On the cusp of his company’s iPad launch, Steve Jobs sat down with Time to discuss his career, life, and of course, the iPad.

Time, along with many other publications, will be lavishing coverage on the iPad, which Jobs calls one of the most important milestones of his professional life. So much hysteria and such high expectations have built up over the iPad that it has the possibility of repeating Apple’s thunderous success with the iPod and the iPhone, which are now worldwide icons (like Steve himself).

I think that the iPad form has the potential to be revolutionary but not right now. It is a pre-order winner, but the device itself is more limited than the netbooks that Jobs denigrates. Perhaps the second or third iPad, with much higher specs, a vast user-base in place, thousands of publishers onboard, and HTML5 in wide usage can be the revolutionary tablet that works for everyone.

Source: Time