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Couple quick thoughts on the iPad:
It's pretty much what I expected. I thought there might be a camera (front facing, for video chat,) but I'm not so surprised there isn't. I didn't expect there to be a keyboard, so I'm a little surprised at that external option.
The price is a little lower than I expected. Apple is clearly gunning to dominate this space in a way they never tried with personal computers.
People are complaining that it's just a big iPhone, but I think John Gruber has it right that the truth is the other way around: the iPhone is a small iPad. This is the product Apple has been trying to make for many years, but it wasn't possible until now. A few years ago they took a lot of the ideas from the then still incubating tablet and made what they could at the time: the iPhone. But this is what they wanted to make, and they just had to wait for the reality of what is possible to catch up with their ideas.
As I predicted, lots of people seem to be enraged by this device (and all the hype around it). They point out, with some accuracy, that there isn't anything new here. Or worse, that there is even less here than lots of other devices that have been on the market for far longer. But this misses the point. The iPod was arguably worse (certainly had less features) than the Creative Jukebox when the iPod debuted. And there was this same sort of "Apple is doomed" talk at the time. How'd that work out for Creative?
The Apple branded CPU ("Apple A4") is interesting for how little Apple will say about it. This isn't to keep things secret, but just because this isn't a product for people who care about the hardware details. But for people who do care, like me, it looks like it's basically an ARM Cortex A9 that Apple tweaked and mated with a GPU (again, pretty much what we thought.) I'm hoping more details come up, but I doubt they'll be from Apple.
And finally, yes, I still think it will be a winner. But remember, it's not the tablet (I think iPad is a bad name, but I absolutely don't think it will matter) that is key. It's the whole hardware / software ecosystem they are building. Nobody else is even thinking on this scale. And that's why it's interesting.
I guess there is some interest in the question of openness. Clearly this isn't an open device. That's the point, Apple wants to completely control the experience because they think they know better than "most people". And while I don't personally like that aspect of it (for instance, I don't think I'll be buying one) that doesn't really have much to do with anything. When it comes to computers most people are not like me. But still, in the abstract, there's nothing ethically wrong with closed computing systems. Nobody complains that they can't load their own software onto a remote control; or that they can't reprogram their refrigerators. If Apple was somehow pushing to make general purpose computers illegal - then there would be a problem. But they're not, and they won't be. Personal computers will continue to exist, with a variety of open and closed architectures and operating systems. The iPad is something different. If someone doesn't like the closed nature, then they shouldn't buy it. But I think a ton of people are going to.
What will the entry level price for the iPad be by Christmas? $399 seems like a not too extravagant guess. $349 maybe? $299 possibly? Probably that's too low too soon, but you get the idea. Can anyone catch up? Does anyone else control the whole stack (from CPU through the OS and all applications? Does anyone else have the volume (iPad + iPod + iPhone - all sharing a ton of components) to drive prices down? I don't think so.