Fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons) on the iPad backlash, penned before the Apple press conference:

Because there is going to be one, trust me. This device isn’t as obvious as iPhone. It’s kind of subtle. Which means that those of you who have done the spiritual work to prepare for it will be fine, but those who haven’t done the work, well, they’re probably going to miss a lot of this at first. So you’ll see some noise about who needs this thing, it’s just a fancy desk ornament, and so on. I am telling you this now so that you can be ready for the harsh voices and they won’t hurt you when you hear them. Just let the negativity pass by you. Do not engage with it or try to fight it or argue with it. Step aside, and let the dark energy flow away.

Humor put briefly aside, my casual observation of blogs, forums and Twitter suggests the hating on this thing is unbelievable.  I see two camps emerging: one that gets it, one that doesn't.  At this point, the former seems considerably smaller than the latter.

Oh, but before we get started, there's also this: MS shill Paul Thurrott already pronouncing the iPad a failure.  Which he did before the keynote was even over. I needed to get that out of my system right from the get go.  John Gruber, be sure to file that one away for your early 2011 Best of Claim Chowder post.

So, moving along, I'll never quite be able to digest the hyper-reactionism and knee-jerk judgementalist attitudes of the Apple fanbase.  It doesn't matter if Cupertino releases the iPod, the iPhone or the iPad: if the device right out of the box isn't saving puppies and importing Russian brides automatically for lonely geeks, it's called underwhelming.  Today's backlash against the iPad reminds me of Slashdot's now-famous October 2001 reaction to the first-gen iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

The iPad does most everything mainstream users want: email. Web. Gaming. Photos. Video. Books. Music. Not to mention the idea that you get to buy into an established software ecosystem of nearly all of the apps already sitting in the App Store.  The iPad, via the new iWork, also allows a new way to create content, not just consume it.  And nearly everyone is ignoring the value of the iPad SDK, which will give rise to iPad-tailored apps that will be phenomenal using such a large multitouch surface.  It weighs a pound-and-a-half.  Its battery will do 10 hours of video.

(Quick note regarding the lack of Flash: stop complaining about it.  Flash sucks in many cases, and with YouTube and Vimeo moving some of their videos to HTML5 + h.264, Apple is throwing its considerable weight around in web policy-making. They don't like Flash, and never will.  Deal with it.)

There's even a docking station and mechanical keyboard for the iPad, a peripheral category that Apple has long eschewed as worthy accoutrements for its products.

Reading between the lines, you can tell Apple brass has big plans for the iPad, way, way beyond what most of us (including yours truly) is seeing.  But I'm shocked at the amount of discontent I'm seeing from people who, apparently, needed a front-facing webcam so badly that everything the iPad does is rendered useless without one.  You Skype that much, do you?  Really?  Really?

But it continues: people are calling it 'underpowered' (despite reports to the contrary) and whining about a lack of Verizon support and (inexplicably) calling it nothing more than a 'giant iPod Touch.'  Hard for me to believe that so many people are missing what this thing represents (have they even seen the video?), especially once the other shoe drops.

And that other shoe, of course, is media deals.  With studios. With more publishers.  With magazines and periodicals.  With academic textbook houses.

There's a reason this isn't shipping for 60-90 days, and it's not all because of tight supply chain or violent outbreaks in Chinese factories: it's the ecosystem needs to bake a little more.  If you don't think you're going to see some interesting iPad announcements between now and its commercial release, think again.

I suspect we'll see the same pattern of naysaying, pshawing and predictions of how Win7-based slates or Android tablets or whatever will beat the iPad at its own game.  Until, of course, it starts dominating the market, creating new application classes, and putting competitors in the dirt.  Then everyone will get it.

Palm, RIM, Symbian and Windows Mobile fans: you know what I'm talking about.  Don't you?

It's incredibly hard to interpret Steve Jobs's letter about his health, sent to all Apple employees, as anything but troubling:

Team, I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought. In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June. I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple's day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan. I look forward to seeing all of you this summer. Steve

Every fiber in me, even the ones that irrationally insist that Jobs is fine, is screaming about this. I don't readily see how this can be good by any measure, and especially worrisome is the ghost that suggests Jobs is really, truly sick -- as in, cancer sick -- and that this media progression of his condition from bad to worse is planned to ease the impact of the news. But as I said before, I don't think going out like this is what Jobs is all about. This would be a flimsy veil to a tremendous deception, and I refuse to believe that's how Jobs wants to be remembered. That might be an overly-hopeful -- some would say delusional -- pool of crazy rationalization skills right there, but I'm sold on it. If Jobs is terminally ill, he will not let his last impression to his fans, his employees and his investors suggest he was a cowardly man who intentionally sugarcoated his condition for the sake of...what, exactly? Nothing. For the sake of nothing. And that's why I continue to insist that through all of this, perhaps a cigar really is a cigar and the subtexts, while compelling, aren't true. On hopeful note that (very weakly) corroborates my opinion, the NY Time's Brad Stone writes:

Mr. Jobs offered no new details about the cause of his health problems. In a letter last week that was meant to calm fears about his condition, he called it a “hormonal imbalance” that was robbing his body of proteins and causing him to lose weight. Mr. Jobs recovered from pancreatic cancer after surgery in 2004 but has appeared unusually gaunt at recent appearances. Two people who are familiar with Mr. Jobs’s current medical treatment said he was not suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but a condition that was preventing his body from absorbing food. Doctors have also advised him to cut down on stress, which may be making the problem worse, these people said.

