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Comment by roadnottaken | Hacker News Reader

That's definitely one of the main things, but there are others. I suspect everyone has their own mix, like on a smartphone. For me it's probably:

  35% web surfing
  35% facetime chat with the wife
  10% kindle app
  10% random games and apps
  10% watching shows and movies on the plane

it's also fantastic if you have one of the video-out cables because you can just drag/drop hours and hours of movies onto it and then play them on any TV wherever you are. Netflix in bed (with the Netflix app) is also pretty good.

There really is no "point" to having an iPad. It obviously doesn't do anything that you can't do without one. But it's a LOT easier to pick up and use than a laptop and if you have one you'll find it becoming your go-to device for a lot of things.

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Thanks for that. Well basically, most of the time I'm using a laptop (I'm a happy user of a new MacBook Air) for coding, surfing the web and, well, doing office stuff and that's it. I guess an iPad would be too much of a toy for me, but I'm curious anyways what people do with an iPad.

It's been argued many times over but I now think we are just touching the surface of what a tablet can do. It will be eventually used for content creation. The most important thing is that people feel some kind of a natural connection to it. From there you build around it just as they did with the mouse.

Ideally, we all want people to be enthusiastic about technology and it's best that we accommodate them instead of forcing them to understand it as we do.

I have a feeling that it can be used to design UI really effectively. Are there any apps taking a crack at this?

I can't give your path but I think we're at the very beginning. Apple's own apps have set the standard as well as Loren's Twitter app but that doesn't mean we are limited. It's up to us to define what's ahead.

As Einstein has said, imagination is more important than knowledge. From my experience, look at how kids use these things and pay attention to what what they need. They're more intelligent than we give them credit.

Computers are merely extensions of ourselves. The intent must be obvious so as not to confuse. If there is one thing I've learned from Jobs it is this.

EDIT: Look at the Elements app as well as the Al Gore (Push Pop Press) app. There are many holes left in this market where others can cause a disruption to what was the dominant presence on the PC.

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