The article (and the rest of the author's writings on the topic) contains a lot of evidence that his children are delighted with what they're doing. They're happily choosing to spend hours of time tinkering with this stuff, both with dad and on their own.

And it's not surprising at all. You're not thinking like a small child. Children focus intently on things that would bore adults to tears all the time. They have so little context that almost anything can be deeply interesting to them.

Now that I have a one-year-old, we spent a lot of time admiring the workings of garbage trucks, examining grass, etc. I can easily see his curiosity evolving over the next couple years to the point where he could amuse himself for hours with a command line and a speech synthesizer.

And he likes the iPad too. This isn't an either-or proposition.