The camera is a real headscratcher. My best guess (similar to copy-paste on the iPhone) is that it wasn’t quite right, and Jobs won’t stand for tolerable. I could see it being awkward to having to hold the device just so to get the camera pointed at the right thing, making it feel less casual and having the user respond to the device instead of the device serve the user. So they left it out. Even then, I would’ve left it in just for the potential and utility (and the cool things developers would do with it).

Yawner is a bit strong, and I personally don’t like the iPhone OS direction–though from Apple’s viewpoint it makes tons of sense. But as a developer–too restrictive.

But for the casual computer user who is looking at a netbook to just surf the web and check email, I think the pure simplicity and experience of this thing will stand up very well against a $350 netbook. There are going to be plenty of apps in the app store for the tasks they want. And at $499 (which really shocked me), it borders on affordable. However, the netbook market is very price sensitive and doesn’t understand value well.

I think it will find a market, but have a hard time seeing it becoming wildly popular like the iPhone. But I would recommend this to many of my relatives who I provide tech support for. Modern computers (even Macs sometimes) are just too complex for them to manage on their own. This they could probably handle most of the time. Whether they would actually buy one ….