Reports of the newspaper's death have been greatly exaggerated ... or ... iPad to the rescue!

Unfortunately, these two personality attributes don't play well together (mac addict and thriftster).  

Today might be the day that I resign myself to fall off the thrifty wagon. I have spent the last hour of my life viewing of the engadget liveblog live from the Apple 'latest creation' event. What is this event about? Ha. I scoff at your lack of foresight! 

Today Steve Jobs unveiled the almighty iPad! It is essentially an iPod touch with a 10" screen (Wi-fi and 3G are built in). All the apps created for the iPod touch will work on it, and more. I won't go into all of the details, as you can view them here with pictures.

What I do have to say about today's unavailing is that the New York Times app looks phenomenal! It actually looks like a newspaper, not some computerized sterile web-safe version of the newspaper. Call me nostalgic but I am AMPED UP for this! Even better than the aesthetics of a New York Times app that actually looks like the New York Times of my childhood (back when print copies were laying around the house), this new app features videos embedded in the articles. Right there on the "page" where there are photos related to the articles, you will also find related videos. Just hit play. That is awesome.  

There are many plusses to this device: 10 hours of continuous playback on one charge, a month of charge on standby, a $15/month data plan, iWork apps, email, photos, music and movies... oh my! This device could kill the portable DVD player and B&W Amazon Kindle markets.  

So what falls short? This device is made for the everyday consumer, not the designer or illustrator. The iPad is much like the iPod touch in that you cannot install third party software, only Apple tested and approved apps. This is not an open OS. There isn't much customization. This means my dream of Apple releasing a touchscreen, pressure sensitive tablet that will allow me to draw onscreen into Flash, Illustrator and Photoshop just got crushed. Oh, and there's no multitasking. Wow, really? Apparently, there are still no two apps running at the same time. Bummer. 

Oh well, there's always the $1,700 modbook. (Modbook is a custom laptop/tablet running Mac OSX off of a Macbook with Wacom tablet technology built into the monitor. This would allow me work onscreen in Flash, Illustrator and Photoshop). I was really trying to avoid dropping close to 2k on that....

http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbook