The way i see it, Steve Jobs is just trying to make the easiest, crash free computing experience possible. I don't think Steve Jobs had the average slashdot reader in mind when he came up with the iPad, iPod, or even iPhone. He had joe sixpack and aunt jemima in mind. Coming from a large family, and being one of the few with extensive computer knowledge, i am always called upon to fix viruses, remove spyware, reinstall OSes due to unrecoverable crashes and when i see the iPad, i see a solution to MOST of this. I know my sister with an iPad to do her internet surfing with isn't going to click on some stupid pop up and download a virus, or play some new facebook game and get some crappy software installation required message. And without flash, she isn't going to suffer from computer freezes and crashes. Even if it does get some unrecoverable error, she would just hook it up to her computer, click restore from backup, and a few minutes later she is off to the races. I know the iPad cannot replace all computing tasks, especially with lack of printing support, but for everything most people do, this "closed system" works better and protects them from theirselves. Now it would be nice if they gave advanced users the option to unlock certain restrictions, but it is just not practical. There are plenty of people out there who know just enough about computer to want to unlock protected settings and still end up calling me every weekend to fix it. There are plenty of full tablet PCs out there, and have been for a while. Go get one of those if you cannot stand the restrictions iPhone OS brings. I for one say, boo flash, yay iPhone OS, and go Steve.

Anyone notice The similarities between the ipad release &the release of the wii? The xbox and ps3 (netbooks & tablet pcs) were doing a lot of things the wii couldn't, but that didn't stop nintendo from selling millions upon millions of them and you can even argue that the wii is just a huge nintendo ds...

Anyone who purposely goes without healthcare is an idiot. And when you get in a car accident and have a 300k hospital bill to pay, i bet you will pony that right up to the hospital. How about instead of a fine we gave jailtime when you couldn't pay your hospital bill instead, bet that 3k fine wouldn't look so bad then.