Doing the iPad Math: Utility + Price + Desire

By BRAD STONE and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
NYT

If the much-promoted iPad is going to be a mainstream consumer hit, Apple is going to have to change the minds of people like Jon Byron.

Mr. Byron, a 54-year-old banker from Connecticut, emerged from the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan this week with a new business card scanner and serious doubts about the tablet computer trend.

“I can do everything on my MacBook Pro, cellphone and BlackBerry,” Mr. Byron said. “I don’t need any more devices. I already have six phone numbers and enough things to plug in at night.”

For all the exuberance surrounding Apple’s new gadget — and the circuslike atmosphere at Apple stores that is sure to accompany its debut on Saturday — sentiments like that are, for Apple at least, uncomfortably common.

(More here.)