Are you really arguing that the iPod Touch, smartphones, e-ink readers, netbooks, and iPad-like devices should all be lumped into one category by tech analysts?

Are you really arguing that the iPod Touch, smartphones, e-ink readers, netbooks, and iPad-like devices should all be lumped into one category by tech analysts? No, I'm arguing for categories that lead to enlightening analyses. Perhaps the industry-standard categorization is perfect: iPad really is unlike all other devices on earth. Well, fine, but then this article is a banal exercise in circular logic: Of course the iPad is the leader of the iPad market. Unenlightening. Let's hypothesize. Perhaps it would be more interesting to try breaking up the market by end-user goals. What is the iPad's share of the portable music player market? The portable video player market? The non-portable video player market? The web-surfing market? The digital sketchpad market? The digital mixing-console market? The e-reader market? The communications device (SMS, Twitter, voice) market? The GPS navigation market? The casual gaming market? The hardcore gaming market? Is this the way customers decide what to buy? Is this the way designers approach the problem of making gadgets better? If so, maybe this is a better categorization scheme. If not, we could try something else. Perhaps it would be more fruitful to ignore the "tablet" nature of the iPad completely. Everyone is focused on the Pad part, but perhaps a real key of the iPad's success is the design of the ecosystem: Minimal variations in hardware to improve reliability, and to make it easier to shop for and easier to support. A brand-new software ecosystem with no need for back-compatibility. A sole-source software installation system that provides leverage for excluding malware and offers generally-seamless automatic upgrades. Categorize systems in this fashion, and suddenly the iPad belongs in a category with the iPhone, a gaming console, the Kindle, and the TiVo, among other things. Obviously, you can slice the universe into categories in more than one way. You can even slice it in several ways during the same essay. But the touchstone of a categorization scheme is: Does it lead somewhere? Does it help you discover something interesting or actionable?