I’m saving this passage to justify my inevitable purchase of an Apple tablet:

Imagine that the “media pad” includes a screen two to four times the size of the iPhone’s 3.5-inch (2″ x 3″) screen, Wi-Fi connectivity, the ability to run software from the App Store and a full web browser. The usefulness of a device like that would instantly trump that of any e-book reader, even if the battery life is poor and the screen less readable than an e-ink screen. That’s because a simple, easy-to-use tablet would be able to do anything the e-book reader could (display the text of books using an app like Stanza, which Amazon recently acquired) plus it would have access to 40,000 apps and billions of web pages. Its screen would be able to display color, and it would undoubtedly let you access e-mail, IM and other apps that people want.

Via Joe Wikert’s Twitter stream.