1. I find it extremely useful for one specific thing: chess. I can't effectively play blitz timed games with a mouse, and with a smartphone I get way more off-by-one mistaken taps than with the ipad mini.
2. Almost five years later, my daughter enjoys making animations on it with Scratch Jr.
3. It is a comfy form factor for just plain reading content from the web. When I come across something specific that I'd like to put more than, say, 40 minutes of directed attention to, I sometimes pull up the resource on the ipad and hit the couch. It's a lot easier for me to focus on long form content (especially if it's dense or boring) with the ipad because it isn't my computer. I can't instantly call up other interesting and ongoing tasks with a meticulously programmed hotkey.
Also, touchscreen laptops felt like an upgrade to me until I tried to use one. IMO, the geometry just isn't there. If the screen is close enough to be touched as part of the general workflow, then it's too close for your eyes or else the keyboard itself is too close.