Apple yesterday had another of its special events, which I noted would provide immediate disappointment with its open streaming that was only available to Snow Leopard-equipped Macs and iOS devices. (Good move, Apple! That’ll show Google and Adobe!)

As it turned out the event was, as usual, a mix of WOW, bleh, and eh? I was going to write a piece about it, but journo chum Adam Banks got there first and, spookily, his thoughts on what went on in San Fransisco yesterday mirror mine exactly. So, er, go and read Adam’s piece to see what I think about Apple’s announcements.

Samsung’s decided the best way to get one over the iPad is to go all sci-fi. “Create a clone,” said the directors. “The iPad will be caught unawares. Then, when it least expects, we can kick it repeatedly in the knackers until it begs for mercy—but we don’t have any of that. MWAHAHAHAHA!”

OK, so that’s perhaps a bit far-fetched. It’s probably more likely that some higher-up at Samsung got an iPad, went “oooh, shiny”, shoved it in front of the company’s design team and said: “One of those please, but in Android flavour”.

And if you think I’m exaggerating, take a look at Matt Gemmell’s Samsung Galaxy Tab comparison with iOS. Mid-1990s Microsoft has nothing on these guys.

Android Central reports that the RIAA’s trying to make it so all cell phones include an FM radio receiver. Now, we already know the music industry is bonkers. The RIAA’s thought in the past that it’s a good idea to sue kids for downloading a few songs online, and U2 manager Paul McGuinness offered the full extent of his crazy in a GQ interview, expertly torn to pieces on No Rock and Roll Fun. But seriously, an FM radio, in every cell phone, PDA and portable device, just because record labels are ‘missing out’ on money they might otherwise get?

I look forward to the proposal of forcing an entire local theatre to be glued to every flat-screen TV.

(Hat tip: Ian Betteridge.)

CrunchGear reports on the Axon Logic Hackintosh tablet, with the headline ‘Axon Logic Hackintosh Tablet May Just Out-iPad The iPad’. So, how’s this device planning on doing this? Well, it’s been “designed from the ground up to be compatible with any Darwin OS”, which means it’ll support (unofficially, natch) Mac OS X.

So, CrunchGear says this will beat the iPad by using Mac OS X, an operating system not designed for touch. Furthermore, the touchscreen is resistive, so wave bye to multitouch. Wow, that really sounds like it’ll out-iPad the iPad to me!

Quick tip to everyone in the journo game: the way to out-iPad the iPad is to make something better and more usable than the iPad, so stop reporting otherwise. Don’t just get all excited by a spec list, because the vast majority of users don’t care. Get excited by a system that is more intuitive, and that is better designed for touch. By all means advocate something more powerful for advanced tasks, or with USB ports, or with a card reader welded to it. But ensure the device is better from a usability and user-experience standpoint; don’t just prattle on about a desktop operating system glued to something vaguely resembling an iPad and call it an ‘iPad killer’.

I read ZDNet’s article on RearType a couple of days ago, but it’s remained in my mind, right next to a 500-metre-tall neon sign that says, in all-caps, WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING?

I’m all for innovation, and I fully understand that some people hate software-based keyboards on tablets, but Microsoft Research’s answer is to split the keyboard and put it on the back of the device. Never mind that this will require a ton more retraining and muscle memory shifts than using a virtual keyboard; never mind the fact that it will cause RSI sufferers to scream and non-RSI sufferers to become RSI sufferers and then scream; never mind that this makes the device itself unwieldy, ugly, and also forces it to be used in a specific orientation (unlike, say, the iPad, which doesn’t care which way up it is).

I was half expecting the white paper to be dated April 1, and the introductory text to be “fooled you, idiot-face”, but, no, it’s dated September 2010, which is presumably the same date every single person involved in the project took leave of their senses.