Ug. Apple make new toy...me get now.

--I surf the web frantically, desperately perusing for whisperings of the Apple tablet that I've heard of for months. I clench my iPhone in one hand, browsing google for possible updates, while simultaneously skimming rumor sites like TMZ on my Macbook. Though I know they usually report on celebrities, I pray that they will have taken a break from following Tiger Woods' mistresses long enough to disperse one of their bottom-dwelling camera voyeurs to Apple's conference so that we might know the details of the gift to the world that Steve Jobs has promised us. As I grow increasingly frustrated, I find myself on top of the dining room table, waving my fists around violently as if some acid-tripped UFC fighter surrounded by bees. "WHAT THE CRAP IS GOING ON?!!! THEY PROMISED....."..............

I wake up with a large knot on my head, having obviously fallen from the table onto an old fax machine after blacking out from being seated for nearly 18 hours straight scouring the internet, then making the quick ascension to the table and using all my oxygen screaming at the ceiling fan. "How long have I been out?" I think to myself. I look at the clock on the wall. "11 hours!!!!! What the --" I cut my explicative short as I dash madly for the Macbook on the table. My eyes glaze over as I hit refresh and see details of the "iPad" litter the search results in front me. The world seems to halt and the only noise that exists is the slight murmur of the laptop. After about 3 minutes, I break gaze with the screen in front of me, slowly cocking my head to one side and staring wide-eyed off into the dead space around me. As if speaking to God himself, I whisper...."It's beautiful." --


Now obviously, none of the above actually happened. But it's kind of the delusional, over-exaggerated perspective I have of Mac fanatics waiting in the wings to hear what new toy Steve Jobs has when he leaks that some new device is in the works. (Hopefully, no one took it as more than a joke and wasn't offended.) But I thought it was a nice prologue to what I actually wanted to say.

I guess I was a little ticked when I started looking at all the specs the iPad DIDN'T offer. Not that I would actually ever consider buying one, but I do expect some sort of groundbreaking release when Apple drops something, especially when they take a lot of time to build it up like they have been with their soon-to-be touchscreen tablet. I mean, it is, after all, the first time anybody has made a touchscreen tablet that almost doubles as a laptop, right?. 'Knock Knock'. Oh wait, somebody's at the door. Hey, it's Dryden Mitchell from Alien Ant Farm, all the way from 2001 to slap me upside the face with this thing called a tablet PC. Though the irony is not lost on me that I've just been violated by a band that capitalized on redoing something that was fine as it was, I digress....maybe Mac could do it better.....after all, they've been anything but a one hit wonder like our aforementioned alterna-rockers . Maybe they were going to integrate their touchscreen functionality from the iPhone to make a super-sweet laptop. Like the Mac enthusiasts (which I, myself, am not), I expected this to be the ultimate all-in-one personal device. I expected it to reach into the great beyond and give us the touch screens you see on all those movies about the future, reminiscent of Star Trek and the touch-friendly pads they kept tucked under their arms, quickly tapping away at schedules, control functions, and using it as a remote control to tap into the majority of the devices I already own. Alas, we're gypped on a built in Webcam, USB connections, and the simple concept of multitasking. But why? I mean...they have the technology right? Obviously, that's a rhetorical question. Of course they do. Cameras/Webcams are standard on pretty much every laptop and camera nowadays. Heck, I'm surprised etch a sketches don't come standard with them by now (patent pending). And a 16gb baseline hard drive? Good luck downloading your DVD digital copies to that with room left to copy over your Aerosmith collection.

So why the lack of features? Here's my theory. Over the last several years, Apple has become the master of selling the newest "version" of their products. Heck, they pretty much invented the term "Gen" in reference to their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, Eleventy-fifth (etc) Gen products. So why give you "rich" features now like USB connections, a camera, flash content, or SD card expansion that clearly are available now, when they can put them into future releases and make their consumers drool over the "cool new features" then? Apple is the king of marketing. Clear and simple. When you think of effective advertising, there shouldn't be a person out there that doesn't see a little white laptop or sleek one-button phone pop into their heads. And now that they've got society eating out of their hands, they've developed a way to keep a product like the iPad relative and popular for the next 5-7 years. Steve Jobs can now relax for that time, holding back on those features until the bustle has died down about his awesome new product. Then, standing on his podium overlooking us all as our palettes wet for something new, say "Alright boys, let 'em have it", as the next wave of whatever-gen products is released, all with features deemed "groundbreaking"...but nothing more than simple hardware specs that were already included on the "less cool" Windows, Android, or Linux models from the start.

So, consider to yourself, if you've pondered dropping $500-$700 on the iPad....are you willing to vomit another $500-$700 in 2 years??? If so, I applaud your utter devotion to spending money on things more useless than Joan Rivers' next botox injections.

And there.....you probably thought it wasn't possible to trash on the iPad without making an observation on it's blatant reference to a feminine product.