The JesusSlate is called the iPad: is it going to be awesome or suck?

Does anyone else feel like they’ve been reading fanfiction on the iPad since the summer and now we’ve gotten the book canon and don’t know what to make of it?

I’ll admit it up front- I’m a reluctant ex-switcher. I needed more power than my dinky yet beloved iBook could provide and got a Dell last March. My life has been hellacious since. In addition to pieces beginning to fall off the thing almost immediately, it’s slow, ugly and doesn’t charge. My iBook had problems exactly twice- once when my ex stompled on it while I slept and once when my daughter accidentally pitched it onto a concrete floor. Part of why Apple has such a loyal fanbase is that their products suck way less than the competition. If I were a dude, I’d rather clap my dick shut in this very laptop than ever purchase another Dell. But enough about how Dell blows.

So, the iPad. Let’s get the collective giggling out of the way. Ha ha ha iTampon ha ha. Kotex hurr. Off the bat it’s a ridicucrunkulous name, and although it’s in line with the iPod line of MP3 domination, it sucks on its own. For a long time, women will not be able to parse the new Apple tablet from an aesthetically pleasing white cord emanating from their hoo-has. Silly Apple. Now on to the specs, and I shall partially be cribbing off of James from earlier, thanks dude.

Price

Okay, so this was a shocker- while most priced the iPad speculatively at between 800-1200 clams, some as high as 1800, the actual product came in at the unJobsworthy price of $499 to start, $829 at the high end. The entry level iPad’s rocking an unimpressive 16GB of memory, with 64GB on the high end. I anticipate this will be the most, if not one of the most, talked about aspects of the JesusSlate.

No camera

Not for shooting, not for webcam sex, this baby’s totally blind on the cam front. Bummer.

Accelerometer digital compass

I have no idea what the first one is, and no idea what the point is with the second.

Speaker microphone

…for ugly people who want to have remote sex. Isn’t technology fabulous?

Size and battery life

9.7-inch display, half an inch thick. 10 hours of use with a month of standby.

Arsenic, BFR, PVC and Mercury Free

Like you all give a frick. You know you’d have bought it even if every time you checked your e-mail a baby seal died and the device tore a hole in the ozone layer, you great big bunch of slacktivists.

How do I get to the internet on it?

Wi-fi and a 3g package at $29.99 a month for “unlimited usage.” Oh, plus 3G models will run you an extra $130 to start, on top of the price of your tablet. So, if you wanna run 3G on your iPad in year one alone it will cost you at least $490. Burn.

Watch out Amazon

It looks like Apple’s ready to crack the e-publishing industry wide open, like it sort of did by getting everyone to start paying for music again sometimes with iTunes. Let’s face it, while I dig the Kindle app for iPhone, the efforts with magazines and newspapers have been anemic at best, and it seems like Apple might be setting up shop in that underserved market. Instead of a boring old list, the iPad will present your books on a picture of a wooden shelf, which might warrant the $499 price tag all by its lonesome. I’d like to check out the iBooks app in depth before I pee all over it or declare it better than Jack White sex.

Overall, it’s unlocked (screw you, AT&T!), cheap for what it is, and Apple made it. While the critiques are coming fast and furious right now, I think this thing is going to find its niche immediately and dig in with claws. No one owns one yet, so we’ll have to make do with the clip below to give it a once over before the overnight lining up at the Apple store begins.

Video, via Mashable: