Had the chance to take an Apple iPad for a spin. The FSF (Free Software Foundation), of course, is against such "closed" devices as reasoned out in this article "iPad is iBad for freedom".
The iPad out-of-the-box itself is a pretty useless device. If you have a WiFi connectivity, then you could use it as a device for browsing. But a very limited number of useful apps are actually installed on it when you pick it out of the box. As soon as I could, I installed a large number of whatever free apps I could onto the iPad. Most of the iPhone apps can also be installed onto the iPad, but by default they show up using a smaller part of the screen (iPhone size). There's a control (called "2X") that you could click to make the app full screen, but then the images seem to be a bit pixelized.
Only those apps that are mentioned as being "designed for iPad" appear displayed correctly. Thus, even though an app maybe available for both iPhone and iPad, only those that say "designed for iPad" are actually the ones that appear more pleasing on the iPad.
Most of the free apps are games. And tons of games I did install. Some of the games were actually pretty cool. Most of these games had a free version for certain basic levels, and the more advanced levels would require buying the games.
There were useful informative apps too. Such as the ones that described the various yoga poses.
I only had the iPad for a few days, and it did seem that Apple had finally hit the sweet spot between the portability and the usability. It could also make for a good device for kids - especially on long boring journeys. I could well imagine this being the replacement for those puzzle books that people buy just before a journey.
The iPad has not yet been launched in India, but even if it does, it would be priced quite high to be a casual entertainment device.
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