There is a lot of hype about the iPad. I am skeptical for many reasons, but all of my fancy arguments were just trumped by an email Apple just sent me. At the very top was this:

After reading this sentence I have become afraid for Apple. It smacks of sales-ly desperation. Because if that's the best thing that Apple can say about what's supposed to be a game-changing product, then they are in trouble. Let's examine why.

Carl Sandburg wrote, "The I older I get the more suspicious of adjectives I become." This bit of marketing is a wonderful example of why you shouldn't trust them either. In this sentence, it's not clear that the adjectives mean anything. Let's break it down.

One of the best ways to see if a sentence has any sense to it is to cross out all of the adjectives and adverbs and see what you are left with. If we do that with this gem we have: "Our technology in a device at a price." Totally underwhelming. Compare this to the words Jobs used to introduce the iPhone, "a new iPod, a new phone and an Internet communicator" -- all in one.

If we use this logical structure to describe the iPad it becomes, "a new iPod and an internet communicator." But that sounds underwhelming, so somebody tried to cover it up with deceptive adjectives. If you want to argue that this is a new category of device that changes everything, I will disagree with you. But that's not why I'm scared. I'm scared because Apple is scared. And the fear is manifest in those bullshit adjectives. If that's the best they can do to explain why the iPad is a game changer I'm not buying it.