I hate to write about Apple again but, really, how can I not? However, this article isn’t so much about Apple—and certainly not about the iPad—but about people’s reactions to them.

Looking across the social networks which, of course, experienced a tsunami of proportions so epic that even the mighty FriendFeed was forced to disable real-time updates lest the servers burst into flames, it seemed that the final tabulation of opinion on the iPad resulted in most people being simply underwhelmed. In fact, the people who seemed the most quiet about it, the ones who looked at the iPad wistfully but ultimately dismissed it were the only ones who seemed to take it at its value. Others, on the other hand, seemed to take personal offense at the iPad’s shortcomings; in particular, many a wagging finger was leveled at the iPad for not having some of the features of its smaller but senior siblings, the wonder duo of the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

OMG WHAT NO CAMERA I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT IFAIL IFAIL IFAIL!

The problem here, at first glance, seems one of the iPad not living up to its hype which, when you think about it, is kind of insane to expect anyway. The iPhone was, in many ways, truly revolutionary but, once you strip away the hype of that device, what you have is just a smartphone with a snazzy interface. In all honesty, does it really do anything different than most other smartphones? Like the Droid advertisements like to claim, the iPhone actually doesn’t do as much as other smartphones. However, what it does, it arguably does better. But, in retrospect, it’s easy to forget how many people dismissed the iPhone outright as well when it was first introduced.

OMG WHAT NO MULTITASKING WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT IFAIL IFAIL IFAIL!

Yet there are millions of iPhones out there, all of them happily chugging along their quotidian duties with no real multitasking anywhere in sight. Heck, we lived for two years without cut and paste and most of us didn’t often miss it (but, oh, when we did miss it we truly missed it). Most people who complained about it were people who had no intention of ever buying one anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who rationally told me that the lack of cut and paste was the deal breaker.

Now, if you look at the iPad, we’re back at square one but with one major difference: heightened expectations. You see, the iPhone had no predecessor. It was a whole cloth birth of something entirely new for Apple. It wasn’t a refinement of an existing product line: it wasn’t the MacBook Air. The iPad, however, especially because of its form factor, was instantly seen as having rather big shoes to fill. If it was anything less extraordinary and evolutionary than the iPhone, it was going to be immediately crapped upon by people who seem to think that their personal expectations are some kind of universal measuring stick. And, by that measurement, the iPad was guaranteed to disappoint unless it projected holograms 8″ tall on the screen or if gold coins spewed out of the dock port when shaken.

But, this has nothing to do with hype. The hype was just anticipatory masturbation, it was everyone shaking the presents under the Christmas tree trying to figure out what was in there. Hype didn’t make the iPad seem less than what it was; hype just made everyone irritable. What diminished the iPad’s impact was the fact that it was seen as the second iteration of an existing product: the iPhone (and thus the iPod Touch). People walked away deflated just like they did when the Air was introduced.

Wow, it’s sexy and all but… why would anyone want this?

Sound familiar? The Air lacked a built-in DVD drive. The iPad doesn’t have a camera. The Air was considered underpowered; the iPad the same. The Air underwhelmed because it was just another version of the MacBook. The iPad underwhelmed because it’s seen as just another version of the iPhone. And they may be right about the Air but are they right about the iPad? Only time will tell. People are already dismissing the iPad without ever having even held one.

If anything, the iPad is more closely related with the Air than with the iPhone. Don’t let the form factor and OS fool you. Like the Air, the iPad isn’t really meant to be ‘the computer for the rest of us’. Not yet, anyway. Like the Air, this is a computer for people with extra money who want a computer to fill a niche they probably didn’t know they even wanted filled. The iPad isn’t meant to supplant the iPhone (for one, it’s too big) nor is it meant to knock your MacBook off its pedestal (for one, it’s too underpowered). As someone (I think it was Jesse Stay) pointed out, the iPad is a living room device. It belongs next to your remote control (and, with the right app, may one day replace it).

What it boils down to here is that hype is not to blame for people feeling underwhelmed, it’s family history. The first born baby is always significant; it’s always truly a life changing event. When the second baby comes along, you’re already experienced with child-rearing. So, when people look at the iPad, they’re seeing the sibling which looks and behaves a lot like their older brother or sister. ‘Oh, it’s another baby.’ What did you expect? A feathered dragon that barfs unicorns riding dolphins?

And that’s really the final question? Strip away the hype and ask yourself, what did you really expect it to do? What revolutionary technology did you expect that would make it as remarkable as the iPhone? I bet most people can’t do anything except name off features that the iPhone has that the iPad lacks. Or they can complain about Flash. Every other complaint is probably more evolutionary rather than revolutionary (i.e., why can’t I sync over wifi?).

