TechCrunch reports on pricing for Microsoft’s Surface RT, which I assume a sub had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from calling an ‘iPad killer’. The short of it is the low-end model comes in at the same price as the low-end iPad, but with 16 GB more storage. The high-end model matches the 64 GB iPad’s price, but you get a cover. What you don’t get is a high-density display; instead, the device clocks in at 1280 x 720 pixels, a pixel density of 139 ppi.

In the comments, Alex Wilks states:

Compared to the iPad that’s a reasonable price- you’re basically trading in the retina display for an extra 16GB of storage, so it kinda feels like the cancel each other out to me. [sic]

It’ll be interesting to see if this is how others weigh up the pros and cons of the two systems. But to me, an extra 16 GB of storage space doesn’t cancel out a vastly better display—the thing that you spend all your time looking at and interacting with.

If you’re reading this, your AWOOGA alarm has probably already gone off, and if you’ve the latest model its vibrant 30-inch display will be flashing ‘Betteridge’s Law of Headlines!‘ in luminous green text. That’s fair enough, because the title of this article—Is writing about iPads making men stupid?—is clearly a load of old bollocks. And yet Chris Matyszczyk over at CNET has just penned Is the iPad making men effeminate?

Purses are a sensitive subject. Murses even more so.

I have no idea what a ‘murse’ is. I assume it’s some hilarious combination of ‘man’ and ‘purse’ supposed to elicit yucks at a rate of knots. As opposed to, say, vomit.

The other week, I was in a restaurant when my friend Ariane ballistically assaulted a man because he had placed his clutch on the bar.

Thereby annoying mechanics everywhere!

It was a very expensive clutch. “Men,” she huffed at him, “shouldn’t carry clutches.” She spent the rest of the evening bemoaning: “A clutch? A clutch?” She’s Belgian. She therefore has strong opinions, especially about men.

Oh, that type of clutch—a small bag for carrying things in. OHO! And sigh.

Still, there seems to be evidence of a sort that men are carrying more purses and that technology is to blame.

THE IPAD HAS MADE MEN INTO WOMEN! AIEEEEE! [Insert favoured deity] forbid that men can, like women, cart their shit about in bags without fear of idiots (men and women alike) bringing to the fore entirely arbitrary bullshit based on gender stereotypes! And [insert favoured deity] forbid that men in relationships with women might actually learn to carry their own shit once in a while, rather than sneakily offloading it on to women who carry bags without a hint of shame! SOCIETY WOULD CRUMBLE AND IT WOULD ALL BE DOWN TO STEVE JOBS!

Today’s Daily Mail, for example, reveals that sales of manbags are up 2,700 percent, a rise attributed to iPads and other slightly larger gadgets that men need to carry around. The Mail goes on to emote that as manbags have proliferated — and become heavier than women’s — the size of women’s bags has decreased by 61 percent. This it puts down (in so many ways) to women’s gadgets becoming smaller.

Probably true. After all, the 1980s was a terrible time for women, having to carry CRT monitors and telephone boxes in their bags. Wait, what?

Anyway, blah bags blah effeminate men blah prejudice blah stereotype. And the zinging finale:

Some will be feel that men with large leather bags tossed around their shoulders offers a fetching fashion statement. Others will recoil at the thought.

But with a little luck, time travel will be invented, enabling them to be propelled back to the 1950s when real men were real men, real women were real women, and real bags were real bags, only touched by the hands of real women and avoided like deadly fire covered with angry snakes by real men.

Macworld asked me to write about analysts. I duly obliged. If you’ve read any of my other articles about analysts, you’ve probably already realised it’s not entirely complimentary. However, this one features catapults, psychics and a curse.

I always like it when a writer or publication subverts things that annoy the entire world, and the latest issue of Tap! magazine (which is half-price until the 14th) does this wonderfully. Amusingly deciding the iPhone 5 is old hat, the magazine looks ahead to the iPhone 6. And the iPhone 7. And all the way to the iPhone 24. But rather than becoming an analyst (and therefore screaming IT SHOULD BE LIKE ANDROID at the top of his lungs), writer Matthew Bolton’s refreshingly no-bullshit approach instead bases predictions and ideas on existing and in-development technology. Here’s what he came up with:

And Tap! head honcho Christopher Phin explains more in the video below.

So, what about that iPhone 25, eh?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz2MYKXE7vQ

Every day, the world edges closer to becoming an episode of The Day Today, with a news cycle that is beyond satire. Today, The Register reports:

Russian Orthodox Christians have defaced the logos on Apple products because they consider the bitten Apple to be anti-Christian, says Russian news agency Interfax.

The radical Christians have replaced the Apple logo with a cross, claiming that the current Apple logo – well-known around the world and often voted one of the world’s most popular logos – symbolises the original sin of Adam and Eve and is generally insulting to the Christian faith.

The Register adds a new law is currently barrelling its way through the Russian Parliament to clamp down on religious insults, and there is speculation that

there could be commercial impact, even a sales ban, if Apple fell on the wrong side of the law.

But how would Apple fall on the wrong side of the law? In a sane world, this would be an argument about intent and not speculation, and as Apple logo designer Rob Janoff once told me in an interview:

The religious myths are just that […] there’s no ‘Eve and Garden of Eden’ and ‘bite from the fruit of knowledge’ symbolism!

Unfortunately, this no longer appears to be a sane world (if it ever was).