Pros and cons of the Apple iPad

Pros

• It has the best screen on the market, called IPS. It is multitouch, capacitive, HD and is very responsive and sensitive rarely giving bad touch receptions (when it interprets a touch gesture in a way that you didn't mean and makes you angry)
• The iPad built-in material and hardware is of the best quality.
• The iOS software based on UNIX is quite resilient to software failures, crashes and such, with an overall good performance and excellent appeal.
• Bought apps on Apple Store have free updates forever. 
• Some content of high quality is only available on App Store. 
• Easy to buy applications.

Cons

• The need of external accessories in a excess, like USB to iPad to read pendrives (USB-On-The-Go), Apple iPad Camera Connector to read SD cards, iPad to HDMI to output to TV, AIR Video to play MKV videos, Dock Connector to VGA Adapter, so you need a bag to carry your whole Apple accessories and its cases to do simple tasks. They are expensive and even some not official from Apple Store.
• Do get all the power of iPad, you need to jailbreak it in order to use Cydia unofficial stores to install third-party apps oriented for different kinds of users, for example file browsing or service management.
• The need for videos to be MP4/H.26/MPEG forces that other formats do not play smoothly even in a jailbreaken iphone, and if you convert other format videos to H.264 ties you to a physical computer. 
• No official support for Adobe Flash. Although HTML5 is good, Flash offers more features to provide a smoother play, like buffering. That detects your speed connection and starts playing the video in the right moment so you don't run out of buffer. Flash does better job at resizing and embedded content in videos or applications. The reason why HTML5 videos are though to use less battery than Flash is because iPad decodes via hardware such videos and refuses to do it for Flash, so generic processor has to be used resulting in higher battery consumption.
• Lockdown to a single store called App Store, with walled content.
• Filesystem lockdown. You can't browse freely the filesystem. For that you need at least to install Cydia and then iFile or similar.
• Although the screen is big for a tablet device (9.7 inches), it is not appropriate for someone who wants to do certain level of computing, more similar to a real PC. At least, people who wants that starts buying the Apple bluetooth keyboard, and then other hardware  like mouses, cases or Docs to keep in a good angle viewing position. That is not really portable and makes it a mess to take with you, suiting better a notebook or laptop.
• The iPad is designed for being a "passive" user and to download content, but not to create it or participate actively on the web. Is good for reading some mail (and answering with short messages), viewing some youtube video, browsing bookmarked pages of playing some games.
• Doesn't allow you to "save", "export" or "edit" your data out of the Apple environmental system, you are just meant to view it, making it nearly impossible to get out when you made your life around the Apple product and you want to change.
• Abusive and nearly mandatory use of iTunes for every simple task related to getting or sending data to environment, like copying a file to the iPad. This ties you to a physical computer for reasons that are not technically justified.
• The iPad 1024x768 screen fits 4:3 aspect ratio, which doesn't match the 16:9 and 16:10 ratios used for 720p, 1080p or other HD videos that even widely available at the App Store. That means that or a part of the screen is wasted if you want to see the entire film or laterals are cropped  if you want to see as much as possible. The iPad can't be compared to a real TV when talking about watching films as appropriate, and even such good screen causes eye fatigue when using it long time. The iPad should have a real 720p resolution from the beginning.
• Some apps pretend the iPad to be a eBook reader, but actually doesn't meet with the objective. That screen is obviously not designed for ebook reading and when using it for a long time may cause eye injury, compared to traditional paper books.