Please be courteous enough to read the other messages in the thread before seeking out only to disagree with mine. I was replying to taym, Matt. I wouldn't otherwise have brought up nettop nor netbooks. You're right, they have nothing to do with the iPad, and that's what I was saying to taym.

BTW, why is it that I'm seeing so much selective reading here? I'm critical of Apple every week. Critical of Jobs by extension and directly just as often. Seems like those are just convenient to skip over. I don't have a hate-on for any particular brand, while I see plenty of "It's Apple therefore I'm against it" in here all the time.

With the iPad specifically I knew I didn't want one for myself but I knew the product would take off nonetheless. With regards to the features in iPhone OS 4, I knew a while back that some of the rumored features were coming. I also knew that Apple would mess something up (I've already mentioned some of the stuff that's dropped off the face of the earth from the shipping iPad OS 3.2 and beta 4.0).

There's nothing wrong with anyone for making a purchase decision. But no one is seriously weighing in on the iPad versus something else. There are no comparable products on the market. That's what some people need to get over. Stop trying to convince the world that "X" or "Y" cheap netbook is an alternative and just accept the fact that the product brings to the table a complete platform that has not previously existed and that a lot of people are legitimately interested in.

Both product classes can exist. They're not mutually exclusive. Someone in the market for a $40 steak doesn't go buy a BigMac instead. Likewise, someone seriously looking at a $500 to $800 tablet isn't in the market for a $200 netbook.

Anyway, can I get back to taym now?