To his last point, an iPod touch can be used to play games, listen to music, watch movies or look at pornography. It can also be used as a point-of-sale system. If you want to categorically rule out the practical uses for a device that you haven't seen yet, that's your business. But you're really only hurting yourself.

Have we reached a point in technology punditry where opinions simply do not have to be backed up by any factual evidence at all? That the point is no longer reporting and analyzing facts, but fashioning these rough golems and setting them loose upon the Internet to indiscriminately destroy all in their path? Is that where we are?

Not that that doesn't have a certain appeal to it. Actually, the Macalope's pretty sure he'd do quite well under those ground rules.

Sometimes it seems like PCWorld writers are given wide logical latitude where Apple is concerned.