Shiny and New: Apple's iPad, Obama's State of the Union

Yesterday, January 27th was a rather busy day, especially for a politcally aware gadget fanatic:  Apple announced it's heretofor mysterious new tablet device, and President Obama delivered his State of the Union address.  So, of course, one wonders:  other than occuring on the same day, what do these two events have in common?

The short answer is that both are going to be judged more by their futures than their current appearance.  The iPad is shiny and sleek, like all Apple products, but also limited.  It has few applications, apparently won't work on websites that use Flash (hulu.com, for one), and limited connectivity.  It is, essentially, a beautiful frame waiting to be filled by developers.  If it progresses like the iPhone and finds itself host to 100,000 applications for various purposes, it will be a wild success.

In the same way, Obama has a plan for increasing employment and decreasing the pain of the current hard times we are in.  Incentives and tax breaks, paybacks from banks that were assisted with taxpayer money, ways to reduce the costs of education.  All wonderful, shiny and new ideas, waiting to be fulfilled or not by the actions that Congress (the "developer community" for our laws, as it were) takes.  If Obama can implement effective policies and pull the country and its people out of its economic slump, his presidency will also be a wild success.

Here's to a shiny new future, with all the apps and productive employment we need to buy them.