not entirely true, although i think you are being a little facetious. this device seems a lot more open in general (use of flash for example).
It's a textbook. Flash doesn't matter. The content needs to be there. I've read textbooks on my iPad before; for the most part, it works OK. There doesn't appear to be any big advantage to the Kno that couldn't be matched in a specialized iPad app.
He may be acting a bit facetious but as someone who really doesn't see the point of an ipad at this point in time 2 ipads seems like a much better deal than this hunk of hardware.