Being somebody who bought an iPad on launch day, it was a little too late to return it by the time the iPhone 4 was announced and it was clear that every single iPad owner had just been shafted.
As I said, this isn't a case of the product being released one year then being revised a year later. Jobs and others knew exactly where they were going with the iPhone, iPod touch, and eventually the iPad. But they intentionally held the iPad back for sake of profit margins. Within days of the iPad's release, we get word of iOS 4 and it not being ready for the iPad for several months after initial launch. Then a few weeks later we see iPhone 4, making it clear that all iOS devices will have dual cameras and "FaceTime".
Why didn't the iPad ship with this? Because it's better to debut it with the iPhone 4, since that is Apple's biggest money maker, and try to get as many iPad early adopters to upgrade next year.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but the only thing that sets the Xeon apart from Core i7 is the ability to use ECC memory. Apple uses the same chipsets and such as everyone else. In some cases, Apple uses lower quality parts than others. Case in point would be the Panasonic (Matsushita) DVD writers.
Contrary to popular belief among Apple forums, GOOD PC parts can be had for dirt cheap compared to Macs. Once you have all of those parts it barely takes a few minutes to throw the entire computer together. Installing the OS? Well, considering how much bloat OS X ships with (Several GB worth of printer drivers still installed in Snow Leopard, as well as language translations and other things), you have to reinstall OS X as soon as you get a Mac. So installing the OS and downloading updates is a moot point considering OS X has you download a few GB worth of updates out of the box. I just reinstalled Snow Leopard recently, when iLife '11 came out. Wanted a clean start. I still had over 2GB worth of updates to download.
Had my iPad on launch day. Didn't find out about FaceTime and such until I was weeks passed the return window.
Didn't find out about iOS 4 until half way into that return window and didn't think we'd be waiting until almost the end of the year to finally get that update. Thought September at most, since that is usually what Apple refers to as "Fall".
Edit: To put it in perspective, we're about two and a half months away from the one year anniversary original iPad announcement. And we're still running the same software shown in that demo. In that same time, the iPhone and iPod touch lines have received two significant software upgrades that have changed how those devices are being used.
My iPad, that cost me over $400 more than my iPhone 4, sits basically unused because the lack of multi-tasking and non-working EQ for music kills its usability for anything other than being a very expensive eReader.
