...what do you think?

Personally, I'm disappointed that it looks like an iPod touch on steroids, and that it runs a glorified version of iPhone OS instead of Snow Leopard.

Disaster, people who are likely to buy that already have a decent phone and laptop..

Generally disappointed as well. A deal breaker for me is the inability to multi-task e.g., listen to music and read a book at the same time. This is obviously a function of the OS choice and, given the processing power onboard, is a real disappointment.

Also, more personally to my situation, GSM 3G simply isn't available anywhere near me and there aren't any places locally that I'd want to hang out for a long time using their Wi-Fi. If I'm at home, I'll use a computer (desktop or laptop) and the only thing I can see that I'd use an iPad for would be if I could read and listen to music at the same time (see objection above).

I'm also kind of waiting until the whole ebook thing sorts itself out into a widely adopted standard that everybody uses but this isn't really a deal breaker for me.

They'll sell a gazillion of them though.

I was really interested in the variety of books they have on the iBook site. I like my Kindle because Amazon seems to have a very large and diverse selection that has been growing rapidly since the gadget's inception.

I have an iPod Touch and my son has confiscated it to play application games. If I bought an iPad I know exactly what would happen. With the Kindle it looks too much like a book to interest him It's a win -win.

Really? Because I know my iPod touch can play music and surf the web at the same time. How hard could it be to make the iPad play music and display a book?

Yes, really. See comments here or do a web search for iPad multitask. Quoting from the above link: "Where is multitasking (honestly, only one app at a time for a device of this size and speed)?"

Not supported.

Now that is just nuts, Apple. :rolleyes:

I have a MacBook Pro for the times I need a portable computer, thank you very much.

I'm not sure what Apple had in mind as far as target end user/application is concerned. It's clearly not intended to be a laptop replacement, yet it will run iWork. It's clearly intended to be more than just an e-reader but doesn't multi-task. Dunno.

All I can say is that if I was their target market, they missed.

I'm scratching my head too. since it runs iWork, you'd think they'd implement some sort of stylus input to enable one to take notes on it.

Same here. I'm going to consider an iPhone if/when Verizon or someone besides AT&T gets them. For now, my iPod touch is an excellent mobile device.

Some thoughts on the iPad:

Wonder who the overactive imaginations were who thought that up??

Still pretty funny, despite the main character.

I read that the clip from "The Bunker" has been used more than 250 times in various parodies (I've seen 3 of them). I also read that when the director of the film was asked what he thought of it being used so much for that purpose he said he was OK with it and thought many of them were funny.

It would seem to be highly adaptable.

Yep, pretty adaptable:

LOL.

I'm sure that you'll be able to do this on the iPad too. The multi-tasking limitation is that you can only use the official Apple apps in the background. Just like the limitations in ipod touch and iphone, it appears that it won't allow you to listen to Pandora or Last.fm and read a book since those aren't Apple sanctioned for backgrounding.

I believe the limitation is in the OS though (not a hardware or memory issue). I'm guessing we'll see this ability in OS 4.0 for all three devices.

I'm personally more disappointed in the lack of Flash and Silverlight. I realize it's old technology, but it'd be awesome to watch Hulu and Netflix on the iPad.

The earlier prototype???

Surely!

About Silverlight and Flash...I certainly don't miss either on the itouch. Hulu and Netflix need to adopt better codecs.

My feeling is that movies and books are what they are after.

It's a large surface which is perfect for movies on the go, as well as a Internet, games and books.

I'm really looking forward to Apple being a new player in the game and lowering ebook prices to a reasonable amount. There is simply no reason why ebooks are more expensive than what I can buy with a coupon at my local Borders.

I completely agree but it'll take a long time to change. Using the recording industry as an analogy, with digital downloads you eliminate a huge number of middlemen and costs (no physical CD, no distributors, resellers, no transportation costs, ...) yet 10 years ago a CD cost about $18. If you download every track off of a new CD it'll cost ..... $18. Yes, I know there are tons of counterexamples but the point remains that it's possible to go directly from the artist to the end user at very low cost. For most artists, their percentage of CD sales remains unchanged and is very low. The vast majority of the money goes to the label and distributors.

This is slowly changing and will continue to evolve in the future but it's taken a while. I don't expect book publishing to transform itself any time in the near future.

Nope. If we don't vote for with our dollars now, there will be no change.

I mean, look how CD's price has decreased, even though it was priced much higher than records and cassette tapes at the time. Oh wait, I guess that's a bad example, since it has never decreased, even though it was promised that it would.

Exactly! If the record labels could invent a way for you to just think about a CD and have it appear on your iPod it'd cost .... $18.

This has been an interesting thing to watch. The record labels are all in trouble, sales are falling, digital downloads (unpaid) are rising and there is an increasing emphasis on "hits". This has several side effects:

• Labels tend to promote established artists exclusively so new artists have a harder time getting noticed.
• Music distribution channels both paid and unpaid are in a state of flux but the labels are holding the line on pricing.
• The labels have huge back catalogs of music that they could put out there available for download but they don't for two reasons: they're hoping it'll be used in a movie or commercial and suddenly be a hit again and secondly they don't want them to be pirated.

The book publishing industry has watched all of this take place and is scared to death of e-readers as the end of their current business model. They'll do exactly the same thing the record industry has done: hang on to their old way of doing business as long as possible.

Here is an article that discusses the above point about physical media (records, books) vs. electronic (downloads, e-books) and Apple's role in both.