But is the iPad perfect? Absolutely not. No camera! No exchangeable battery! No multi-tasking! (Actually, that last clause should get a couple of hundred exclamations behind it … on a phone, I can sort of live without multitasking, but on something that's a type of computer, that's like going back to DOS.) No Flash! (Ditto on the exclamations.) No handwriting recognition! (To not have handwriting recognition on a pad device is a bizarre omission.)

The missing video camera is perhaps the oddest thing for Apple to have left out. In fact, the iPad should have two cameras; one pointing away from the user for taking photos and videos, and another pointing at the user for video conferencing, something that would make the iPad a really compelling tool.

I have little doubt that Apple is going to be selling an insane number of iPads and what concerns me is that the company will continue with its walled garden strategy. The iPad's lack of support for Flash is the biggest tell regarding its market approach because that technology would allow all sorts of applications that Apple couldn't control do all sorts of things that Apple believes it has to control.

Here's the thing: The iPad is going to make some serious inroads into the e-book market because of its multimedia abilities. Combine that with Apple’s iron-fisted control of the iPhone market and its hold on the content market through iTunes, and at some point someone is going to have to call it: Apple will have a monopoly that will need to be disassembled in the public interest.

Moreover, in an age where so much effort is being directed towards open systems and open source, here we have Apple doing the opposite. For all the great things that Apple has produced, some of them insanely great, the success of the iPad will eventually define it as just another greedy, self-serving company. Remember its 1997 advertising slogan, "Think Different"? It doesn't really.