There's a lot of great apps for the iPad, obviously, but would we need so many great apps if Safari just worked completely? Ignoring the fact that Flash doesn't work on the iP-devices, rich text edit boxes don't seem to work either, as I've noticed with both Wordpress and Sitefinity. Logging in to Google Adwords actually crashes Safari. Google Analytics uses Flash so that doesn't work either.

Wordpress has a free iPad app that works wonderfully. There are a few Google Analytics apps that work great too, for a fee. Here's where we've gone backwards. For years software has been moving towards the web. It was supposed to be easier to deploy, and you could use the application in any web browser. For the most part, it's was all free. Some of it was paid. But whether or not a website charged a fee was largely based on whether or not the company wanted to charge for the service.

In the case of Google Analytics, we're being charged not to use Google Analytics, but to use it on the iPad. At any point I can power up my PC or Mac and use it for free. You really have to love a device to pay to use apps on it that are free everywhere else.

The applications are also device dependent. I can't just go to any iPad and use my apps, I have to go to my iPad. Unlike on the PC and Mac, where I can go to any PC and Mac and login to the paid websites that I subscribe to.

Now, my personal opinion is that the web is good for some things, but when complex applications are involved, a nice desktop app can go along way. Nonetheless, conventional wisdom has pushed everything to the web, and soon, to the cloud. But wait-to use Wordpress on my iPad, I am downloading and installing software. Yes, it's easy to do, but I lost a little flexibility now. If all of the great websites become great iPad apps, I am going to have a lot of apps on my iPad. Not as great as just hitting a web browser.