The Wired iPad app had just gone live launched with the message that Apple’s device finally gives s the magazine the “opportunity to make the Wired we always dreamed of”. And isn’t that a great cover to kick off with?

Editor-in-chief Chris Anderson said that while Wired had always made its stories accessible online that is not the same as a magazine and he noted the irony of a magazine founded to chronicle the digital revolution coming to readers each month “on the smooshed atoms of dead trees”. The medium he said is not always the message.

“The tablet is our opportunity to make the Wired we always dreamed of. It has all the visual impact of paper, enhanced by interactive elements like video and animated infographics.

“We can offer you a history of Mars landings that lets you explore the red planet yourself. We can take you inside Trent Reznor’s recording studio and let you listen to snippets of his work in progress. And we can show you exactly how Pixar crafted each frame of its new movie, Toy Story 3,” Anderson said.

It might not be flash, but Wired is still working closely with Adobe to deliver its iPad app in a project  headed by Wired creative director Scott Dadich.

Anderson said that the iPad and the tablet more generally (interesting he used the broad phrase tablet in the announcement reminding people that this market is bigger than Apple) represented “a grand experiment in the future of media” and that over the next few months Wired planned to integrate social media and offer a variety of versions and ways to subscribe in digital form.

“We’ll learn through experimentation, and we will watch closely as our readers teach us how they want to use tablets,” Anderson said.