I agree with your assertion but this only stands at more advanced level for a niche audience, us. Overall, for what they are and for the wide audience they cater to, Ipads give a decent abstraction so one doesn't get bogged down by details. Yes, at the details part unfortunately sometimes it fails short and for that reason I personally have no real use for an Ipad, I can get by fine with just using a smartphone and a desktop/laptop for most of my uses. As stand alone devices, Ipads can be put to a lot of uses though.
I think of the iPad as a computer the same way I think of visual basic as a programming language. It may make 95% of things easy, but that 5% is a real pain!
