This is another thing I take issue with. So a 12" thinkpad tablet has wifi,can pair with a usb dongle or mobile phone to get 3g internet anywhere, can run real applications including photoshop and lightroom, but is inferior to an ipad because its not as pretty and doesn't have a multitouch interface? To addinsult to injury the iphone OS system is very closed and apple are dictating which software does and does not get on to there - using a 'real' OS would not result in issues like this.
I dunno if you've actually read the story about the emperor with no clothes on - if you do you'll see that the majority of people did not want to acknowledge the fact and the one person who did was laughed at. History does not paint a pretty picture for the idea that people will see through the bullshit and not succumb to contagion - see tulip mania, the missisipi bubble, the French fiat money scandal, the '29 stock bubble, the '99 dotcom bubble, the '08 credit bubble, the '10 sovereign debt bubble. Millions of people are willing to choose an inferior product (not that the ipad is inferior) which is pretty and cuts out the amount of thinking you have to do for yourself. The ipad is a nice toy, but to assert that it will 'revolutionise' the industry is laughable - the ipad is definitely not the first step towards an almot entirely electronic media - this movement started long before it was announced and was not fueled by the tablet rumours that had been about for about 10 years now. Just because it may end up being the most widespread point of access to electronice media doesn't mean that it led the revolution, it is nothing more than a new toy jumping on a pre-existing bandwagon. The real future for electronic media is colour e-ink which is visible in any light and doesn't burn your eyeballs out and maybe the next ipad will have that.
the thinkpad is not the only product out there....the modbook has a touchscreen....and runs osX...this is not about windows vs mac....simply adding a touchscreen to an interface that wasnt made for touch just does not make any sense....
those little sonys had touch, built in wifi, 3g, ran PS,...but it is just not practical....
you need at least the equivalent of a macbook pro (core2duo) 4gb ram and 256 vram to really run ps, lr, c1,.....then add in 3-4 hour battery and you are back at a much larger laptop/ macbook pro.....the ipad is only so fast at what it does because it is more or less a huge battery with a big screen...and a custom processor designed for the os it runs....
whcih is why the HP slate has to have a 1.6 chip (compared to a 1 in the ipad) and still runs slower.....and yes it runs flash (badly) and the battery is dead within a couple of hours.....
all existing tablets have one problem: they are running a os that needs enormous recources already.....
the ipad runs an os that came first on a phone....and is much much simpler, leaner, faster....
anyone who wants to run ps on a ipad got it wrong.....