Here's another way of thinking of it. 15 years ago a kid might have had access to a home computer. The machine enabled pretty much all the tinkering that it could enable. The physical limitations (It was very expensive. Everyone uses it and you are not allowed to break it. Mom doesn't want you near it with a screwdriver.) were close to the  limitations that mattered.<p>Today, a kid with an inclination has access to many, many tinker-able things.<p>A lot of that stuff is new. They can tinker on the web via a browser, which they can do with this device. They can get a Linux machine. They can get Windows. They can get OSX.  They can tinker on Android. There aren't that many android devices floating around that aren't someone's phone. In 5 years, there might be lots of old Android phones in drawers that the kid can have.<p>The fact that you cannot write your own software on an iPad is an arbitrary limitation so people don't like it, but within the ocean of possible tinkering, it is a small drop.<p>The practical pool of possibilities is growing. The existence of another device, even if it more successful then the iPhone, is not going to change that.<p>Put another way, if you have the choice of either (a) creating another environment (say a webbapp) where kids can tinker or (b) fighting back the "direction" that the iPad is taking us in, choose a.