It seems to me that whether this is a leap or a nudge depends on what the individual person is looking for.
If you're looking for an e-book reader, it's a nudge, maybe even a step back, because it's arguably less suited for that application than the various existing devices, unless you need
really big print, of course.
If you're looking for a professional device, Adam's document reader, or nekokami's info pad, then, depending on how the features actually shake out, it's quite possibly a rather large bound forward.
I'm looking for the latter, as I have a ebook reader that I'm quite happy with, but something for note taking in a meeting, or reading manuals or document on the go, that's something I'd really like to have and don't. For my wife, something to grade papers on (she's an English professor) would be a major boon. A lot of whether it would work for those purposes depends on exactly what formats it handles, how it handles them, and whether I can get them back onto a PC from the device in a usable format for downstream stuff (i.e. returning said papers, and putting said meeting notes into another app such as MS OneNote). Probably if I can get them back to a PC at all, with text and ink combined and intact, the rest can be handled easily enough.
Very interesting indeed.