People will buy anything if the price is right. Offhand I'd say iPad needs to be a tiny bit cheaper to succeed widely but the crowd who thinks iPhones are affordable will buy them up regardless and the rest of us will wait for less extravagant alternatives (the Android looks like a no-brainer possible future competitor, in cheaper hardware).
Tablets are not niche, they were just unaffordable and without a good UI - at least the second problem will be solved by porting apps made for mobile phone touch interfaces. Time will solve the first one.
There's some fundamental flaw in the system if giving people free stuff is bad for them...
Yes, it's called "human nature" and by overwhelming agreement it's one of the worst things in the universe. Unfortunately, no two people agree on how to fix it...
My suggestion would be - show the kid what he can do *with* programming, then see what he likes best and then choose an appropriate language / environment for him. If he's graphically inclined, you might want to start with e.g. Flash. If he's fascinated more by how quicksort works then maybe Haskell or LISP.
Python can do all those but it's for people who already know what they want.
"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them" - Heisenberg