In my experience, a tablet has a much more specific purpose than a phone: to view web pages. I'm willing to bet that 99% of iPad usage is for web pages, apps that are essentially just iPad optimized web pages, and games that could have been done in a properly touch-enabled Flash (which may not exist yet, but will come eventually).
2. Ultimate Mortal Combat 3 for iPad (3D Fighting)
3. Splashtop Remote Desktop for iPad (Remote Desktop)
4. Angry Bird Rio HD
5. Pages
6. Angry Bird HD
7. Words with Friends HD
8. GarageBand
9. Gangstar: Miami Vindication HD (3D ACT)
10. Real Racing 2 HD (3D Racing)
Only 4,6,7 fit your discription and for now the Chrome Store port of Angry Bird performs rather poorly on a duo core Atom system. And the facebook version of Scrabble doesn't compare to the iPad version.
My reply was more targeted at this part of his comment:"apps that are essentially just iPad optimized web pages, and games that could have been done in a properly touch-enabled Flash (which may not exist yet, but will come eventually)."
But if you want evidence for people not spending majority time using browser on iPad, here is Flurry's analytic data:
1) apps that could be web pages are generally free so don't show up on the "top ten paid apps" list. The cooking apps I used are a prime example here.
2) flashy games are often purchased but forgotten, it's the apps with good gameplay but not necessarily as flashy graphics that get replayed and replayed and replayed. canonical example: angry birds.
3) Flash can do 3D too.
4) in your top ten list, only #3 and #8 would not be possible as a web site.
Most apps could be web sites, so any stats that say most time is spent in apps is meaningless.
No they could not. There could be and in some cases already are Web based similar services out there. But they are inferior, unpopular among iPad users. Connected Application can not necessarily translate into a web application and remain the same attraction or even feature parity.
Angry Bird/Tiny Wings/Fruit Ninja etc are not as graphically demanding as say Infinite Blade, but they are still very well done games with impressive art work. As a matter of fact all the Zynga games and Gameloft titles in the top 10 are not flashy by any means, to be honest Gameloft's 3D engine is so out of date it's laughable.
I'm sure given enough motivation Adobe can make Flash do anything, it could do your dishes and make your coffee. But it doesn't mean you should let Flash take over.
IMHO your wishful thinking is as meaningless if not more, especially when you don't even have stats.
I think it's more accurate to say that the iPhone and iPad are game platforms that happen to have very good web browsers and email clients. Games utterly dominate the top 25 app lists on both sides.
If you put aside anti-virus stuff and Microsoft Adobe's flagship products (namely Office and PS), you'll see all games on paid PC software chart too, if there was a chart. * In consumer space.
I own one. I'm surprised you haven't noticed the lag when trying javascript intense sites (like games). Here are the iPad Nitro Sunspider results: 2121ms vs. Chrome 11: 248ms. That would make Mobile Safari javascript 8x slower than desktop Chrome (other desktop browsers have similar speeds).
Well, ot in my experience. Native apps still have an edge. For example: twitter web interface is nice, but twitter the iOS app is WAY better on iPad. Also, I don't see something of the quality of Flipboard coming as web app (and clipboard get content from web, after all). May be this will change, but we are still not here.
I don't get the appeal of Flipboard at all. It's pretty, but the reason that good books are pleasant to read is that someone has carefully laid out all the content on each page. Splashing a bunch of random news items with truncated headings on a virtualized book doesn't get you there.
I suspect we'll look back on this early period of tablet software design with a laugh. All these clones of real-world objects (iBooks) will seem quaint and naive and conservative.
web surfing (is that phrase even in wide use anymore?) is the sole reason I bought a NOOKcolor... which is incidentally exactly what I'm writing this on. It is of course rooted.
