More marketable? Hardly.

My mother wants something that she can lie down on a couch with, read books, check email, be relaxed. You can't do that in the iPod comfortably.

Note that Steve's doing all this in a comfy chair. That's what this is. It's a comfy chair device.

This is basically a crunchpad - but it's probably be going to be $1000. Yes this device has a niche, but it depends on the price point...

I know, right? TechCrunch has such an extensive history of creating brilliant, usable interfaces?

But you're wrong. This doesn't have a niche. This is going to replace many, many niches. This is going to be what people buy instead of laptops. Unless I'm a hardcore user that needs pro tools, this will do everything I want a computer to do. And it will do it sexier, and sleeker, and it won't have any of the rough edges that my laptop does.

$499 for the base model makes it a whole lot more attractive than the $800-$1000 a lot of us were expecting . . .

From Engadget:

> 10:18AM "Now if I want to send a message, I hit compose -- up pops this gorgeous keyboard." Steve is typing, it looks very responsive.

I would be extremely disappointed in Apple if they produced a device that was supposed to be capable of handling email, and you couldn't type on it. I suspect they've managed to solve the multi-touch/OSD keyboard problem somehow, which would be neat.