Eight Feet Deep

Maybe I’m just too far out of the techno gen­er­a­tion to grasp the impor­tance of today’s announce­ment by Apple, dur­ing which CEO Steve Jobs unveiled their new tablet com­puter. I mean, I own a lap­top and use it exten­sively. I have a cell that can take pic­tures, video, respond to voice com­mands such as “roll over and play dead.” I have a desk­top in stor­age. I got your dig­i­tal cam­era. Just last week I was given an elec­tronic device that mea­sures my blood sugar. Also, my work com­puter is a tablet-style which would pro­vide me tons of plea­sure if only I could blow it to King­dom Come with a Smith and Wes­son .500 Mag­num.

Surely a .50-caliber revolver promised as a “hunt­ing hand­gun for any game walk­ing” could take care of that screwed up Fujitsu tablet PC I have to use that often acts as if it is on a con­tin­ual for­ti­fied wine bender.

I even started out using Apple’s Macs.

But I don’t have an iPod. Maybe that’s why I don’t get the sig­nif­i­cance of the iPad.

I do under­stand what the new tablet does and it’s rel­a­tively cheap price start­ing at $499 instead of the expected $1,000. It appar­ently com­bines the tech­nol­ogy and oper­a­tion of Apple’s iPod, com­put­ers, e-book read­ers and cell phones. Smart, func­tional, rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive and deliv­ered by a genius of a man who sur­vived liver can­cer after get­ting a trans­plant. It’s a hell of a story, no doubt.

What it isn’t, is the Sec­ond Com­ing of the Almighty. The head­line on Huff­in­g­ton Post this after­noon took up half of my lap­top screen.

Maybe my lack of enthu­si­asm stems from becom­ing com­puter lit­er­ate only in my 30s and 40s. Or, as I said, maybe it’s because I don’t have an iPod. Some pun­dits remarked that they believed the iPad announce­ment would over­shadow Pres­i­dent Obama’s first State of the Union address this evening. Go fig­ure that one.

Now if some­one came up with a com­puter that was really func­tional it would be a dif­fer­ent story. I’m talk­ing an android-in-a-box. A com­puter that would make meals or snacks for you that were both deli­cious and per­fectly healthy accord­ing to your dietary and taste bud needs. If it mixed your adult bev­er­ages just to your spec­i­fi­ca­tions. If it was a com­puter that could pull up the five-shot .500-magnum and do a Dirty Harry imi­ta­tion in the event unwel­come intrud­ers were in your abode. If a com­puter was intro­duced that was just com­pletely out of this world in its func­tions, would heal the sick, feed the starv­ing, stop global warm­ing and save the whales, then yeah, 72-point head­lines and per­haps an extra edi­tion if news­pa­pers are still around.

But the iPad, the little-bitty tablet PC that mys­tery and hype has even me talk­ing about it, I just don’t under­stand the hub, Bub.