Oh, and if you don’t believe me, imagine for a moment if the iPhone (and thus the iPod Touch) didn’t exist and the iPad was introduced today. How differently do you think the aftermath would have played out then?

Here are two great rumors that taste great together: a new tablet from Apple and a new tablet for Windows.

Okay, yeah. So what, right? We all know this. We won’t shut up about it.

Now, in conversations that followed my last post about the Apple tablet, I admitted that I’ve never wanted to jailbreak any of my iPhones but I might be interested in jailbreaking the Apple tablet that I will inevitably get.

However, what if the tablet’s OS is just crap? What if it does turn out just to be a glorified iPod Touch with a focus on movies and eBooks? Am I going to want it then? Maybe some shiny HP tablet running Windows 7 might be more attractive to me for what I want to do (sure, I’ll read books on it but movies? only if I’m on a plane). But why should that be the only option?

I wonder how hard it will be to turn one of the new PC tablets into a Hackintosh? A Hackintablet, if you will (even if you won’t). That may be a better option for some people who are disappointed with Apple’s offering but don’t want to get their precious little hands mussed up with some Windows 7 action. I’d be fine with Windows 7, honestly; I use it for work every day and I maintain that it is the best consumer OS that Microsoft has ever released. It makes me excited for Windows 8 which I imagine will be a further refinement of what they already have (in other words, I expect Windows 8 to be the next Windows XP). But, I’m drunkenly stumbling off the path here.

Personally, I’ve always been kind of against jailbreaking. I don’t see how it’s our ‘right’ to be able to install whatever we want on hardware (outside of laptops and desktops, of course). But my opinion was mainly out of spite for all of the whiners who get all indignant when they can’t get Linux to install on their electric toothbrush or whatever. Trust me, a lot of my opinions are based straight out of spite. Spite gets me through life. Spite is fuel. But spite don’t make right. And even though I don’t necessarily agree with jailbreaking, I really appreciate the work the guys who produce jailbreaking software do. That’s some serious hacking and my hat’s off to ‘em. And now jailbreaking or building a Hackintablet seems more acceptable to me now that I might have a personal use for it.

And even if I don’t do it myself, I’d be surprised if someone doesn’t hack the crap out of Apple’s tablet and I’d be surprised if someone else doesn’t shoehorn OS X onto a PC tablet. Especially since it was my idea first. And it was my idea. Don’t contest. Give credit where credit’s due:

To me. THAT’S RIGHT. TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah, the Apple tablet. We’ve dreamed long and wild about it and speculated like it was the Klondike. We’ve already praised and damned Apple for a product that no one knows one proper, proven fact about. And I’m about to do the same thing.

You see, this is the most excited I’ve been about an Apple product since the iPhone (and, before that, the iPod). Unfortunately, I already have an Apple tablet: it’s called the iPhone. And—bonus!—it fits in my pocket. Sure, the screen isn’t that large but do I really need a 7″ or 10″ screen for what I do with it? Do most people? Is the tablet seriously going to just be the large-sized-print version of your favorite book, geared for the bespectacled elders amongst us?

And lest you think that the tablet is going to be like the MacBook Air and run Snow Leopard, just take a look at the name that’s been bandied about by the Relevant Ones lately: yeah, it’s iSlate and not MacSlate. This suggests that it’s going to fall in line with the iPod Touch rather than the MacBook. That tells us iPhone OS and not OS X. Does that mean that the home screen is going to look like your grandmother’s Windows 95 desktop: just an endless grid of barely-organized icons? Or will the icons be huge so that only, say, 16 are visible at once? Will it be like we’re using 1024×768 on a 27″ screen? Will this really be the large-print version of the iPod Touch?

All of these things do only one thing: disappoint me. There’s a lot of potential in the idea of an Apple tablet that will be thoroughly lost if it’s just a glorified iPod Touch. At the same time, it’s not realistic to expect it to just boot up to a nice, empty install of OS X; desktop-oriented operating systems simply aren’t geared for touch interfaces (sure, they may be touch-capable but it doesn’t mean that they’re designed for that sort of thing). That’s what drove the design behind the iPhone OS, of course. And, now, I’m sure that Apple also realizes that OS X won’t scale down well to a 10″ touch screen. But do they also understand that the iPhone OS won’t scale up either? And does it matter?

The iPhone OS is already a proven winner that not only has immense popularity and support going for it but also doesn’t require anyone to be trained on how to use it. Why waste resources developing a new UI when you already have one that can be recycled into a viable—if less capable—solution? Of course, I don’t expect it to be identical to the iPhone OS. They’re going to want to put that extra screen real estate to use and there needs to be at least something impressive other than the fact that, yes, Virginia, the Apple tablet does exist. If nothing else, I’d like to at least see a UI based on the iPhone’s but with, say, cover flow and tabs for organizing installed apps. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if the UI looks suspiciously like iTunes where everything is organized by activity and is always linked to your iTunes Store account so you can download books, apps, and music without having to jump into a specific app.

