For me, the Ipad has great potential, but the games need to at least have voice chat before it can fully replace board games.  My daughter went to college and we thought the ipad would be a great way to continue our gaming rivalry.  And while we did play a few games, we really missed the bantering and verbal interaction of being in the same room.  To me, half the fun is the social interaction while playing the game.

Once games have that then the Ipad offers a lot of convenience to storing the games, setting them up, and putting them away.

I have a different perspective. I started somewhat backwards, mostly playing on iPad before getting into the board game hobby. I take my iPad with me on trips, but when I'm at home, it gets used as a music player while we gather around the table. Before, with pass and play on the pad, we would watch TV or a movie while waiting for our turns... Now the focus is the group, and it really is a better experience. The analogy sometimes used is iPad is to board games as films are to books. I'm grateful for the iPad as it got me into the hobby, and it's cool to be able to use both.

Maybe it depends on the personality, but in my case, iPad is definitively the winner. I have got a lot of boardgames and I'm always looking for someone to play with. It's hard to find people with the time to play. With the iPad you can always play either against AI or other people online. Games are cheaper in the iPad than in real life so you can have more games in the iPad, you don't need physical space to store games in the iPad, you don't need to arm and disarm the board. I have been introduced to some boardgames through the iPad and I don't even think of buying them in their physical version. I hope other board games I own in physical go to the iPad, as Alhambra, cities & knights (catan expansion), other expansions of carcassonne, etc...

iPad is the definite winner.  I have a collection of physical board games that have been played exactly once over the past 10 years.  With the iPad I get to play daily online and with my friends that have their own iPad (who doesn't have an iPad these days?).

Will the iPad ever replace sitting down at table to play with friends face to face. Never. It's too small yet.

Will something bigger replace physical board games. Yes it could, for some people. Even for those who wish to hold things.

Will physical board games ever be able to provide all of the flexible opportunities to game that a digital tablet game can offer? Never. For flexibility and the ability to offer engagement in many different situations (instant, solo, online, quick portability, ergonomic positions, etc,) with the mechanics a given board game, the iPad and whatever its predecessor will be, just wins hands down.

ipad may be great but without physical friends to react and chat, boardgames are still better. It is no fun without them. Playing with AI all the time is no different that playing than playing with console games alone. 

For two players, the instant set-up is what makes iPad beat physical games for me. Being able to supplement a face-to-face opponent with AI players to make more multiplayer games available to a couple or pair of friends is another important factor. For more than two players, screen size is a big issue. For that, we need to wait for either table-sized iPads or universal tablet ownership, with more games designed to be played across multiple tablets. Pass and play doesn't quite do it, because you don't get to see what other players are doing while they are doing it.

Thought-provoking article.  I too am a fan of the physical aspect of a game, I love me a board full of cool wooden pieces, and I love moving them around.  And while setting the game up is rarely a chore -- primarily due to the enthusiasm of looking forward to play -- packing it up usually is, is you're usually mentally exhausted and/or have a second game you want to crack open.  These two are roughly equivalent for me, and the tablet's ease of setup balances it's non-physicality.

What tips the scales to the physical game's favour, however, is the basic act of sitting down with a bunch of friends to play.  Ultimately, playing the actual game is only ever about half to two-thirds of the experience; it's the table talk, the unwarranted, strategic advice on another players tactics, the pointing out the error of their most recent move just to rub it in, or that timeless classic, doing everything you can to convince the strongest player that it's in their best interest to attack someone other than you that makes board games more than simple games.  It's the social experience.

For me all of these are negated by just one thing: can't touch it. Can't hold the pieces in my hand, cant admire the craftsmanship in many games and how awesome it looks set up on the table, etc. That said i have lots of boardgames on my ipad, just as i have many comics, but i will always prefer the physical version, no matter what. I got up in this with the comics a lot until i realized its not the same and now i have quite a few that i have both digitaly and physicaly. Boardgames are also like this, i have many in both forms, but in that case those were concious decisions, because i get a lot more playtime on my ipad especially since my daughter arrived. Still whenever i get the chance to play i'd prefer the physical.

Don't forget cost, all the iPad board games I have cost less than $10!!

Two more items in favor of digital(iPad) gaming:

Setup - Don't forget the ease of setting up a game in a digital or iPad version.  This is one of the elements of games that is overlooked as far as something that makes certain folks hate a game the tedium of setting it up.  

Randomization - dice or order of cards can be better randomized in say Dominion when shuffling can be a tedious and annoying task as well as not done to the satisfaction of other players.

*cards :D

no more cars sleeves!!! :)

btw real boardgames with real friends are still better IMHO!

Great article, but I completely disagree. For me, screen size is the major issue here. You just can't sit down with a handful of friends and stick an iPad in the middle - and sitting down with some friends is ultimately what gaming is and should be about. I don't touch multiplayer - I play iPad implementations solely for practice. 

Now, huge tabletop displays might change this (the iTable?) but for now, an 11" screen is never going to win out over actual games.