One thing I’ve not read with all the buzz on Apple’s new iPad is this simple fact that you must connect the iPad to another computer to perform backups and updates via iTunes.
This statement means, unceremoniously, that you cannot ONLY have an iPad as your sole computing device. If you want to have the magical experience that the iPhone OS experience gives you, with automatic backup of all your applications, music purchased OTA or via wifi, your personal settings, notes, audio recordings, (and now) downloaded iBooks, you must connect it to another computer to sync that information to an iTunes installation.
And when the next new iPad OS is released, if you want those new features and functionality, you had better not have pitched that clunky old Dell or old iMac you “used to use everyday, but haven’t in months” because of the new freedom granted by your spanky new iPad.
All the talk of the freedom to chuck the traditional OS in favor of the stable, predictable, controlled existence of the iPad (iPhone) OS which seems to be the huge buzz now misses the fact that you, at least in the current form and for the foreseeable future, simply cannot live with an iPad as your only computer.
I’d like to think that someday Apple will provide a .mac MobileMe experience that will negate the need for a “real computer” in your home, backing up and installing OS updates over the air, but that may not be the case. Apple is in the business of selling hardware as well as the underlying software and media (conveniently downloadable via the App Store or mobile iTunes). Why would they give up the revenue stream of selling computers for one that will be arguably smaller, even though it would be subscription based?
Maybe someday this will be your only computer, but today is not that day. So let’s all tether up and sync away.