Wow. 256MB of ram is enough to run full OSX with some hacking and sputtering, though with some hiccups. Then, there seems to be a lot of space under the bonnet, but Apple chose higher-priced, tiny components rather than cheaper, larger ones. Why? Who knows, but it is Apple we are talking about and their reputation needs to stay up. Pictures at ifixit.

Steve said the iPad's chips hardly use energy and that is a good thing because paired with a huge battery like the iPad has, battery life could be amazing:
The iPad battery is a lot bigger than an iPhone 3G battery. The iPhone battery has about 1/5th the capacity provided by the iPad battery.
Looks like Apple made it as well as any device they've ever made, even better if it is perfectly balanced between batteries. Samsung manufactured RAM and A4 it looks like