Cult of Apple

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.” - Tyler Durden

Apple has officially announced their much-anticipated iPad:

After nearly a decade of rumors and speculation, Apple’s finally unveiled the iPad. It’s a half-inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds, with a 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display, and it’s running a custom 1GHz Apple “A4″ chip developed by the P.A. Semi team, with a 10-hour battery life and a month of standby. It’ll come in 16, 32, and 64GB sizes, and it’s got the expected connectivity: very little. There’s a 30-pin Dock connector, a speaker, a microphone, Bluetooth, and 802.11n WiFi, as well as an accelerometer and a compass. There’s also a keyboard dock, which connects underneath in the portrait orientation. The device is managed by iTunes, just like the iPhone — you sync everything over to your Mac. As expected, it can run iPhone apps — either pixel-for-pixel in a window, or pixel-doubled fullscreen — but developers can also target the new screen size using the updated iPhone OS SDK, which is available today. The 3G version comes with new data plans: 250MB for $14.99 and an unlimited plan for $29.99 a month contract-free on… AT&T. Activations are handled on the iPad, so you can activate and cancel whenever you want. Every iPad is unlocked and comes with a GSM micro-SIM, so you can use it abroad, but there aren’t any international deals in place right now — Steve says they’ll be back “this summer” with news on that front.

It starts at $499 for 16GB, 32GB for $599, and $699 64GB. Adding 3G costs a $130 per model, so the most expensive model (64GB / 3G) is $829. The WiFi-only model will ship in 60 days, and the 3G models will come in 90.

At the moment, the device seems like glorified iPhone, and the 10 hour battery life is underwhelming.  Yet despite all the technical specs to squabble over, I’m thoroughly fascinated by the folks who not only avidly purchase these products but practically froth at the mouth over their arrival:

No matter what type of new product Apple unveils at its much-anticipated press event later this week, Xavier Yaffar says he will buy it. Whatever the cost.

“I don’t even have to look at it,” the 48-year-old said.
Apple Inc., the Cupertino, California, company that’s the darling of the gadget world right now, is widely expected to release a touch-screen “slate” computer on Wednesday at an invite-only event in San Francisco, California, according to blogs and news reports. Rumors say the device will have about a 10-inch screen and will look kind of like an enormous iPhone, but Apple hasn’t commented on the subject.

While cautious consumers might want details about the new device — like whether it exists — before stashing away money and planning to buy one, Yaffar and some other Apple fanatics say they trust the fashionable and notoriously forward-thinking maker of the iPhone and iPod so much that they’ll buy whatever the company puts out, even if they’re not sure why they need it.

“I bought the iPod when it was announced. I didn’t know what it was going to do when I bought it,” he said, adding that Apple knows before he does what he needs in technology. He ended up loving that portable music player. Now he has more than one.

Rumors of the Apple slate — also called a tablet — started years ago and have advanced to full-drool mode in the tech blogosphere in recent months.

For people like Yaffar, the rumor mill has been a blast. He said he spends about 4 to 6 hours per day reading online news about Apple. He hangs on all the details.

But the buzz generated by the notoriously tight-lipped company’s events inspires an equal amount of gusto in people who dislike Apple — or who say the company is downright evil.

The Onion wins.  Always. If you really want insight into the development process, however, turn to the voice of prophecy that is MadTV:

Posted in: Technology