Apple ran its first iPad commercial during the Academy Awards on Sunday night. The 30-second advertisement shows the tablet computer sitting on an unidentified man’s lap as he whisks through the features and functions in veteran style.

Apple’s latest computing innovation will hit store shelves on April 3, but the commercial offered a closer look at what Apple CEO Steve Jobs calls “something completely new” and “magical” and “revolutionary.” The iPad will start at $499 and lets users browse the web, read and send e-mail, view and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read books, and more.

“Is Apple cranking the marketing machine? Absolutely. is this hype? I would say no,” said Avi Greengart, a senior analyst at Current Analysis. “The press release calls this a magical device. The commercial shows off what it can do. Apple believes they have created products that have unique value propositions, and then they create television advertising that shows off those value propositions.”

A Multipurpose Device

While Apple’s Mac ads choose one particular feature and fire away at the competition, and iPhone ads are basically 30-second tutorials that demonstrate a scenario consumers may experience and show how the product helps, the iPad commercial took a different approach.

“With the iPad commercial, Apple is showing off all the different things the device can do. They show it being used as an e-book reader. They show it being used as a movie viewing device. They show it being used as a photo frame. They show it being used a web browser, but it’s all product all the time,” Greengart said. “This isn’t some pale-faced woman exuding Zen. This is not an ad where you have someone extolling how cool they are for having the product.”

He isn’t sure why Apple’s competitors don’t take a similar approach with their product commercials, noting that Microsoft’s 2009 Seinfeld ads were abstract and bizarre. Even when competitors have highly differentiated products, he said, many of Apple’s competitors have not translated that into consumer awareness.

Focus on the App Store

Apple’s press release hinted at the App Store tie-in for the iPad that lets consumers wirelessly browse, buy and download new apps. so far, the iPad includes 12 new innovative apps designed especially for the iPad, and Apple said the new device will run almost all of the more than 150,000 apps in the App Store, including apps already purchased for an iPhone or iPod touch.

Although the App Store wasn’t part of the launch commercial, Greengart expects it to be more pronounced in future commercials.

“My guess is that the number of new apps available for the iPad is going to be in the thousands or ten thousands in fairly short order, based on what I’m hearing from the developer community,” Greengart said. “Even if someone else comes out with web-browsing tablets and e-readers, you are going to see Apple saying the iPad is better because it will be able to run app X, app Y, and app Z.”