My review
iPad and MBA are competitors if the customer thinks so. In this case it is for me. Quick review:
iPad is great, love the full touch. But I became really annoyed at functions that were missing or altered from a standard PC/MAC experience. Yes yes i realize that for new/niave owners this is not an issue...but for customers like me raised on PCs (and have had iphone and mac for ever), it became really annoying, especially when there is no good reason. simple examples were: certain browser controls and functions are missing (no good reason for this), no radio playlists in tunes (what???), etc. of course there were work around to probably anything but that is not the point...the point is I did not want to have to have artificial limitations. Just give me the tablet, w full touch. All the great iphone/ipad apps could be provided on the same hardware, as an app, on a mac, on a tablet.
sooooo.......
ipad is great for the mission, consume content but has 'features' that will limit it to this mission. if its all you need BUY IT! its great!
if you want a more full featured computer, MBA is it!
BUT THE BOTTOM LINE TO ME AS A CUSTOMER is: I would just like to ipad hardware running OSX with ipad apps running in it. It will get there sometime in the future...I just wonder if android tablets will get there sooner...
ONE MORE THING: this is a lot like comparing a low end economy car to a luxury car, depends what you want. the annoying thing to me is the (sometimes) arbitrary changes in UI between the two...like having the gas and brake pedals switched on the economy car, or having your radio not allow certain stations to be played on it. When the product differentation makes sense most customers understand, when seems arbitrary thats something different.