Whatever the case, godspeed Steve. Here's wishing you the best.

Speculation hasn’t stopped since Steve Jobs begrudgingly penned his letter to the Apple community on the issue of his weight loss.  Despite his dismissive tone – which is characteristic of a healthy Jobs, not one staring his own mortality in the eye – I think Jobs did what he needed to do to put the issue to rest at an official level.  Remaining speculation is just that – speculation.

It seems the public won’t be happy unless the man shares every intimate detail of his health with them, which is not his duty nor responsibility.  He issued an official statement yesterday in which he established his position.  If the man is lying to the public about his health and ability to lead Apple, I expect the punishment to the company stock to be swift and rightfully severe.  If that turns out to be the case, any damages AAPL suffers would be fully and completely deserved. 

But behavior like this would be uncharacteristically short-sighted for Apple and its executive board.  This is a team that has doggedly clung to its vision, and as a result is enjoying a renaissance like none other in the modern technology business.

Jobs is many things, but he’s not one to put his company in a position of being utterly flogged by shareholders by lying to sustain the short term.  Many times, Jobs has done things – or refused to do things – against the grain of the street’s desires, and his stock was punished.  The man has his vision, and right or wrong, he stands by it.  As an Apple enthusiast, sometimes that’s maddening, sometimes poetic.  But mostly poetic, as the results speak for themselves.

Just because there are “questions” remaining doesn’t mean Jobs is softcoating the issue or lying to the public.  Even if Jobs released more medical data to the world, endocrine issues are very hard for all but specialists to interpret, and therefore more information would lead to even wilder speculation.  People would Google and armchair-doctor every snippet of data, and then come to their own uneducated conjecture and interpretation of complicated medical circumstance.

That’s a no-win in this age of the Internet, where everyone has a voice and your average idiot could produce a viral meme that spreads across the blogs and damages the company anyway.  Specialized, complex matters like those of a cancer survivor’s endocrinology are not fit for layperson consumption or analysis.

I think Steve has done his duty.  There is always speculation about him and his health, and that is the curse of being a celebrity CEO.  If Steve is lying, then shame on him AND Apple management.  The consequences will be brutal, and the entire executive team will be implicated in what essentially is stock-manipulation fraud.  The lawsuits will be terrifying, and I’ll be right there in the condemnation chorus.

And at that point, Steve’s lasting legacy will be that of a coward and a liar.  Being an egomaniac, that’s no path to immortality.

And because of all this, I think Steve Jobs has told us the truth.

No matter how many times I watch this classic Steve Jobs commencement speech for the 2005 Stanford graduating class, it gives me the shivers without fail. Simple lessons with far-reaching impact: 1. Connect the dots. 2. Keep looking. Don't settle. 3. Death is the best invention of life. There's a lot of wisdom here. To me, this is required viewing for anyone. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA]

James Wiebe:

Steve Jobs walked into the room, as all oxygen in the room exited simultaneously.

We were seven feet apart.

He said: "We don't like it when you introduce accelerator cards which are faster than our computers." (At that time, I was the CEO of Newer Technology, which ultimately sold somewhere around 150K+ CPU accelerator cards for Macs.)

Well, that was a nice Howdy Do.

You're in Cupertino. You have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to ask Steve Jobs a question in a rare, almost unheard of, Town Hall Q&A session. You raise your hand, get your turn, stand up and ask the most influential and respected CEO in American business any question you want.

If you're a retard named Bob Keefe, your question is why Apple doesn't put Intel stickers on Macs. You literally ask that question and stand there, looking at Apple's CEO, waiting for a response. This is how you engage a literal technology icon. You wonder why Apple, to borrow a phrase from John Gruber, doesn't booger up its computers with the same ugly-ass stickers you find slathered all over every other PC. One more time: you want to know about stickers. On Macs. Of everything you could ask Steve Jobs, you can think of nothing better than why Jobs doesn't put “Intel Inside” stickers on Macs. I mean, just think about that. Think about the level of idiocy that requires. Keefe clearly just wanted to say something -- anything -- to hear himself speak to Steve Jobs in a public forum. So he opened his mouth and a giant failboat came soaring out. The mind boggles. I would have paid good money to be there, let alone ask Jobs a question. And if, by some stroke of luck, I got a chance to ask a question and it was about fucking stickers, I would ask to be shot nearly immediately. If nobody did it, I would hang myself with my belt in the nearest restroom. Bob Keefe, you truly are a jackass. It's hard to imagine screwing the pooch any harder than this. His employers at Cox Newspapers need to rethink having this twit on staff. How do idiots like this get into Apple events? Is there a requirement to let one village idiot into the press corps just to provide comic relief? For the record, Jobs handled the situation with class, once he got his bearings after being hammered by Keefe's laser of pure, crystalline stupidity. Listen to Jobs' response, which comes after some embarrassed laughter immediately following Keefe's question. I cannot get over this. What a friggin' turd.