Well, thanks, YCombinator, for taking the spotlight for the most obvious iPad speculation to date.

This, though, is a little more insightful:

“Many will never make a conscious decision to switch. They’ll get an iPad as well, then find they use their Windows machine less and less. When it dies they won’t replace it.”

I was in Portland over the weekend, twiddling away on my iPhone in our hotel room when I had my first conscious longing for an iPad, and it was then that it occurred to me that the device isn’t just for “average” users. It’s for everyone.

It’s the computer you slip into your bag at the last minute before you leave the house to go anywhere farther than the grocery store. It’s not like your laptop—you don’t have to consider whether you want to deal with the hassle and risk of a $2000 liability, and whether you really need the power versus the weight and bulk. It’s cheap enough to be replaceable, light enough to be unnoticeable, and thin enough to fit anywhere you’d otherwise drop a notebook or a couple of magazines.

Does carrying an iPhone and an iPad make you an over-endowed tech dork? In year one, probably. But three years ago, simply carrying an iPhone had the same net result. In two years, you won’t question the “necessity” of having two devices, one that fits in your pocket and one that fits in your day bag. And your trusty old desktop will sit at home, neglected for offering marginally more functionality at a fraction of the convenience of your portable devices.

“But what about the power users?” goes the old refrain. Have power users ever had a shortage of expensive, powerful options? The entire computer marketplace has been for power users, despite what a hundred competing marketing departments would have you believe. The choices range from affordable power to powerful power, but my mom can straighten all of the doubters out in a New York Minute about which market the current paradigm serves best. Apple just broke the seal on the era of technology that is truly for everyone, and gloriously, it doesn’t look like a TV in your refrigerator.