"We decided to publish the full report anyway (as a donation to the community) because all experiences from the last 30 years of usability shows that early usability findings have a disproportionally large impact on design projects."
Surely, the reality is that Nielsen wants to increase his relevance by glomming on to the current hype surrounding the iPad. Hence he releases the report is a freebie.
I am glad he did this, now I actually have an idea about the product he sells.
One of the best ways to market yourself is to give away freebies.
For example, I knew a graphic designer who did pro-bono work for some non-profit organizations. He did really good work and some of the non-profit board members gave him work to do. Really lucrative work - corporate annual reports.
Right, but that's because he's really good at increasing his visibility, not because his work is as fundamental to the field as, say, Shneiderman or Newell or even Norman.
Kudos to Jakob Nielsen:
"We decided to publish the full report anyway (as a donation to the community) because all experiences from the last 30 years of usability shows that early usability findings have a disproportionally large impact on design projects."
http://s3.amazonaws.com/nngroup/ipad-usability.pdf