What the iPad actually does is allow you to use it as a mouse not a pressure sensative tablet.

Said another way:

What the iPad tricks do is effectively allow you to use the iPad as another monitor, but one that happens to be a touchscreen. Being a touchscreen, your finger (or a blunt stylus) becomes the "mouse."

In other words, it's really just about using your iPad for ordinary remote access (which is reasonable), not about using your iPad as an alternate pointing device.

I agree with Scott. Nowhere near a practical substitute for using a Wacom stylus (and I don't even really like using Wacoms, either).

Ever visited a computer store and played with the HP turnkey system bundles that include a large touchscreen monitor? They predated iOS devices, and they are mostly a marketing flop. They just let you work on your computer as if it's a kiosk.

Who really wants to work that way? It's awkward, cumbersome, slow and laborious. Your hand gets in the way, and you get fingerprints all over the screen. Along comes grossly underpowered, overpriced iOS devices and suddenly everyone wants to use to use their iPads as a kiosk. (Okay, with the addition of zoom and pan gestures. But really...do you get excited about using a kiosk at the airport?)

That's why I much prefer using a stylus over my fingers on iOS devices (zoom jestures be hanged); which, in turn, I still find far inferior to using an accurate, sharp stylus on a 10-year old Palm Tungsten with its elegant and efficient Graffiti handwriting recognition instead of tapping an onscreen querty keyboard with what amounts to the stylus version of a fist-sized brick of sidewalk chalk.

We're all fad-chasing suckers, straining for excuses to waste good money on the lastest techno junk. I'm convinced that when the flash-in-the-pan (okay, marketing inferno) new wears offs, bulb-head aliens visiting earth will find these silly glorified finger-painting devices in the ruins, snicker, and count them among the myriad historic curiosities over which humans wasted ridiculous amounts of energy, time and money.

;-)

If you seriously want to pursue this for serious work, that $800 iPad fund that's burning a hole in your pocket is already over 3/4 of the way toward the real thing: a 12" Wacom Cintique; a drawing/painting stylus tablet that is also a monitor.

But c'mon...we all know what this is about. You can rationalize a drawing tablet for getting work done, but you just wanna buy an iPad. ;-)

Meanwhile, I'll still get more productive (paying) work done with a $39 optical mouse. ;-)

JET