Those examples may all be true, but that's not all of what a computer does. There is a fundamental shift to mobile for usage, that doesn't mean anyone's getting rid of their computers. It's just a time/attention shift.
Sorry but that's a straw man and completely misses my point. I never said that those examples were all computers do. But those are the things most people do most of the time - even those who need, or think they need, a "real" computer. And those are *also* the kinds of examples where the speed, convenience, and superior overall user experience of the iPad makes itself known over and over and over and over and over in every single moment of use.
And while people may not (yet) be getting rid of their computers in droves, they are and will increasingly abandon them to 'occasional if ever' usage. I still maintain a household iMac and make no bones about it. It serves one essential function that the cloud has yet to conquer in a way that works for me - and that is to act as a media storage and syncing hub. But I will happily eliminate that sole remaining function when the cloud provides the functionality in a way that works for me.
As for the rest - high end video/photo editing, heavy spreadsheet jockeying, serious page layout work, and coding, the path from here is pretty clear. More and more functionality has appeared in apps and iOS over time, and of course thanks to Mr. Moore we've had lovely increases in hardware capabilities, and those processes can only continue.
-iMovie is completely fine for most consumer use, and is already being used for light professional use (I know, I'm in the industry)
-Numbers and various office suites are fine for viewing and tweaking spreadsheets
-Codea is a great little development environment, built right into an apple approved app and already resulting in a pretty cool ipad game called Cargo-bot which was developed entirely on the iPad
-Adobe and Apple both continue to push what's possible with photo editing on the iPad
I cite these not to say that "we are here" but to demonstrate clearly where we are going. This kind of stuff was completely unimaginable to so many when the iPad first appeared. Now? They're more or less conventional ideas which only hint at where things will go.
The reality is that most people don't need a computer (again, using the current conventional definition of a Mac or PC) because as individuals most people don't do much of the stuff that an iPad cannot. And, for what the iPad does do, it does so in a manner which is vastly superior in terms of overall user experience (and here too I include things like size and weight, battery life, portability, etc. as well as the speed and efficiency of the touch interface).
Some critics of this notion too get bogged down by interface. To that I say again it's a limit of imagination. iOS devices already have myriad physical keyboard options, and now have dedicated DJ and audio mixing consoles, musical instrument interfaces, and on and on. Again, the trend will only continue. But these are not 'most people most of the time' kinds of things. And they don't need to be!
.. Unless you want to do things slower and more inefficiently forget accepting the iPad 'as a good enough' tool especially for a productivity tool. Why limit yourself?
