Flash driven websites provided a palette of endless variety to designers that allowed us to play, outside of the browsers restrictions. The flip side to this however is we didn’t leverage, or maybe forgot to leverage, those things that browsers did well and often disrupted the user experience by plastering it with attempts to replicate the browsers’ built in functionality (witness non-function Flash based scrollbars).

Now browsers coupled with javascript allow designers to do 95% of what might have required Flash only 2 or 3 years ago. Flash itself has been transformed into primarily a delivery mechanism for video and very out-of-the-box sites, however as our browsing technologies evolve, Flash may be remembered as a bridge that helped direct us but ultimately couldn’t deliver us to our destination.

The iPad is Steve’s way of sneaking in the heir apparent and the future replacement to the Mac, disguised as an eBook and a media consumption device. Don’t be fooled by this. Apple is actually doing a product category reboot for the Mac line. It is a trojan horse approach to ensure that the ankle-biters of the world (think Dvorak and their ilk) don’t go ape-shit and tank the stock. Steve is determined to ensure that the transition from the Mac to the iPad will far more smoother than the transition from the Apple II line to the Mac.

When Net book buyers see that the iPad is fast, rugged, and competitively priced, many of them will be won over, as well.

I am surprised the reception for the device has not been stronger, but there are MANY, MANY investors who would like to see someone other than Apple coming out with a new “growth engine”– people who bet prematurely on Android, for example.