In any case, Apple’s choice of who to give loaner iPads seems not to be influenced by what we’ve written in the past. It’s a pitch, to audiences it hasn’t yet won. It loaned early units to newspapers and mags not to entice their publishers into the App Store fold–they need no further convincing at this point–but because it wants their unconvinced audiences to buy iPad. A similar plan holds true here: vast and diverse as it is, the readership here includes an awful lot of tech-savvy culture hounds who don’t follow the gadget scene too closely and are suspicious of Apple’s policies, but who remain susceptible to the lure of new technology.