How would we like to use the iPad? Simple. Ad hoc data exploration can be facilitated with gesture control. At least that is the hypothesis, and it's a hypothesis that is being validated by companies like Perceptive Pixel with their gesture-controlled wall technologies.  In ad hoc data exploration and analysis, visualization, semantic zooming, data pivoting, and related approaches to interactivity can speed up the process and reduce the need for complicated command-line and configuration level approaches in trying to understand "big data" problem spaces.

The iPad can potentially be a part of the solution, but only if existing applications that are tuned to web-based delivery can run on the iPad platform. So far that isn't happening, but with sufficient demand, iPad/iPhone native solutions will arise that help to plug the gap and, ultimately, it is likely that Apple will succumb to the potential of a lucrative market opportunity outside the well-controlled pond of iTunes and the App Store to support the needs of business and government.