We don’t deserve anything. Publishers can do whatever they want. If you don’t like it, don’t send them nasty emails or browse their sites with ad-blockers: just don’t support them. Don’t read their content, don’t link to them, and don’t talk about them. Since money’s not usually involved, vote with your attention and read elsewhere.

Ultimately, though, I don’t think the iPad is meant to leave the house very often. But it’s going to be great on the couch, and even better on airplanes — the unconscientious person in front of you can lean their seat back without hitting it. […] Launching a $500 tech device that very few people can justify purchasing, in a recession, isn’t going to lead to a ton of sales. Maybe it will sell at a similar rate to the MacBook Air. I don’t think it will be considered a failure, but I also don’t think it will ever be as big of a hit as the iPod, the iPhone, or the Mac.

I haven’t written about the supposed Apple tablet yet because nobody knows anything (including whether it even exists), so everyone’s just talking out of their asses about it. Normally, I’m perfectly willing to join in and endlessly talk out of my ass about this sort of thing, but I honestly don’t have much to say on it. Nothing I can imagine about “the Tablet” gets me particularly excited. Considering one of its roles as an ebook-reader competitor is interesting, but Apple would never go with e-ink, so the Tablet wouldn’t be as pleasant for long reading as my Kindle. […] Many devices (real, vapor, and theoretical) have tried to fill that vast portability gap between laptops and iPhones (even back when they were called PDAs and they didn’t have voice or wireless data capabilities and nobody bought them except rich people and geeks like me). Historically, this has never succeeded in a way that’s even close to mass-market penetration, including impressively forgettable eras as the “palmtop” computer and the Tablet PC. […] The text-input mechanism seems to be the big hurdle required to bridge this portability-and-usefulness gap. So far, nobody has nailed it. I don’t know what Apple has in mind for the Tablet, but they nailed it with the iPhone: after decades of clunky, awkward, mediocre pocket computers, I think it’s safe to say that the large touchscreen is the best input mechanism for them. But the decision isn’t nearly as clear for a slate-type device with a 7-10” screen, which most people assume to be the Tablet’s form factor. There doesn’t seem to be a good solution. No device in this category has ever even been close to good. […] I’ve learned never to say that Apple can’t or won’t do something simply because it’s a significant technical or design challenge. And while I’m talking out of my ass about this like everyone else, “iSlate” is a stupid name. I’ll predict that the product’s name won’t contain “tablet”, “slate”, or the “i” prefix.

I know you’re double-charging your advertisers for the same story by artificially inflating your pageview count. […] But it doesn’t really work as well as you had hoped because only a tiny percentage of viewers will actually read page two. You know that, but you don’t care, because you won’t give up a chance to make a few extra cents. Who cares if it annoys the crap out of that tiny slice of your audience? Who are they, anyway? The people who actually read your content thoroughly instead of skimming the headline and moving on? That can’t possibly be your most important audience segment — they’re just the most involved and attentive. Repeat customers. You already have their “eyeballs” that you can sell to your real customers. And these dupes get their eyeballs double-counted. What a steal! Keep up the great work, publishers.

Tech geeks are terrible at knowing what they want from technology. (A faster horse.) It’s embarrassing, because we’re supposed to be the experts. But we suck at this. If you listen to geeks, you get products targeted at geeks, usually at the tremendous exclusion of design, usability, marketability, and usefulness to regular people. Then, when someone shows us what we really want but were too narrow-minded to ask for, we ridicule it and say it’s too expensive or too small or too big or too limited or too closed or too underpowered or too light or too heavy or too ugly or too stylish. We trash it on our blogs and make fun of the people who wasted their money on it. Six months later, we want one.

I probably just need to start using more options between discussing something with a few friends (audience: 5 people with terrible memories) or blogging about it here (audience: a few thousand, plus permanent and complete archival, tied to my name forever). I enjoy writing under my real name, but sometimes it feels like I’m running for President on the Democratic ticket against Karl Rove and the Clintons and I know that they’re going to dig up any missteps that I’ve made and turn around everything I say to make me into a monster or an idiot or a shithead.