A Truck Ran Over an iPhone...

It's 25 degrees outside, and the unemployment rate here in Michigan is 15 percent. Great job at economic recovery, Washington.

Being that Apple Inc. introduced a new product whose name reminded me of the 35 years of feminine protection in my life, I decided to look at this thing as a diversion from the rotten economy here in the Rust Belt.

The iPad, which also could have been the iTablet or the best name, the iSlate, is supposed to be released in March and April. There are a billion tech columnists and probably a couple hundred Mac blogs/pages (ironic for those who are still about only 8 percent of the world's computers), and they already summarized the iPad's specs -- read books, listen to music, surf the Web, write a document, email something, etc.

When I first saw Steven Paul Jobs fondling the thing (right), I really thought he was next going to kiss it with the passion that a man would do for something that will generate a mountain of moolah. Which will happen, due to his company cult and society's endless materialism.

My reaction is, as the Biggest Apple Hater in my state, that criminy, here comes another product to cause mass hysteria in people, those humongous lines at the stores, etc. Fact is, it does look like a Freightliner flattened out an iPhone. Same bezel, same silver band around the edges, same "home" button, same little icons.

My rabid Mac fan-girl neighbor, "Cross-Eyed Julie" Novak, said she wasn't getting one, even though it seems she has every product that the Fruit Co. ever released in her ranch house next door.

That surprised me, but Julie says she can do everything on her Mac or iPhony that the iPad can do. She brags that her MacBook Pro weighs just 4 pounds and isn't that hard to carry or stow. A few of her friends, she says, scoffed at her when she said this, crying out that they'll be in line at our area's two closest Fruit Stores, in Troy and Clinton Township, to get their fix. Oh, just lovely.

That is the pattern that Apple has set. Months or years of rumors. A press conference with such phrases as "a magical and revolutionary device" (magic -- did Apple or TBWA Chiat Day borrow Disney copywriters for this?). Official sale date announcement. Huge lines as they used to have in the golden days of rock concerts in the 1970s. People coming out of the stores, raising their precious cargo aloft, and exhibiting the level of hysteria usually found at pentecostal revivals after finding the Lord. (Which in turn may be why idiots call these things "Jesus phone/tablet?)

It's been five days since the "press event," as Apple calls their announcements, and already the iPad is appearing in pop culture. Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central appeared to have a real one to read off Grammy nominees last night. He took it out, and the screen started whipping around wildly to try and orient itself correctly, just as you'd see on an iPhony if you turn that pitiful thing about rather quickly.

Then there was Pee-wee Herman. In what I first thought was a digital manipulation of old 1980s show footage in a sketch on Funny or Die, the man-child in the gray flannel suit was back in his Playhouse with Chairy, Globey, Conky and the rest showing off his own iPad. However, it didn't appear real, just a mockup, because the picture onscreen never moved. Pee-wee's friends quickly ripped the thing's benefits to shreds, such as the inability to run two apps at once, as pointed out by Globey. He showed how he could do things at once, singing The Beach Boys' "Kokomo" and showing exactly where "Aruba...Jamaica...Bermuda..." were located. Magic Screen was more than happy to read Green Eggs and Ham aloud.

This little video, however, is brand new, something comic Paul Reubens did on a reconstruction of the show's set currently being used in a live show at Club Nokia in Los Angeles.

But it reflects exactly the shortcomings the tech crowd has listed for this thing, which indeed could evolve over the next couple years while at the same time drop in price. Someone's suggestion that it could be used for college textbooks could be possible, as there are multiple universities that use podcasts and iPhonys in their classes.

But for now, another Apple product that, in the words of the Valley Girls of yesterday, "gags me with a spoon." Useless technology in a pretty package, the kind of stuff only for those who want the latest gizmos, or those Apple "completists" who have to buy every piece of nonsense their company puts out.