apple can do it, because they’re the only ones who dare to make such a dramatic change. There’s nothing more inspiring than that.