GIMP is used by precisely no one doing serious work. There are other alternatives, but GIMP's poor colour management, lack of CMYK workflows, lack of easy to use multi-bitdepth editing (they finally included 16bit support over a decade late at a time where other tools started natively handling 32bit HDR files), all makes it a non-starter for anyone but a home user.

No, it's not. The article makes some good points, sure. But the real reason the iPad succeeds where other laptops fail is that it's the first tablet that didn't suck. Every tablet before it has had a resistive touchscreen and a swivel-hinge keyboard, with the CPU under the keyboard. The iPad has the CPU with the display, and no keyboard. If you want a keyboard, you buy an external one.

Every tablet before the iPad had a hard drive. Hard drives are big, and draw a lot of power. That is, they suck.

Every tablet before the iPad had an Intel CPU. Intel CPUs are big, and draw a lot of power. That is, they suck.

Every tablet before the iPad ran Windows. Windows is designed for PCs. For tablets, it sucks.

Every tablet before the iPad weighed in at over three pounds, because of the Intel CPU, the hard drive, the hinge, and the battery required to support all that. You couldn't hold them in your hands unsupported for ten minutes, much less an hour--you'd have to cradle them. They were designed to do too many things, so they sucked at the one thing tablets really need to do--replace a pad of paper or a book.

Every tablet before the iPad had a battery life of maybe five or six hours, if you were really careful, and two or three, if you weren't. The iPad's battery will last through a full work day of full time use. It doesn't suck.

That's why it's the first tablet to succeed in the market.