It makes me uneasy how pervasive DRM is becoming and how it's infiltrating lower and lower levels of hardware. We're already 90% of the way to not actually owning our own machines anymore.
Coming? It's already here. And your iPads are part of the problem.
Proprietary software is the technology that enables it.
Media-consumption devices are the problem. If the primary aim of your device is to consume media (and that's what tablets are for), then DRM playback is socially unavoidable at this point. DRM begets DRM, and lo...