And the keyboard in the graphic above? Good grief, I hope not. It’s supposedly going to have a 10″ screen. A centralized floating keyboard only makes sense if you’re going to be using it against a surface. Or awkwardly cradle it in one hand like a plate full of steaming clams while you’re poking at it one character at a time with the middle finger of your other hand, cursing Steve Jobs’ crinkly old body at each alphanumeric stab. A smart design would be two fans of characters in both lower corners, half being one side of a QUERTY keyboard, the other half being, well, the other. That way, you can hold it in your grubby little paws and thumb-punch your way through life. A space bar, of course, would be on both sides. This is smart because left-handed people could have the option to switch things around.

But now I’ve just gone all science fiction on you. I’m just typing out loud anyway. This is me being both nervous and hopeful for the Apple tablet. I, for one, hope it’s better than I expect but don’t expect it to be as neat as it is in my head. In the meantime, I’ve gone from my wallet practically barfing out $800 every time I see mention of the Apple tablet to it just offering up an anxious vurp.

Did I miss out on some big secret? Were people passing around news articles about Snow Leopard that I didn’t have the pleasure of reading myself? Did people read that Snow Leopard was anything more than an under-the-hood, non-socks-blown-off update to Leopard? Perhaps articles that touted all sorts of major new user experience features and graphical updates? Was Snow Leopard supposed to come with those Minority Report gloves so I could Vogue my way through the Internet while listening to Beethoven? No? Really? Nothing like that at all?

Then why is everyone wandering the streets, wailing, gnashing their teeth, and rending their clothes as if Apple had somehow pulled a Lucy to their Charlie Brown? I mean, really? You’d have think that Steve Jobs himself had come into their houses and shot their dogs. Or, if they didn’t own a dog, bringing one in with him and then summarily shooting it in the head while they’re trying to watching The Big Bang Theory.

I could provide an avalanche of posts or comments where people whine fitfully but, instead, I’ll provide here one of the more mature and reasonable reactions to Snow Leopard:

I can’t believe that Apple has done this. This isn’t an OS upgrade, it’s a service pack! What in the hell does Apple think that they’re trying to pull? I can no longer count myself as a fan of Apple. I am going to go tear the Apple window cling off of my car and then I am going to march right back into the house and kill myself!!!!!! THIS IS A TRAVESTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, people, we’ve all been reading the same articles and rumors for the past six months. Developers and testers (and nefarious digital thieves) have had pre-release copies of Snow Leopard and they’ve been blogging furiously about it. Apple hasn’t kept any secrets from us and they haven’t made any promises. In fact, they’ve been rather blunt and apologetic about it because they knew people would pretty much go turd-crazy when they found out that it wasn’t an overhaul as significant as the jump between OS 9 and X. And that’s pretty much exactly what’s happened. Apple feels so guilty about it that they’ve priced the upgrade ridiculously cheap: $29. Cheaper in some cases.

But, no, that’s not good enough. People are still ranting and raving and insisting that somehow their honor has been besmirched. Sure, it’s not a parcel of eye candy. Sure, Finder’s still pretty lame (seriously, guys, no tabs? and I’m looking at you, too, Microsoft). But it’s what you don’t see and what you can’t impress your friends with that makes Snow Leopard so compelling: the move to 64-bit. That’s significant. It’s more significant than a service pack. Last I checked, none of the Windows service packs have ever packed such a punch. And, if you want to get really down and dirty with it, Windows 7 is essentially a Vista service pack with about as many graphical updates to the OS there as we’re getting going from Leopard to Snow Leopard. At least Microsoft’s also only charging about $30 for their update.

Oh wait, they’re not.

And then there’s the people who are complaining because the upgrade breaks stuff. Of course it breaks stuff. It’s an OS upgrade. That’s part of what they do. If you look back, Apple often doesn’t give a crap about backward compatibility so this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. But it’s not Apple’s fault; it’s developers’. And these developers should be given time to update their software for Snow Leopard compatibility.

Now. Isn’t there some other software that, when updated, breaks just about all of the functionality that everyone has to build into it themselves to make it even worth using? And don’t people still just furiously masturbate over it anyway? What’s it called? Oh yeah, Firefox.

So, here’s my advice: if you don’t like living on the cutting edge of software, then don’t upgrade yet. Wait for the smoke to clear, wait for your must-have software that’s currently broken by Snow Leopard to be updated and then upgrade. That $29 is going to spend the same then as it does now.

In the meanwhile, perhaps we should all practice our breathing exercises or at least stop punching ourselves in the face when we don’t get our petulant little ways.