I’m going to depart from game design and dev updates to offer my opinion on the iPad for a bit here.
If you’re reading this, chances are good that the new Apple iPad is not aimed at you, though you can get one if you want it! All the grumbling from folks about this missing feature or the price, or “Why did I have to wait so long and why would I pay for just a large iPod Touch?” The yawning, the jokes. You’re missing the point, and it’s because it’s not about you.
I predict the iPad to be a consumer household device for casual content consuming, gaming, communications, specific industry workflow- not at all aimed at the traditional pc/laptop market. A family device that is hard to break, maintenance free, difficult to infect and looks sexy. For people who don’t want to lug a laptop around in the living room/kitchen/bed, or folks on the job who flaunt a clipboard as a constant accessory. For IT and customer service folks, it’s easy to support and extremely easy to learn to use. It’s not for hardcore work at all, or with all of the ‘open ended’ uses that a computer has- though it will overlap in many ways. “There’s an app for that” and if there isn’t, there will be. For people at end-of-life for their current laptop or family computer, something new and sexy and probably as cheap as the replacement computer they were thinking about will seem like a good idea. Apple marketing will take care of the rest.
In comparison, the iPad has very much the same broad market appeal that a Nintendo Wii has been successful with, yet with the overflowing App Store it seems tailored for a broader use than you would think. To arrive at and identify the potential market seems in retrospect, a no-brainer. The surprising sales of eBook readers and iPods for application and gaming and the huge UNCAPITALIZED market of household casual computing is ripe for the picking. Aside from households and private industry, there is also an enormous potential for government employee use, and broader military use. The lack of moving parts and places for sand and dirt to get into is a fantastic reason to get these things… support costs in comparison to normal laptops and computers would be fantastically lower. Though as my friend pointed out: a child dropping it would probably be a Bad Thing(tm) for the glass.
Right now everyone who is interested in or were scouring for news about the device are the existing laptop/desktop users who were left thinking “What do I need this for!” Yet the ones who are already using their iPhone/iPod for communications/gaming/content consumption may very likely and instinctively want to get an iPad badly. I certainly felt the yearning. I am not a laptop fan at all though, I MUCH prefer a desktop. The people who were expecting a laptop or netbook replacement out of the iPad are sorely disappointed now and scoffing, yelling “Fail!”. No camera? No Office Suite? No USB? Well.. why would there be? These things were intentionally left out! Apple will continue to sell MacBooks and iMacs for those purposes, it probably doesn’t want to cannibalize its userbase. Though it’s safe to say that brand loyalty and coolness factor will generate a substantial number of sales. I’ve been a Mac Hater for.. 25 years! Until I actually used one 
I believe Apple will begin to market this device to the household consumer, and large (niche) industry- not the student, not the gamer yet, not the ‘computer user’ yet. Then: sales forces, medical personnel, education. For those of you who don’t ‘get it’ it, and I was certainly one who had major doubts about the iPad, we’re also the same folks who don’t really see why Facebook and Facebook games are so popular. We mock and scoff. Yet that doesn’t stop the millions of users, or the revenues.
As a content provider myself (I make games!) I am excited about the new device and its potential userbase, and what it will bring to casual gaming. I will make sure my iPhone/Facebook MMO DangerLands will look great on it, and I am very thankful for the additional device power. It effectively adds a new platform to cross-platform gaming without much extra effort on the part of the game developer. This is a GOOD thing