Ok I admit it, I was in Best Buy today, and as I passed by the Apple display I decided to stop and try one of the display iPads.
...I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. It's actually a very nice device. I know, I know, I hate Apple and all, but...I have to admit, they did well with that thing. I really wanted to hate it, but it just...worked. It didn't get in my way like a lot of other devices tend to. After using it for a little while I can definitely see the power of the A4...I'd like to try a Snapdragon-powered Android phone to see a comparison, but it is definitely snappier than the 600MHz cortex-A8 in my N900 (damn well better be considering it's based on the same tech and has a 1GHz clock -_^ ). The wide bezel used to puzzle me, but when I held it I could see how nice it is; it's just wide enough to comfortably grip it, but not so wide that it gets in the way. The frame is nice and solid, with no flex.
All that highly out-of-character praise aside, there's no way in hell I would buy one. Too expensive for too little use cases (for me), the onscreen keyboard is one of the best onscreen keyboards I've ever used, but...it's still an onscreen keyboard, which means that it inherently sucks, it's a fingerprint magnet, there's no flash, and there's no multitasking. Really Apple, wtf were you thinking? You're wasting that beautiful A4 without multitasking. I could almost feel it straining at the software, wanting to let me do more with it. Oh, and the closed-garden environment...that alone is almost enough for me to say 'never will I buy this thing'. ..not quite enough on its own, but combined with the other faults, yeah...never gonna happen.
Disclaimer: This viewpoint is based on about 5 minutes using the thing, so by no means is this intended to be a fully-informed opinion. I was just surprised at how nice it actually is.