The introduction of the Apple iPad has engendered a somewhat luke-warm reception. It is a tablet computer about the size of a standard pad of paper, and features a color display with a screen that responds to touch. There are a number of core applications bundled with the device, not the least of which is an e-book reader where you will be able to download many popular books directly from the Apple iTunes store.
For anyone with an iPod Touch or iPhone, support on Linux has been somewhat limited up until a few months ago. Fortunately, with the work on usbmuxd it is now possible to mount either one of these popular Apple devices on your favorite Linux distribution.
My last full-time Mac was a Centris 650, at the time I spent a lot of effort getting the Houdini 486 PC board running so that I could boot MS-DOS and possibly Linux. While Houdini never lived up to my expectations, the modern Mac is transformative in many regards.
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