Anyone going to stand in line for this thing? Just wondering

[B00tDisk]

I neither "love" nor "hate" inanimate electronic devices.  There are varying things I can get out of them versus what I have to put in to them to get it out.  I could probably do about 90 to 95 percent of what I do on my PC with...say, oh, an Amiga.  The massive amount of effort required (money + time) however means I really won't bother.

Likewise, consolidating things I'm already familiar and with into a new device, and then asking me to move out of my comfort zone to learn an entirely new UI simply doesn't interest me.

What I do hate is the WOO WOO HYPE TRAIN that comes storming out of the roundhouse every fucking time Steve Jobs takes a crap, and the idiocy that accompanies such blind fanboyism.  I've got a four year old Gateway I got for the price of repairing the flip/pentouch screen on it that I could probably install OSX on if the mood took me that would eat the iEtch-a-Sketch for lunch.  Apple neither invented nor perfected the PDA, MP3 player, cell phone, palmtop or netbook, but to hear the shrill Apple Defense Corps, carrying their Jobsian Reality Distortion Field generators into battle, you'd think that Apple had.

That is what I hate.

[B00tDisk]

I specifically avoided mentioning the iPad, but yes, I believe that it is the first of a new class of computing. A class that might not feel natural to us, just as people resisted GUIs in the mid 80s, but is now here to stay. Ok Apple's mk1 iPad might not appeal to you and I... Maybe their mk2 or some other manufacture's device will, but it doesn't matter, as we are now the old blokes in the pub moaning about the new fangled music that's basically just noise

I disagree; it's new paint on an old idea.  The day I cannot, under any circumstances, or any way, go out and "roll my own" hardware, pick my OS of choice (including Mac OS - as long as they're x86 based they're a choice for homegrown PC enthusiasts, and privately Apple can't help but be happy about that regardless of their corporate stance on it) and enjoy computing the way I'd like is the day I give up on it as a hobby, period.

Imagine someone saying that a round track and battery operated toy train is "the future" of scale railroading, or that in five years model plane enthusiasts will all have single-stroke engined Cox "plane-on-a-string" models etc., and that anyone else's enjoyment is just them living in the past.  I'm a big-tent guy, there's room for everybody underneath it, and I'll be damned if I'll sit by and nod my head and pretend it's OK for some nitwit with a degree in interior design dictate what I do, and do not, with computers.

[B00tDisk]

Apple has done for personal computing what The Beatles did for rock and roll.

...be a shallow overhyped boy band?

(p.s., as pointed out the Beatles were pop, and furthermore even Paul McCartney acknowledges they couldn't produce an album as good as anything by The Beach Boys)