Did you even read your links? The first one states that the growth in netbook sales slowed in Q1 2010 compared to Q2 2009. Not the sales, but the growth of sales. Moreover, the article noted that the growth of sales slowed to only 38% (as compared to 49% in the previous year). In other words, people are still buying tons of netbooks, and the growth of netbooks sales is tremendous...it's only noteworthy because it's not as good as the even higher sales from the previous year.
And probably some of this decline is due to the iPad...but some of it is also due to the fact that more and more people who could use a netbook already have one.
Re: crippled - While I think that "crippled" is too strong of a word for the iPad, I do agree that its value has been diminished by the fact that the iPhone has more RAM. When you buy a brand new cutting edge product, you are buying it not just because of what it can do now, but because you expect that it will be capable enough of running all cutting edge software for some period in the future. I.e., when you buy an iPhone, you know that it will eventually be surpassed by the next version (probably in a year), but you also count on having one year in which all apps produced for the iPhone will run on your phone.
Because the iPhone now has twice as much memory as the iPad, iPad owners have to be concerned that their iPad will not be able to run many newer apps as well as they were expecting (since these apps may run better with more memory). See iMovie for the iPhone.
Further, most people who bought an iPad did so in expectation of iOS4 becoming available (at least most people on MR did...). One big feature of iOS4 is multi-tasking...and it's clear that multi-tasking will work better on a device with more memory.
Having said that, it is true that the iPad won't physically be any different on June 24 than it was on June 23. But I think it will seem less capable, in the same way that my iPhone 3G seems much less capable now than it did when I bought it.
And if Apple announced that they were going to come out with an iPhone 4.5 in August, with 1GB of memory, a "brain screen," and further refinements, I would feel disappointed that I had bought a 4.
