Jim Dandy: Of course it will not. Its much cheaper to get better features on a (non-Apple) laptop. Only the believers in Steve-church will be buying it.
Jim Dandy: No no, its not all hype. All Apple products i have used have been excellent in their area. I'm sure iPad will be an very good product. And Steve is the god of marketing. Surely it will be appealing to some people, even outside of Steve-cult.
But it is not really going to compete with laptops, thus it will not "push them off the cliff". It does not have enough features to do that. Who is really going to need a thingy that will have less features than a decent laptop and it'll be much harder to bring along with you than a mobile phone?
puupia: I mentioned the laptop comparison because I've read (watched) it being done by a few computer reviews the last few days.The conclusion seems to be that the iPad won't leave the laptop in its dust, for many of the reasons you point out, but it does have the potential to take a decent bite out of its market share.
Jim Dandy: I really doubt about that decent market share. If you consider 1-2% decent it just might happen.
But we will see in few days when the first iPads hit the market. Surely most of the very first buyers will be Steve's disciples, so we can't really trust the first impressions.
There is no camera, no card-reader and not even an USB-Slot in it!
Right now, its just an object of prestige, an adults toy.
As a professional creative, i am using apple products for over 25 years now,
and i agree in the superb quality of the hardware, and the better stability of the operating system.
But as far as the IPad is concerned, i can tell you all to wait at least one year from now on if you think to buy it.
It wont push any laptop of the cliff (neither apple nor non-apple laptops) as long as the multimedia-abilities are that poor.
The apple leaders dont put a memory-card-reader inside to avoid storage-extension. It comes with a poor amount of GB though. If you, for example, simply want to import the pics of your non-apple digital camera, you need to buy additional adaptors cause there is no serial USB slot. You cant use videoconferencing cause there is no camera..... .
The touch-screen-technique is innovative and enjoyable. Not more.