7) Lose the dock/keyboard accessory - the iPad supports bluetooth. Apple sells bluetooth keyboards. The camera accessory and the dock accessory are both so un-Apple-like - so is the cover - since when does Apple make accessories? I remember Palm Pilots having a similar keyboard dock - it was just lame. It feels like Apple is hedging that the on-screen keyboard wont work... let people buy a laptop if they want a real keyboard. Make a good enough synch system and nobody will need a keyboard.
I agreed with most of what you said, but not this one. I agree with the first half of the first sentence ("lose the dock/keyboard accessory"), but nothing past that.
1) From having used various devices in the last few years, virtual keyboards aren't good enough to typing fast in a meeting/class. You need a physical keyboard for that. Otherwise, you'll be struggling to keep up with the meeting/class.
2) Saying that people who want that should buy a laptop (or netbook) is asinine. You don't need a laptop nor netbook for that, you just need a physical keyboard. And having a built-in keyboard on a netbook is, in my experience, a waste of weight. The ONLY place it's useful is in a meeting/class. When you're on the go, it just gets in the way and makes the device awkward. The ideal form factor for netbook sized devices is: slate tablet, with the ability to use external keyboards. Laptops are dinosaur devices for dinosaur people (too big, too heavy, too expensive, etc.). Netbooks are just a smaller/cheaper version of that mindset. Mid-size tablets (with the option for external keyboards) are the right choice.
3) While bluetooth is nice, and should definitely be supported, it is "not good enough". There's battery issues, etc. The right answer, for me, is a folding USB keyboard. I bought one for use with my mobile devices, and it's perfect. It doesn't get in the way when I'm on the go (because it's in my gadget bag), and it gives me a FULL size keyboard when I'm in a meeting (unlike, say, the Apple BT Keyboard, which is not full size, nor is it as small as my USB keyboard when it's folded in half -- the Apple BT Keyboard is full-of-fail, if you want to use it as a mobile device keyboard).
4) the problem with the keyboard-dock is that it only allows you to use the built-in keyboard. It should let you use any keyboard you want, and just have a USB port on the front (and an Apple Display Port on the back). Then you can use it with a mobile USB keyboard, or with your desktop KVM switch, etc.
The iPad should have a keyboard-less dock with USB ports that support USB keyboards. I know that some of the attachments have USB capability (like the one in the camera kit), but ... it's not clear to me if the software on the device is capable of supporting the HID profile of USB (HID = Human Interface Device ... keyboards and mice/trackpads).
If the camera kit's USB adapter supports that, and there's a dock that has a USB-Host port (not just a USB-Client adapter for syncing with your Mac/PC), then great. But I haven't seen specs that say it, just comments speculating it.
Apple should ditch the keyboard-dock, and release a KVM-switch compatible dock (which can also be used as a replacement for the keyboard-dock, if you just hook up any available USB keyboard). They should also release a KVM-switch compatible cable/dongle, so that you can put power, display, and keyboard attachments on it, and put it into a landscape oriented stand (and thus do all of those same things in landscape orientation instead of portrait orientation).
