"One tablet to rule them all and in the darkness bind
them."
I don't really have any insight into why Apple released the iPad, but I can try to guess.
In some ways, its a no brainer. Apple was looking at how it
dominates the portable music player and smartphone market and then
thinks that if it makes a larger iPod and combines it with 3G -
success!
And, of course, it was.
The biggest problem for the iPad is that while it may take away from
some netbook sales and may introduce some folks to the Apple cornucopia
of computing, it does not lend itself to traditional computer-type
work.
I concur. I just lost three paragraphs, because I am typing this on
an iPad and there is no "Recent Items" on the version of
Pages for the iPad. The reason I can type on the iPad is because I
have a Bluetooth keyboard - and there is no major cut and paste work to
do.
But that's not the purpose of the iPad. It's intended to be a
consumer of media in a neat, small package, and not necessarily a
producer of media. I would much rather cruise the Internet while my
wife watches The Secret Life of the American Teenager or some
other cable time waster than have to fight iOS to do something that I
take for granted in OS X. Typing is not fun, but using the iPad to
watch
Netflix is great!
Why not look outside the box?
The iPad can be used while you are standing and walking. So to use
the iPad for serious work, you have to find situations where the user
is not sitting at a desk. If it isn't replacing clipboards in a
hospitals - well, it probably is.
The education field is traditionally conservative, but I can see
teachers using the iPad to roam around the classroom, and I can see
special education departments using the iPad to allow handicapped
students to access the same computer universe as mainstream
students.
I wonder if the three paragraphs that I lost to cyber hell were
better? No way of telling now.
John Hatchett's computer desk with PowerBooks and 17" Apple
monitors.
However, thanks to scoring two old 17" Apple CRT monitors and
TenFourFox, I have turned
my old PowerBooks into desktops and, even as we speak, I am testing the
load limits of my desk. See the accompanying photo. Betting pools may
form.
I like using my iPad for somethings, but I will always need a
laptop. 
