It's the worst product I have ever seen Apple produce since I started using Macs back in 2001'ish.
It simply serves no purpose. It does lots of things and is crap at all of them. It runs the same OS and Apps as I already have on my iPhone. And it can't run any of the apps I have on my MacBook Pro.
Plays movies but has a 4:3 screen - Apple's own publicity photos show Star Trek playing with about half of the movie missing due to the image being cropped, and if you play in letterbox you have black bars covering half the screen, especially if the movie is in 21:9. No HD as it doesn't have the resolution even for 720p. And no DivX / MKV / M2TS due to it being encumbered with the iPhone OS which doesn't let you install anything apart from what you get from the Apple Store, all of which is very tightly controlled by Apple themselves.
I do not read books, so that aspect (which seems to be the one they are focusing on) has no interest for me.
The maps, iPod, etc features are irrelevant, there is no way I'm lugging one of these around when I can take my iPhone out of my pocket and check the map, and I'm not going jogging with one of these in a backpack just so I can listen to music.
Most games, apart from those specifically designed for it, are crap with a touch screen. I have GTA Chinatown Wars, Street Fighter IV, and other big-name titles on my iPhone and they're fun, but the controls and the playability are hampered by the touch screen - the PSP versions are so much nicer to play.
Web browsing? Still no Flash support. It cripples my iPhone, as it seems that many of the sites I visit regularly require Flash functionality.
I'm a big Apple fan, but this thing is junk. Whoever designed it needs to be fired. Almost all of the reaction on the web about this are negative, including the Apple 'fanboy' sites, which are usually full of "Wow! Amazing! Jobs is God!" comments whenever Apple releases so much as a new mouse. That's almost unheard of.
Some of the apps being showcased by Apple on their site as showing the revolutionary nature of iPad are ridiculous - scrabble and a recipe app? All they need now is snowman maker.
It should have been a MacBook Air without the keyboard and price. Instead it's an iPod touch without the portability. It will fail, and it deserves to.
