Who said anything about capability? You get an iPad because what little it does do it does well (either that or you just wanted one for no reason and had the money to spare). I can't really say that much for most netbooks since they don't do well enough at anything they can do; I'd rather just have a full laptop. I have just as little reason to buy either.
Well, except for the iPad does have some nice apps, and it makes an absolutely spectacular digital picture frame. Netbooks are a dying fad, anyway; they're just dumbed-down, disposable mini-laptops. I think Apple made the right call on this one, specialized-function tablets are going to stick around for a while, especially once Android starts seeing some deployment in this arena. Trying to type or use a track pad on a netbook is infuriating because they're far too small; might as well not have either and go for a touchscreen with a flexible on-screen keyboard layout that only needs to display fewer keys at a time.