Steven Hodson says I should get over myself:

Well you bunch of tech-heads and early adopter dweebs need to get over your ego puffery and delusions of self-importance. Just as with the iPod and the iPhone before it the iPad wasn’t created to give you all a great big woodie.

The iPad was created for the cool kids. It was created for the mother living next door. It was created for the student going to college. It was designed for the people in the world who couldn’t give a shit if they can program the next great million dollar app or not. It was created to give people a way to be entertained without having to book a chiropractor appointment from having to lug their laptop around on their travels.

I’m uniquely qualified to dispute my buddy Steven’s claims. My wife qualifies as the “mother next door,” and while my kids aren’t school aged, they are a typical market segment gadgets are often bought for (we spent $400 this year so far on gadgets for the kids).

My wife gets on the computer and watches videos on Failblog and CNN. My sons both get onto Popcap and Yahoo games. They do other things, but these activities constitute a large portion of their computing experience. It’s something Apple could easily do, but due to obstinacy choose not to.

Flash is important. Apple’s iPad still fails. Game over.