I like Alex Payne's take the best (bold highlights mine):

http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad....

For years, me and thousands of other techies have been wondering what
comes after the Personal Computer as we’ve known it. Yesterday, in
Apple’s iPad, we caught a glimpse. If I had to pick one predominant emotion in reaction, it would be “disturbed”.

The iPad is an attractive, thoughtfully designed, deeply cynical thing. It is a digital consumption machine. As Tim Bray and Peter Kirn
have pointed out, it’s a device that does little to enable creativity.
As just one component of several in a person’s digital life, perhaps
that’s acceptable. It seems clear, though, that the ambitions for the
iPad are far greater than being a full-color Kindle.

The tragedy of the iPad is that it truly seems to offer a better
model of computing for many people – perhaps the majority of people.
Gone are the confusing concepts and metaphors of the last thirty years
of computing. Gone is the ability to endlessly tweak and twiddle
towards no particular gain. The iPad is simple, straightforward,
maintenance-free; everything that’s been proven with the success of the
iPhone, but more so.