I happen to live about 2 miles away from the Apple headquarters. On my way to the gym I often see Apple employees walking through the campus, carrying a shiny Macbook Air or one of the other Macbook variants. Am I going to see them carrying an iPad on their way to the next meeting?

The device is undoubtedly way cool, and I definitely want one. It won’t fit in my pocket, so I’m going to have to lug it around in a bag. But I already carry a phone and a laptop, so why should I? to replace the Kindle I don’t have, I guess. Or maybe to replace all three of them?

The mass-market use case is not yet clear (to me at least), but the greatest achievement here is Apple’s new A4 chip, which reportedly is extremely fast. This finally lets Apple be totally self reliant, just the way they (rightfully) like it. In a year or so we’re going to see the A4 and its descendants replace the iPhone and Macbook CPUs, and maybe even penetrate non-Apple products.

Two companies entered the prestigious “I’m officially scared of Apple” club today - Intel and AMD. The banter in their executive boardrooms might be giddy and condescending, but they should be revising their 5-year plans instead.

iPad

The San Francisco Bay Area is ripe with intelligent people. Some of them choose to broadcast their personality through their car. I assembled this handy guide to let you instantly learn more about the owner by reading a few simple signs on their car:

Mystery Spot sticker: I’m a sucker to believe this tourist trap is a natural phenomenon. Not only that, I’m also stupid enough to promote this money-sucking operation while destroying my car’s paint coat. I’m going to end up taking a financial hit when selling the car, but I don’t know it yet.

Cryptic license plate: I’m oh-so-cool and witty. You guys don’t even know which side to start reading my license plate from, do you. In fact I’m so smart that I’m the only one who can figure out what it means, which kind of defeats the purpose. Heck, I had to spend 10 minutes explaining what GTK4DRK to my best buddy. But hey, I only pay the DMV 40 bucks a year for that so it’s totally worth it.

Jesus fish: I’m a believer, and I want to make sure everyone knows that. Jesus has a small problem - he is not famous enough, so I’m doing my part by advertising him using this cute little fish I stuck on my car’s buttocks.

Jesus fish with little feet: I’m a non believer, and I want everyone to know that. Jesus didn’t exist, but Darwin did and he said that my ancestors were fish with feet. You won’t understand that, so just keep thinking about your legless fish and let me keep cruising peacefully in my Prius (see below).

26.2 sticker: I ran a marathon, did you? you didn’t? wimp! I bet you didn’t even know that a marathon is 26.2 miles, did you. Oh wait, so what’s the point of putting this sticker on my back pane. Whatever.

Toyota Prius: I want you to think that I care about the environment. I drive my Prius to the steakhouse, ignoring the fact that eating meat contributes much more to global warming than driving any type of car. I also ignore the fact that it takes 10 years of driving a Prius to balance the greenhouse gas emissions caused by making its battery, and that the car’s extra cost could be put into much better use by buying carbon offsets.

Toyota Prius with a carpool lane sticker: I paid $3000 extra for this car just because it has this yellow sticker, so I can ride in the car pool lane. I’ll soon have to shell out a few more grands to replace the battery, but you didn’t hear it from me. Who cares, when I’m going to make it home 10 minutes before you. Keep sitting in traffic, sucker.

A Porsche: Boy, do I have a solution to this damn midlife crisis! I just bought myself this amazing car. So what if I can barely fit in the driver’s seat, maintenance is going to cost me a fortune, and I can’t really use third gear or higher because I already have 4 speeding tickets and I don’t want to get my license suspended. This makes me look so young and cool that I simply must have it.

A large helping of optimism for the new year in this great little video about the power of entrepreneurship.