Yes. iPad is for consumption not for production. Don't know when some of these guys will realize it and stop making a big fuzz. I don't see the point of it.
It's perfectly fine for email, posting on message boards, etc. I also will probably use it to write documents when I'm out and about, and using it today I felt like I would like to be able to code on it (though ssh or jailbreaking are probably the only ways that will happen).
24 hours ago, I would have agreed 100% with you that "iPad is for consumption not for production". After a day of using one I have changed my mind entirely. The iPad can be an adequate device for production, and it has the potential to be a great one.
Specifically, having a software keyboard has large and untapped potential advantages over a physical keyboard, once basic typing is acceptable. The buttons on a software keyboard can change to adapt to the situation. We already see see small examples of this with the built-in keyboard: when the address bar in safari is open, the space bar disappears and the forward slash and .com buttons take its place. Imagine alternate keyboards for things like LaTeX markup. Furthermore, your pointing device (finger) is much closer to the keyboard, so no moving your hand from your keyboard to your mouse. I think apps that really take advantage of the possibilities of the interface are yet to come. Once they arrive the "tablets will disrupt the laptop" argument sounds sounding really plausible.
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It's not obvious how to add an advanced button that the right people will press, and others won't. You can hide it, but it will get reported on websites that newbies see, with simple instructions. But that said, I'm sure there's a solution, and I hope Apple finds it.
I think the development effort from Apple to enable stuff which would only be used by a fraction of the audience -- even done to Apple's high standards of polish -- is a secondary and more minor issue. Apple can afford it, and Apple knows that developers are worth the expense. However, in terms of development time rather than money (which aren't equivalent because finding, hiring, and training good programmers is hard), this has to be lower priority than enabling multiple programs to run at once and some other stuff, so maybe it'll be a while.
However, I believe your latter point is right. I won't dump any amount of money on an iPhone/iPad until it's able to run multiple programs, and until it is route access is likely pointless.
My girlfriend (a university professor) is in the process of finishing her first book, and would love to do the rest of her writing and revising on the iPad in Pages, but she doesn't see it as being realistic. She's still really excited about being able to watch Battlestar Galactica on the iPad. (regarding BSG: yes, I am lucky.)
I spend all of my time writing code in Ruby and Objective C. I'd love to be able to get access to MRI, the Rails gems, MySQL and TextMate on the iPad in order to do my work there, but it's just not realistic. And that's ok: because I am unbelievably excited about the web browsing experience and the games on the iPad.
Edit: I amend my comments above with a Tweet from the author of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air: http://twitter.com/stevenbjohnson/status/11564792495
I think if they had multi-tasking it'd go a long way to shutting up this criticism.
1. You've probably forgotten more about this sort of data than I'll ever know, but I look around at folks on laptops in cafes and see nothing but Facebook or Gmail on Netbooks. I think we, as a class of users, are the exception: most people on computers spend the bulk of their time consuming information instead of producing it.
2. Rumor has it that iPhone OS 4 will be announced at WWDC 2010 (big shock) and will feature multi-tasking.
The bigger critique, though, is multi-tasking. I like to be able to consume music and webpages at the same time. A consumption device that won't let me multi-task is inherently unsuited for my normal day-to-day use.
The problem has never been that the iPhone and iPad can't support multi-tasking, it's that Apple has only permitted some of its own apps to multi-task.
I think the relevant verdict would be delivered not by the Pogues or Mossbergs but by mom, dads, and the 4-5 year-olds who see this device for what it is. Because, for the first time we (as in majority of the general public) can look at a computer as a consumer device as oppose to a general purpose device that needs training or learning. I think most reviews I read missed this aspect.