So you’re sitting there with your new iPad and you’ve got all you possibly can out of the built-in apps. What next? Well, I’ve spent most of my life over the past two weeks going through a massive number of iPad apps. Reviews of these are slowly making their way to iPhoneTiny.com (Twitter users might like to follow @iphonetiny), but the best have been compiled in a series of articles for TechRadar.

Visit the links below to find out the very best apps you can download for your iPad:

• Top 20 best iPad apps worth paying for
• Top 20 best free iPad apps
• 10 best iPad games worth paying for
• Top 20 best free iPad games

And already, the verdict is in. The iPad is great. Or rubbish. Or the future of computing. Or a huge waste of money. Krishnan Guru-Murthy wasted no time largely dismissing his purchase for Channel 4. “And you soon realise that nothing on offer is really going to transform your life the way having a mobile phone or a laptop computer did,” he says, noting that he nonetheless loves his iPad. (And, to be fair, he does later suggest it could be a laptop replacement for him in some circumstances.)

He argues that the iPad is a piece of Apple genius, in being able to sell you stuff you don’t need. While I admit that it’s hardly a piece of entirely must-have tech (unlike, say, a cooker), the iPad is a future for computing. It’s a console-style computing experience for people who no longer care for all the associated junk that comes with the Linux, Windows and, yes, Mac experience.

I’ve had an iPad myself for a few weeks now, and my advice if you’re not convinced with your purchase is this: stop worrying. Just get some decent apps and use the iPad whenever you fancy. You will find that, without even realising it, you’re using the iPad in place of a laptop, netbook or iPhone. All of a sudden, maybe a week in, the entire thing will just click.

Gizmodo yesterday ran the piece Bill Gates Told Steve Jobs About the iPad in 2007, and various tech sites have since repeated Gizmodo’s opinion verbatim. However, I think they’ve got it wrong—or at least half wrong.

After being asked about what kind of device people will be using five years after the interview (conducted in 2007), Gates talks about a future where you have a full-screen device that you carry around (say, an iPad), and a device you put in your pocket (like an iPhone or iPod touch), although he also talks about a kitsch sci-fi future in which every surface has something projected on to it. By contrast, Gizmodo suggests Jobs remains rooted in a PC-as-digital-hub strategy.

Watching the video, I don’t think this is true. Jobs continues on from what Gates says, rather than repeating him, and talks about a type of PC: “This general purpose device is going to continue to be with us and morph with us, whether it’s a tablet or a notebook or, you know, a big curved desktop that you have at your house”. That, to me, sounds a lot like an iPad. Or an iMac. Or a MacBook. Or even Microsoft Surface. And that is the point he’s making—the PC continues to exist, but in new form factors. And, at present, a more traditional PC of some kind does remain the digital hub–something that’s unlikely to change dramatically by 2012. (It’s also worth noting that the iPhone was revealed only a few months after the interview, so it’s clear Jobs is being cagey, rather than yelling: “Hey! We’re working on something like like right now!”)

So Gizmodo’s half right in that Gates did predict the iPad, but so too did Jobs. What’s the more interesting question—and one Gizmodo utterly fails to ask—is why did only one of the two companies these guys are involved with, Apple, capitalise on this shared vision?

I’ve spent quite a lot of my life over the past couple of months writing about the Adobe-Apple spat. Frankly, I’m sick of the thing and wish the two companies would either get a room or have a punch-up in the car-park, before lolling around drunk and going “I’m, like, really sorry. You know you’re my best mate?”

Today, the row took a turn for the bizarre, with Adobe posting an open letter from founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock. In it, they argue for open markets (which is fine), against closed systems (also fine), and rattle on about how in open markets, the best products win in the end (again, fine).

Where the entire thing gets smacked in the face in surprised fashion, like a foot suddenly flipping an infinite number of rakes towards the foot’s owner’s head, is when Flash enters the equation. Adobe again argues that Flash is an ‘open’ technology, and that in ‘banning’ it from its devices Apple has “taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web—the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time”.

This is total and utter bullshit and makes me extremely angry. First, Flash is proprietary technology. Adobe can bleat all its wants about publishing specifications, but the fact remains Flash is Adobe’s toy. It’s pissed off with Apple because Apple is saying Adobe’s toy isn’t good enough, and people listen to what Apple says, not least when it’s related to the newest and shiniest Apple product.

Secondly, Apple is hardly going to “undermine” the next chapter of the web when it’s a supporter of truly open web standards, such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, which are supported well by Apple’s various versions of Safari. Safari, remember, is available on all of Apple’s mobile devices.

Throughout this spat, I’ve felt sympathy for developers. It sucks that they can no longer package an app in Flash and send it to the App Store (even though such apps are effectively Flash apps and not ‘proper’ iPhone apps). I also think it’s a shame for the publishing industry that Apple’s entirely banned Flash from its platform, because many of the most interesting publishing innovations of late use Flash. However, to argue that Apple is undermining the next chapter of the web due to its stance is absolute hogwash, and I certainly expected better of Geschke and Warnock.

The media had a field day when UK iPad preordering arrived. The low-end iPad came in at a wallet-busting £429, way more than the US price of $499 after a swift currency conversion. What nasty people Apple are, yelled lots of people, ripping off anyone outside the US. All true, unless you take into account triffling little matters like VAT (added by default to UK prices, but not to US ones, since taxes there vary by state), after which point the UK’s being ‘ripped off’ to the tune of $13–$41, depending on the iPad model you buy.

Still, said analysts, the device will be a failure! It’ll be a niche product, they yelled, utterly failing to explain why if this was the case everyone and his dog’s announcing they’ll have an ‘iPad killer’ out at some random date in the future that, for some reason, they can’t confirm just yet, because, presumably, all iPad killers currently amount to CEOs having written ‘Get proles to make an iPad killer’ in biro on a to-do list.

Whether the iPad becomes a success in the UK remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: the ‘high price’ clearly hasn’t put that many people off. Already, the shipping date for new orders has shifted to June 7, meaning the initial batch has sold out.

My advice? If you don’t have £429 (or more) to spare, avoid the iPad at all costs. You might not think you want one, but you sure as hell will once you start playing with one.