Watching The Matrix on Apple's new rectangle.

The main reason I won't be buying an iPad for the purposes of home movie-watching has nothing to do with the comparative quality of iPads and laptops. I just don't like watching movies on computers that much. No lap-based home viewing experience can compare with the comfort of flopping on the couch, hands free, and watching a movie—any movie, not just those available in iTunes—on the larger surface of a TV screen. For watching outside the house—on a plane, say, or in a coffee shop—an iPad's portability would be nice, but between the propping problem and the distractingly reflective screen, I'd just as soon use my laptop. But there's one place you can watch a movie without worrying about propping, or smudges, or the attention-fragmenting presence of the Internet. It's called a theater, and Steve Jobs hasn't improved on it yet.

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