I've got my iPhone, I've got my Macbook Pro, I've got my gaming systems (and we have a few Kindles floating around the house)... I need the iPad because?
A Macbook Pro equivalent back then was a lot more than $1800.
An iPhone equivalent would have been really expensive and it would have had a 10 minute battery life. Combined WiFi+GSM chip sets were still new back then. Wireless data plans were running at around £2 per megabyte (packet) or a max of ~50kbps (channel at 1.5c/min+).
Trying to build a useful tablet, with wireless capability, with the money left over in the electronics budget of the average consumer, after paying for a MBP and an iPhone? Not possible.
There would have been too many compromises for Apple at the time, whereas in 2010 they can do a pretty good job at it.
Compare a Macbook Pro to another laptop that is $500 cheaper. I'd argue there is $500 worth of value there. Is there $500 worth of value for the iPad over the Macbook Pro? I can think of a lot of things to do with $500 that would be better for me than buying an iPad.
IMO, the best option for most people is to buy a cheap 17" laptop and an iPad. And for gamers a desktop + iPad is much more reasonable than a "gaming" laptop.
PS: When you consider how often the average users system is down (software/hardware/virus etc) having a simple independent device that lets them use email and most webpages is a huge advantage relative to spending 500$ for a better version on the same basic HW.
For me, sure.
I looked at all the things that a desktop is bad at, that the iPad is good at. Like reading on the couch, occupying the kids in the car, annotation and note-taking away from a traditional desk, reviewing a load of pictures in the field, diagramming or sketching.
I've spent more than $500 on an assortment of devices to meet those needs and none of them have been half as good as the iPad. So for me, it's absolutely worth it.
But my finding value in it certainly doesn't speak to whether you will or should. Maybe you don't have any of those needs.
If you're not working while you're on vacation, yet need to stay connected, that $500 will make you feel like a million dollars.
I took my iPad on our vacation in Vancouver late April. It was the only electronic device aside from my cell phone that we took. Rocking that thing loaded with movies and TV episodes on a plane was unbelievably convenient (and try getting a netbook with an IPS screen at that price point). At the condo after walking around the city or hiking in the North, I'd shoot off some emails or map out where we wanted to go next and enter it into Navigon app for the next day.
Not lugging a $2000 MBP around on a vacation is reason enough to celebrate :)
Curiousity piqued: what makes it worth $500 more?
There is the argument of "Why not just buy a netbook for $200?" To that question, I suggest you go try out an ipad and remember that you aren't going to do any coding on it. It's a pretty fantastic machine.
That being said, I am a computer programmer in a Vanderbilt research department. At some point I will have to pick up a laptop just to do some real coding work (and SC2 when it drops). For everything else, I love my ipad.
If you were married to someone who read a lot then I think you'd understand. At night you just can't share the same Kindle to read 2 different books at the same time:)