While it's not fair to define a new generation of computing by its isolation and exclusion of the previous generation, people have been taking a pop at the iPad because a PC (or a Mac) is required before your iPad will work. At all. I'm pretty certain that the Apple II didn't need to be sync-ed up to a minicomputer via iTunes before you could turn the thing on.
The real reason is that Apple wants to nudge new iUsers towards providing a credit card when being forced to create a iTunes account for activating a iDevice, so that it can have it on file.
That's why the process to create an account without providing payment info is made intentionally difficult without jumping through hoops. It is as simple as that.
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While it's not fair to define a new generation of computing by its isolation and exclusion of the previous generation, people have been taking a pop at the iPad because a PC (or a Mac) is required before your iPad will work. At all. I'm pretty certain that the Apple II didn't need to be sync-ed up to a minicomputer via iTunes before you could turn the thing on.
The real reason is that Apple wants to nudge new iUsers towards providing a credit card when being forced to create a iTunes account for activating a iDevice, so that it can have it on file.
That's why the process to create an account without providing payment info is made intentionally difficult without jumping through hoops. It is as simple as that.