I touched a nerve with my recent dismissal of the iPad as a costly Etch-a-Sketch alternative, and received more reader responses to that article than anything else I've ever written for this publication.

Here's a representative sampling, complete with my unsolicited rebuttals.

I sound like his wife
Is it just me or is reader Ken Ashford implying I have some sort of hormonal imbalance? I'm probably reading too much into his opening observation:

The cool reception of the iPad reminds me of questions my wife has asked me over the past 30 years.

As each was introduced to the world, she has posed the same question: "Why do you need a computer (or the Internet, or email)? What's it for?"

I recognized their potential, but there was simply no way to explain it to her. She could only follow up with "But why do you need it?"

For the iPad, you must consider its potential, not just its first incarnation.

You mentioned the Apple IIgs, an effort to placate the massive Apple II base that felt they were being ignored by the very company they helped finance. So Apple pushed the Apple II technology to its limit. I recall it was marketed with the "Apple II forever" campaign. There was no place left for it to go and they soon rightfully pulled the plug on the Apple II.

You also mentioned [former Apple CEO John] Sculley's brainchild, the Newton. I think it was the first thing Steve eliminated as soon as he came back to Apple. I had one. It was ahead of its time, but it was clumsy and it needed to die. I won't say any more about that.

Which brings me to this. Take a quick look back at the iPod and the iPhone when they were first released. There were plenty of MP3 players on the market, but the feature rich iPod redefined the music player. The scroll-wheel-controlled menu could have done that by itself. Later iPod models continued to add capabilities and an online store to support it that took us beyond the earlier market for MP3 players.

The iPhone brought enough early features and high expectations to immediately redefine the future of the cell phone market. The developers kit and all the apps that followed have carried us with it into a world beyond the simple cell phone market.

The iPad has been part of Steve's vision since the mid '80s, waiting most of that time for technology to catch up to what he envisioned. I think we can agree that it will continue to have his full support. Yes, it was released with fewer features than we've grown to expect, but I'm confident it will morph and expand to take its place at the leading edge of another growing market that doesn't currently exist.