I was just thinking about this as I woke up. Somewhere in my HN comment history, I took a contrarian (and supporting) position about the pre-iPad Microsoft tablet vaporware commercial: basically that if they did do something like this, with an accurate stylus and split-pages multitasking, it would be a winner.

That's not the middle ground iPad is aiming for, though. It's a spectrum, and it sounds like you'd rather have a Surface. Sometimes I think I'd like one to doodle with, too. I've seen people be productive with iPads as well, but you have to use them differently.