It's full-circle for Apple...they _never_ liked openness.  The new iPad, with all the closed-ness and proprietariness of it isn't shocking by how new it is...but how oddly familiar it is.  The Apple I knew (and resisted) from the 1980s to the mid 2000s was decidedly and deliberately closed, and in complete opposition to the open systems and PC world.   They might go back to that model, at which point I'll go right back to not using any Apple products.  The world will (hopefully) always want open-ness.  If Apple won't deliver that, someone else will.<p>I'm less optimistic about consumers.  The iPad might indeed be just what 'regular' consumers want....a new kind of fancy TV set.  If so, the iPad is just right for them.<p>The dark cloud for me is that parallel.  When TV was introduced, people had grand visions of an informed society, brought together by broadcasts of useful and enlightening knowledge.   It ended up being an ad-selling jukebox of near-useless crap.   We've projected the same (and even larger) hopes and dreams on the new technology...but the trajectory seems all too familiar.