In a way the iPad is almost the perfect device for children. No keyboard to break and everything is touch-sensitive. Plus kids already have an innate aptitude for technology. There are also tons of popular kids' apps for iPhone/iPod Touch out there that would easily port to the iPad.

You don't let the kids around it unsupervised, but my toddlers have been all over the laptop and desktop in my house. My brother in law had an artist's sketching computer that he let my older girl doodle on when she was two.

This kind of electronic glitz and glam is catnip for grandparents. Who have disposable income they'd rather spend on people the like (their grandkids) so the people they don't like (their kids) won't get it.

It will sell well.

The good thing is that giving publishers this kind of control over the interface may get them to actually care about the ebook version. (E.g., make sure there are no typos, see that the index is hyperlinked rather than listed by invalid page numbers.)

The bad thing is you may have to learn a new interface - and there will be some crappy ones - with each book.

I hope Apple has an approval process for their book store like they do for their app store. There are so many poorly converted Kindle books out there.

What is it with Macimbeciles that anything previously done, if done on an "I-something" is announced as if it were brand new!?

Back in 2002, I bought several mp3 players, among them the Creative Rio. I would go to the Internet, and stream 3wk indie radio. I would record it with this program that could divide up streams into songs by slicing at the silence points.

Get it? I INVENTED ITUNES!! And that was like 1 or 2 years before Apple...and guess what...a lot of other people were doing the same thing!

@5 - I was doing the same thing. I had an MP3 player (MP3MAN some crappy Korean product). Ripped CDs, downloaded MP3s...held about 20 songs...and you know what...it sucked. It was clunky, the software buggy, the process frustrating.

Apple came along and just made it ten thousand times better. No they didn't invent it, but they did make it a whole lot better...and that's worth a lot. Around $40 billion if you look at Apple's balance sheet in fact.

@5, I'm not a Macimbecile by any stretch of the imagination; quite the opposite. But I had a Rio too, and it blew massive chunks compared to my iPod. There's a reason why Apple's net sales are 100 times Creative's.

Why did you imply that the iPad is just $400?

My Rio was transparent ice blue.

The nice thing about the iPad is that you can update the book as people get more used to presenting eBooks, and with the majority of the eReader market share that Apple will have, it will be pretty easy.

That said, my week old nephew has a FB account already. I suspect he'll be wanting me to send him iPad eBooks soon ...

The nice thing about the iPad is that you can update the book as people get more used to presenting eBooks, and with the majority of the eReader market share that Apple will have, it will be pretty easy.

This doesn't even make semantic sense. Update the book? As "people get more used to presenting e-books", this will make you want to update it? What? You have no clue, do you, Will? Come back after you've at least SEEN an e-book or an e-book reader, m'kay?

The Rio Karma (2002) was far superior to iPods of its day in one important respect: It had gapless playback (between songs).

Apple didn't get it till their fifth generation, and even then it only worked if you took the time to mark the album in iTunes as "part of a gapless album," a feature that was all but undiscoverable.

Some of the latest iPods finally play gaplessly without that iTunes rigmarole, and thus, can at long last claim to kick the Karma's ass.

@10 - things aren't static - did you actually WATCH the video - DK, for example, has travel books, which they update annually.

Wake up, it's the 21st century.

First off, the ipad was created for old people. Second off... do you know how many parents hand over anything (including expensive technological devices [which the kid actually has the most fun with]) to shut the kid up? Wouldn't it be great if those "shut up devices" actually did something the kid could understand and learn from? I think so.

Paul, you said:

The one actual prose book on display here seemed to have a whole bunch of features that covered over the text. The thing that Amazon did extremely well when they created the Kindle was that they identified the need for the reading experience to surpass the bells and whistles on the device.

You can clearly see (@ 1:42) that prose book with nothing overlaying the pages. They immediately bring some stuff up (because they were talking about books aimed at teen girls, who can go onto online chat groups from here), but that makes it clear that we old farts who just want to read can do that. No unwanted bells and whistles.

Now, I do believe that the iPad is supposed to be more than an eReader, correct? I think your criticism fails to take that into account.

Is the screen still back-lit when you're reading prose? I don't think I'd be able to read more then a chapter at a go if it is.

@13 - if by old people you mean people older than 4, then yes.