It removes any type of flexibility that I would have wanted in a device this large. Want to run Pandora and surf the web? Sorry, can’t be done. Want to install an x86 game or application? Better hope its available on the App store. What about the ability to use the device as a pad for writing notes using a stylus? No app for that.

Apple wants me to use this device to surf the web without flash support, and I understand that HTML5 is the future but no support at all is being sticks in the mud. This means that until the entire webverse moves everything from flash to HTML5 I will not be able to view or enjoy feature rich internet content.

Apple has done nothing to convince me that this product will do anything better than my iPhone or Macbook Air (A device that if you could remove the keyboard flip the screen down and add touch would be the device I would pay for).

But it’s also a rare exception. Even in other cases where software tip-toes over to our Windows brethren, it’s rarely successful. Look at Safari – a browser which took years to iron out serious bugs, largely because developing in an open environment with a nearly infinite hardware base comes with a ton of overhead.

Apple really can only deliver a solid, driver-update-free experience because they keep their hardware base locked-down, giving them much tighter integration that Windows will never truly have. Case in point – Windows installs on Mac hardware are just like installs on any other computer. You’ll have driver issues every now and then, a lot of separate, propriety management systems to configure settings. It becomes immediately apparent that the hardware on the Mac isn’t anything special – it loses it’s feel entirely in Windows. That level of transparency in Mac OSX is only possible when you’re operating software is designed specifically for a single line of hardware.

You can argue it’s a meaningless distinction for computer geeks like you or me, who don’t really sweat it when drivers need updating or you have to use separate software to manage an audio or video device, but there a ton of users that are instantly and completely lost when you tell them that the Window’s volume is separate from their audio hardware manager’s volume – or to open the nVidea control panel instead of the Windows controls. These users don’t have to think about stuff like that on a Mac, and anytime you can reduce the complexity of management you’re going to get a smoother end-experience. Perhaps subtle ones, but an important ones.

The iPad continues this tradition – with Apple launching on an in-house Apple A4 chip instead of a nearly identical spec nVidea. It just furthers their ability to make the hardware-level computer interactions completely transparent to the end-user. Which is really important when a lot of users don’t understand what’s inside their computers at all – those people think the computer processor and the word processor are two separate internal devices. Even if you aren’t down on that level, even a geek can enjoy a device with a highly casual, non-technical feel to it. It fills a niche that really no Windows tablet successfully could. Couple that with a locked-down system of program deployment via a single App Store, and you’ve eliminated a huge subset of minor annoyances and major headaches to a casual user.

At a higher level OS choice is a preference thing, they do each serve similar and specialized roles uniquely, in most comparisons generally equivocally. But there are a fair number of people who buy Macs just for their status. Those are the same people that used to brag about their new pink-Dell XPS, their new BMW their daddy bought them, and their new 20th pair of Oakleys. Those people are just going to be d-bags no matter what their purchasing.

As far as the ones that are just hopping on the trend – really it’s just a simple fact that most people don’t understand the complexities of their computer purchases, and they will go with what’s popular, what their friend have, and what their friends are telling them to buy. All they really have is recommendations and innuendo because the specs sheet is practically in a foreign language to them. I think this group is the majority, not the elitists d-bags, as Macs are becoming too common to be special anymore. And really you can’t blame anyone for being excited at first and wanting to talk about any new, let alone for their first real foray in a foreign system. And honestly since their last computer was probably a bare-bones Dell or HP with onboard video, they’d have a right to be excited about a computer with decent specs, regardless of brand.

If you’re computer does what you need it to do – then you’re good as gold. I think there are a lot of people that haven’t, and perhaps a device like the iPad will be a far better fit than what their currently using. And a lot of people are even yet to identify where in their lives a device like the iPad will even fit, and many will be surprised to find an eventual need or desire for one. Just like how a lot of iPhone users didn’t think they needed/wanted email or internet on their phone.

It is a preference thing, I am so sick of hearing about apple I could spit. I know you have been on the apple train since before it was cool so you are not in this market, but 95% of mac users brag about their macs just as a way to seem better than everyone else. I don’t give 2 shits about what computer someone has, all that matters to me is that mine does what I want it to do.