At least if there's one single interface between a website and the mic/cam we can do our best to ensure that interface isn't exploitable. If every website has to roll their own, overall it's much less secure.

I thought the printer sharing only worked with a very few "supported" printers, and wasn't actively being updated. Is this not true?

Sorry man. That's why I moved away from apple. Contacts and meetings should sync without iTunes

At this point the only thing that keeps the iPad being a truly viable replacement for a computer is the need to sync it to a computer. But if you buy in an Apple Store you can have them set it up there, and then just buy apps and media on the device going forward (though it makes me cringe at the thought of people doing that and not backing up the device regularly).

No, Apple customers still lose. They still can't run Flash

So, let me get this streight. You can copy an MP3 file to your iDevice WITHOUT using iTunes? You can listen to that file on your iDevice? You can later connect your iDevice to another computer and then copy that file off?

the fact that you can't upload videos unless you are using the windows client (I usually just use the web).

I want a "server in the cloud", that works preferably just like a server on my desk, except with a faster internet connection and better cooling etc.

But it still needs to do things like letting me see it's screen, replug, reconfigure the network, add/remove disks, ...

The advantages of the cloud would be : -> ridiculous disk sizes possible (and for-rent - no capital cost) -> no capital investment -> someone else does hardware repair (and does it promptly) -> fast scaling, that means fast access to more & bigger memory, cpu, disk, ...

The idea of apple allowing corp-specific apps is ludicrous. They have no reason to, it would not benefit them in any way, but the freedom would be dangerous to their profit margins. If those apps contained code that allowed more freedom in use of the iPad, then some users would be filtered off through alternative manners of acquiring applications and could potentially harm their profits. At the same time, companies will not be willing to submit their own code to apple so that apple can approve it and allow it. There is no reason whatsosever that this is likely. You speak as if things are obvious out of assumptions, but your assumptions have no logical backing. If you are going to say something, base it on logic.

What we have here might be a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. HTML5 would have a larger installed base if there were more content available. In turn, there'd be more content available if HTML5 had a larger, more established installed base.

Well Flash accelerates nicely on Windows, and is supposed to be getting the ability to do so on the Mac (not sure on the status, I don't have a Mac).

Flash has been working just fine on the Mac for like 15 years now. You're thinking of the iPhone/iPad.