You might say that Nokia had everything ready for this shape or this design, but market? What market?

The iPad is an ebook reader and stand-alone media player that as a bonus, can even run iPhone applications... It's not "the next big thing", it's just an iPhone that you are supposed to use on the couch instead of standing up on the bus stop.

As for the lack of Flash: I am not a huge fan of Flash myself, and I kinda like it that Apple is making pressure for people to move away from Flash and anything on top of the browser. They brought the focus towards OS applications again. I like that. It always feels funnny to me that one of the good aspects of Maemo is to support Flash, that I dislike so much.

But it would be good if these applications were more platform-independent, of course...

(The above comment is quite good. I would just like to point out that while I dislike Flash, it doesn't mean I think it's easy to substitute it for anything else! )