"iPads? We don't need no stinkin' iPads"

While I have heard numerous people and pundits shower Steve Jobs with deity-like praise for the impact he has had on the computer, music, and telecom industries, I've never been eager to join the chant. Don't get me wrong, my media is in iTunes, I tolerate AT&T for my iPhone, and I am using my MacBook to write this. I always thought Jobs was just taking the next logical technology step and slapping an aesthetically pleasing silver casing around it. However, after Wednesday's introduction of the iPad, I am prepared to sculpt his likeness out of some old Macintosh IIes and display it in my front yard.

Now before you assume that I plan on dusting off a lawn chair, give my "The Truth Is Out There" t-shirt its annual wash and wear, and emotionally prepare myself for hours of World of Warcraft banter to get my hands on Apple's latest and greatest, I have no intentions of buying an iPad. The reason for my new found Jobs fanboy status has nothing to do with the what he has brought to market. Instead, it's his unmatched ability to stir a world wide audience into a year long, Jonas-brother-to-a-12-year-old-girl-like psychosis over an iPod Touch for giants that will pull you in even closer to his digitally licensed and restricted retail world.

Thousands of chat threads with specs speculations, hundreds of grainy photos of possible prototypes (why do tech spies always have the worst cameras?), and numerous blogs leaking any minute detail they can dig out from their best friend's sister's boyfriend who works at an Apple Genius Bar.

I can empathize with Mugatu. I too feel like I am taking crazy pills.

Listen up, everyone! It's a laptop without a keyboard running dated software. That's it. Cool looking? Yup. A platform on which new applications for a portable computing device can grow? I guess. But a bargain starting at $499? Uh, no.

The man in black mock turtleneck, and again to his credit, has generated so much market credibility as an innovator, nobody actually stops and asks if his newest endeavor is really innovation or proliferation. Maybe its just another device that will spin his followers around so many times that they'll be too dizzy to realize that they're paying an extra $0.30 for their favorite Miley Cyrus track. Or better yet, too blinded by the glowing Apple on the back to see they're coughing up $2.99 for an episode of Archer that Hulu will let you watch for free (at least until they start charging subscriptions fees).

I could probably go on for a few more paragraphs about Jobs, the iPad, and definitely Miley Cyrus (apparently she's never even heard a Jay-Z song nor does she even the know title of one because "I don't listen to pop music."), I simply will encourage everyone to realize that just because something is new, it isn't necessarily innovative. Well, I guess if you looked up innovative in the dictionary, new is in its definition. But just like a dictionary, why buy a new one if it hasn't changed any of the definitions.