If you tried to visit the various and sundry web sites covering Apple’s iPad announcement, you likely ran into a few delays. JR Raphael, PC World:

Both Engadget and Gizmodo, two of the Web’s biggest tech blogs, were inaccessible during parts of the Apple event, according to user reports on Twitter and other places. Web broadcaster Leo Laporte’s live audio stream of the event is also said to have crashed during the iPad’s introduction.

What an event.

Barclay’s Capital analyst Ben Reitzers met with Apple executives and leaked a roadmap of Apple’s upcoming products. Oh? And what was leaked? Apple will launch iPods with cameras, a new tablet computer in 2010, a low-end MacBook, an updated Apple TV, and sign an iPhone deal with China Unicom.

Speculation has been rife during the last year that Apple will introduce a tablet computer into its range. However, the company has long contended it is not ready to get into the growing netbook market, maintaining that such low-cost systems lack the quality it desires in its offerings.

How is this news? How is it even a leak? That list of speculations has been floating around for a year.

The iPhone is popular and AT&T is not. What’s the real price tag on Apple’s new iPhone? Can current iPhone 3G AT&T customers upgrade at a reduced price? The backlash on AT&T’s iPhone upgrade price is growing. From Ad Age:

Many consumers aren’t aware that the handsets they buy to go with their service plans are subsidized by the carrier, who hopes to recover that cost by locking subscribers into two-year contracts. The $199 is the subsidized price paid by current 3G iPhone users; AT&T has to pay Apple a subsidy north of $350 for each iPhone it sells…

Reading the fine print is a lost art. This solution makes sense:

For current iPhone users who can’t wait until their contracts expire to get the new handset, AT&T could also simply extend their contracts by a year to allow it to recover any residual subsidy costs.

With over 65,000 apps now in the App Store for iPhone users, some are great, many not, and more than a few are just plain dumb. The real dumbest? FatBurner2k:

...it can “help your body consume fat molecules using disharmonic, molecule to molecule, physical oscillations.” Translation: It vibrates on your tummy.

Useful, not dumb is iNap@Work:

This app promises to generate random office sounds—mouse clicks, keyboard taps, pencil sharpeners, coughs, and rustling paper—to give power-nappers some cover. Little sliders are supposed to control your “productivity” level and the frequency of each sound.

The award for exploitation of the most desperate of people should go to Hair Clinic: For Man or Woman:

Promises to give you “healthy and abundant” hair by generating “various types of inaudible high and low frequencies to promote blood circulation around hair roots and under the head skin.”

The spirit of capitalism is alive and well in the App Store.

From Paul Thurrott comes The SuperSite Switcher Guide: From Mac OS X to Windows Introduction. Sorry, Paul. Been there. Done that.

Hold on, hold on: I know what you’re thinking. There goes Thurrott again, goading the all-too-easily-enraged ranks of Mac fanatics into a frothing anti-Windows frenzy. Relax, guys. Yes, you’re fun to mess with, with your mock turtleneck sweaters and one-too-many leather hipster iPod cases.

The guy is a mind reader.

My suspicion is that very few people have actually transitioned completely from Windows to the Mac.

That’s rubbish. How about switching from Mac to Windows? Because the road less traveled is often less traveled for a reason? So, Paul, why should a Mac user trust what you say?

We should all be OK poking fun at ourselves, especially if you’re a little too uptight for your own good. I’ll start. I’m Paul, and I’m a wine and coffee snob, and an NPR-listening, East Coast liberal. You, the Mac fanatic who is right now furiously trying not to fire off yet another nasty email bomb from your mac.com address, will admit in return that you’re a smug, know-it-all so-and-so.

Yep. That’s a real confidence booster in your ability to inspire trust. Goodbye, Paul.