Why You Need An iPad. Period.

Well, okay. You don't NEED anything, short of food, water, and shelter. But you need an iPad. Trust me on this one.

Steve Jobs came out of medical leave today - like Punxatawny Phil seeing his shadow - to introduce/hype the iPad 2. If you listen to him, it will "change everything" all over again.

Not really, but the new rig looks awfully sweet.

Well, let it be known that I am not some irrational Apple fan-boy who just buys anything the company pumps out. I still think their OS is needlessly mickey-mouse, and Microsoft's Windows 7 has been nothing short of a rock of Gibraltar on my everyday laptop.

And yeah, as somebody who has TWO Gen-1 iPads - a non-3G iPad (wife and kids) and my own 3G enabled version - I do get rather cheezed that obvious features like a camera were (intentionally) excluded out of the gate just to help squeeze an extra cycle of sales out of us hopeless early adopters.

That said, you do need an iPad. You just don't know the how and why, until you have one.

The kids use it all the time for games. I use it all the time at lunch to read while eating (is there anything better?) It's a killer movie player for plane flights (your battery won't run out, like your laptop) and yes, you can plow through email and other more boring work related tasks.

For me, the best thing about it are the newspaper apps which keep getting better and better. The NY Post app is my favorite, thanks to the Post's tabloid sensibility, and obvious conservative tilt. The sports stories are heavily NY-centric, which I kinda enjoy in a voyeuristic sense.

But here's the most unexpected joy of my iPad, and the newspaper apps I use now every day - the photo clarity is simply stunning! Usually, the NY Post runs at least 2-3 "slideshows" embedded in the digital paper.

One is a "celebrity" slideshow, which has a nice 8-9 servings of Hollywood/music/models doing various things. Always nice to keep tabs on who is looking good, and who is losing some steam on their fastballs.

Another slideshow is a "today in photos" version that spans the globe. I love this slideshow, because it always involves photos of poor bastards in some far flung hellhole on the globe, dragging a pile of sticks on the back of their donkey back to their thatch hut of a home. It helps remind you, just how f'ing lucky you are to be living in such opulence as a middle class American, indulging yourself in expensive tech toys like, well, an iPad!

And then you have a few sports slideshows, which deliver such gorgeous, high resolution photos, you sit there and just marvel at the details.

Of course, not everybody is in love with the iPad. I get it. Maybe I am a sucker. But in a capitalist free market society, if Steve Jobs and his tech geniuses keep cranking out these innovative products that tickle my techie sweet spot, then I'll probably keep plunking down for them.