Rubenerd

There are certainly a lot of pundits ready to declare the iPad a spectacular failure, just as they correctly predicted the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone would be. These are some of the best comments I've read.

Twitter (screenshot above)

Good one @FrankSting :).

Slashdot. Yes, Slashdot!

You'd think Slashdot would be the last place on Earth where you could find someone sticking up for Apple aside from MSDN, but Znu (31198) put it so succinctly my eyes started watering from the onion in my sandwich.

If you can really look at the iPad and think Apple should have just shipped a netbook, then not only have you completely missed the point, but the next 10 years of computer industry evolution are going to be very confusing for you, as the mainstream market increasingly ignores the tech specs that geeks obsess over in favor of user experience considerations that are far more relevant to normal users.

Don't get me wrong, if a truly open platform tablet came along I'd buy it, but until it arrives people shouldn't be guilt-tripped into feeling like they're tools for buying the best system available. I guess you could say I'm free and open source software pragmatist in that regard.

Dave Winer

Apple is eating our seed corn. That’s why you should buy one Eee PC for every iPad you buy.

Yes, because the strongest way to send a message as a consumer is to vote for both. By buying the product you hate, you're legitimising it, and by buying the other you're telling the manufacturer they don't need to improve their product in the face of new competition because you'll still buy them out of pity.

Bless your heart Dave. Don't worry, I still love you.

Me

I haven't taken much issue with the hardware of the iPad, so far my only major criticism has stemmed from the fact that more people are going to find it difficult to justify buying what is still (even with the Kindle and JooJoo crushing prices) an expensive gadget in this current economic climate. Those same people probably wouldn't be buying netbooks if they already have a computer either.

For what it's worth, I won't be buying one for now because money is fairly tight and my tiny five year old ThinkPad X40 with FreeBSD has a beautiful keyboard compared to crappy netbooks.