The haters keep saying they don't understand what the iPad is for or who would use it and that it's not good enough as a laptop replacement or it's just a giant iPod Touch. How many examples does it take?
I'm an IT professional. I have a state of the art workstation to work on. I also have a macbook pro which I find myself using outside of work to... browse, email, watch a movie etc. The first thing I tried to do with my iPhone was these things while I sat on the sofa in front of the tv after work. Of course, I was frustrated because it was too small, but the reason I tried to do this in the first place was that the macbook was too big, ungainly and frankly *complicated* in that I just wanted to click and use, not open folders and manage file systems. The iPad is perfect for everything I do outside of work, it also has the perfect OS for *these* tasks. I've been using computers professionally for over 20 years and even I don't consider it a toy. It *is* a giant iPod Touch (which was the toy) and that's the perfect tool for the job - I wanted an iPad from the first time I sat down with my iPhone even though it didn't exist then. The need/use pattern existed.
Similarly for exclusively casual users like my parents, it also does everything they want to do too, from the sofa and without the unecessary complications of an old fashioned computer. They certainly don't need a workstation or anything close, not even a laptop.
So as someone mentioned before, that's the low-end AND the high-end covered in two devices that excludes the need for netbooks, laptops etc. It's *these* devices that are compromised not the iPad. They're neither powerful enough for serious work nor portable & simple enough for pleasurable recreational use. They are the middle ground that will fade away or simply find a more niche user base.
I suspect those complaining are neither casual users nor, frankly, serious power users, because if they were they'd have a desktop workstation and wouldn't be wanting to do such innappropriate tasks on a laptop. Predominantly nerdy kids who've never actually done a days real work in their life thus far and like to brag how powerful their computer is? Presumptious but quite likely the case... I'm sure Alienware will eventually release a ludicrously powerful netbook they can brag about and ilegally rip dvds at twice the speed of anything else on the planet, but guys that's a tiny market right there.
It's not rocket science kids, if you can't see how good this thing is at what it does, and that what it does is enough for *most* people from pro's to casual users you can't be living in the same world as *most* of us.
