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Well, the iPad has been upon us for a week now and most of you have had time to mull over what it means for the tech industry. I actually wrote a little opinion piece last week about how ridiculous speculating about the iPad was. After having watched the entire press event live, as it turns out, the iPad is quite a bit different from what many people expected. For starters, nobody really speculated that Apple would come up with a name that would be the butt of jokes about female hygiene. Then there is the blatant lack of even simple things we take for granted on netbooks and computers today; simple things like flash and multitasking.

Now in fact I'm not really very funny, so rather than even trying to sum up the things the iPad lacks in writing, I'll simply consult Hitler himself:

Now of course the iPad will be a smash hit. It's coming in at a $499 price point of the 16GB non-3G model. But more importantly it has the backing of the App Store, iTunes and a new eBook store Apple will be launching. Apple's biggest advantage in this game comes down to their strengths in content distribution. The iPad will be a device that people will use to consume content, nothing more. And for the consumer space, that's exactly what's needed.

The other day I got into an interesting debate with a good friend of mine regarding louche women on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. The first thing that came to mind was of course the "Myspace angle". In case you've never heard of this mystical angle, allow me to help illustrate:

Now I went ahead and took this idea a step further - no, not to just women wearing makeup. Me? What? Just a little bronzer, plenty of men use it, I swear! No, but seriously it occurred to me how distorted our perception of reality has become because of the images that appear in fashion magazines and all over the web. I know all too well how much you can distort reality using graphics software like Photoshop in very little time. Now as I was the one who brought this up, my friend of course asked me to prove it. Tack 16 minutes of amateur work onto an image of a girl that honestly looked okay before and this was the end result:

Not perfect, but enough to give you a pretty good idea of how much the lines of reality can really be blurred with very little work. I'll be honest, every time that I go and modify a picture of a person like that it really does pain me in many ways. You really do feel like you're chopping a person up. What's more, it's a total objectification of people - the kinds of thoughts that pass through your mind are of course "Hey, this doesn't look too good" and "She'd look better this way!".

I think the message here is awfully clear, as cliché as it may be: stop aiming to look like people do in magazines and online. You can find thousands if not millions of pictures online that have been touched up to a point that the end result is convincingly good looking but only moderately resembles the person it started as. Now don't get me wrong and don't try to misconstrue the message as being "Ignore how you look". Just do the best you can and don't beat yourself up over every the little imperfection you see. Nobody is perfect, not even those seemingly perfect models you'll find online.

Hard day at school or work this week? Need a little time to de-stress? Well I've got your solution boys and girls: a great new game called GNILLEY! The premise of the game couldn't be any simpler. As the creators so eloquently put it, Yell--->succeed.

All you need to play GNILLEY is a Windows PC, a working microphone and a keyboard. The creators of the game showed it off at Game Jam in Sydney on January 31. Scroll down for a link to this great free game, and enjoy the awesome presentation!

Download GNILLEY!

The author's original page can be found here.

Okay, this is going to be a short one because without any shadow of a doubt it could easily end up being 5000 words long and my rant still wouldn't be over. So here goes...

Please, for the love of god, stop making stuff up about Apple's new tablet! In fact, Apple hasn't even confirmed they are going to be making a tablet and we won't hear a word until Wednesday. I've seen incredibly ridiculous (incredulous really) headings online about an unreleased and unannounced device that make it so incredibly obvious how much the media and consumers are Apple tools...

And the worst part is that despite the fact that I'm awesome, I've still been turned into a tool. See, I spent exactly 7 minutes mocking up my own Apple tablet for use on this blog entry. I think it turned out pretty good for a 7 minute mock-up job. The best part is that I only needed two shapes and a screenshot of OSX and I could have fooled you all into thinking it was Apple promo material.

Some classics over the past week include:

Apple Tablet an Ideal Business Tool

What that should have read is "I'd Love to Play with a Tablet at Work". Then they start trying to guess names for this thing: "It could be an iSlate, or an iSlab, or an iTablet, or perhaps even an iPod Tablet Edition." Aside from the fact that all those names are laughable (iSlate, really?) why are we even discussing it? Don't we have better things to do with our lives than get wet over the name of an ideal business tablet that isn't even confirmed to exist yet?

Apple's Tablet: a gizmo to save the world

Wow, this is going to be good, Apple is going to save our planet. I don't think the word "overhyped" even fits this article. I mean think about it, the whole premise here is that we are all going to die and Apple's unannounced tablet will save us all. Then again, I should be ecstatic - we aren't all going to go the way of the dinosaur in 2012! Reason enough to fork out cash for Apple's new mystery device.

iTablet may save publishing

I think that finally we are starting to cool down a bit here - at least the word overhyped fits the bill this time. Still, you have to appreciate the irony here, the media bringing you an article published online asking the question whether a tablet will save the very publishing we know, love and read online today.

Can Apple save the written word?

Yes, obviously all languages will cease to exist without Apple making a tablet... Obviously!

Now don't take any of this the wrong way, I'm sure that Apple and its engineers have put a huge amount of work into whatever device it is that they are launching. What's more, I'm sure it will be a great product with some really cool applications. In fact in case you hadn't noticed that I never actually spend time complaining about Apple so I'll spell it out for you: I can't stand Apple tools. It's such an incredible shame that I can't rightfully go and buy an Apple product without looking and feeling like a Jobs drone...

As per usual though, props to Steve Jobs for making a fool out of all of us.