But people have been discussing for well over a year. Not one prominent bloggers/journalist mentioned the industrial applications. 802.11n + 10hr battery life + standardized browser like Safari is awesome for writing data-collection web-apps.

There is an article for that: http://www.executivehm.com/news/itablet-in-healthcare/

Should be an awesome opportunity for WuFoo.

OK, I agree. You're right. Just sounded funny.

I guess Apple's strong B2C orientation & the non-tinkerability of the device has something to do with that. Can you run the webapp on a local server, for example?

Why not? WiFi links up to the local network; access the server based on an internal server.

I can already do that via the iPhone.

Agreed. Another overlooked option is you can easily get people to physically sign things on it. That's a potential tipping point for a huge number of forms that are still on paper.

sign with your finger? That's probably harder than signing with a mouse.

Apparently there are styluses that will work with capacitive screens.

http://robrohan.com/2009/02/27/diy-iphone-stylus-the-free-ca...

Why not sign in with a camera?