While I haven’t spent much time pimping my iPad, one of the first apps add was Zite because there had been so much buzz about it, particularly after the Vancouver-based startup was acquired by CNN for a reported $25-million.

This may sound dramatic but Zite has dramatically changed how I consume content. As someone who sucks in a lot of content every day for market intelligence and information, and ideas for columns and blog posts, any way that improves efficiency and productivity is a wonderful thing.

With Zite, I can create categories that are interesting or relevant to my interests and needs. Then, Zite generates stories in a magazine format that can be quickly scanned and read. It’s also easy to save an article or blog post to read for later, or share it via social media or email.

Zite also lets you “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” a story to adjust your preferences, although it would be great if you could add a particular Web site or blog into the editorial mix.

Zite has been a productivity-booster because I can cover the content landscape in 10 minutes for ideas and information. At the same time, it has cut down on the amount of time on Twitter, which I use as a quasi-RSS reader.

More important, it has dramatically changed how much content I can consume and read and, in the process, saved me a lot of time, which is one of the most important considerations.

One word: mistake.

I’m not what I expected on a glorious Saturday afternoon but the store was utter madness. There were people everywhere, and the line-up to pay involved extreme patience for anyone who actually wanted to buy something as opposed to worship at the Apple shrine.

Personally, I walked in, and then quickly left. If there was anything I wanted to purchase, it would happen later in the comfort of my own home or a more sane store such as Carbon Computing.

As I left the store, the person walking up the stairs in front of me said it best:

“From a consumer perspective, it was a disappointing experience but from it was a great experience from a shareholder perspective.”

Granted, we’re are talking Apple’s flagship store on a day when the streets of New York were heaving with tourists. But for anyone looking for first-hand evidence of Apple’s sales mojo, it was an awesome display of rapid consumerism.

First reaction: “Crap”.

Second reaction: “I hope my AppleCare hasn’t expired”.

Third reaction: “Great, another trip to Carbon Computing”.

If there is a silver lining to a double shot of computer woes, it is that an increasing amount of my computing has migrated to the cloud. I’m a big user of Google Docs to handle word documents and spreadsheets. I made the move to Google Apps and GMail a few months ago. And DropBox has become a “virtual” harddrive/storage depot for lots of personal and professional documents.

It means that having hard drives go crash and burn isn’t a catastrophe as much as an aggravation. When I was told the hard drive on the MacBook Pro would likely have to be replaced, I just cut and paste a bunch of data into DropBox, which was a snap because I happily pay $99/year for 50GB of storage.

Putting your computing world into the cloud can be a leap of faith but it’s a no-brainer for people like myself who are mobile and use different devices to access data and services. At the end of the day, hard drive problems are still a pain in the rear end but rather than being a disaster, they’re bumps in the road.

And, of course, I had everything backed up on an external hard drive just in case because it’s always good to have a backup plan!

The hits keep coming and the new products keep on getting released, even if they are just minor upgrades to the previous product such as the iPhone 4S.

Even though there was disappointment, the 4S wasn’t a iPhone5, it’s still something new from Apple, which is always a good thing for the growing Apple Nation.

The question is whether we’re strong enough to resist the temptation to upgrade. Is getting the new thing irresistible, or should we live with what we’ve got.

The iPhone4S called out to me yesterday when, coincidentally, my battered and bruised 3GS fell on the floor. The glass panel shattered, bringing on agony but, at the same time, the ecstatic realization that it had created a window of opportunity to get a 4S. It was like a spiritual Steve Jobs had lightly pushed my 3GS off the shelf.

So what to do, what to do? Spend $300 or $400 on a 4S, or hold onto the 3GS given saving money seems to a good thing these days. Or should I buy an iPhone4 that the carriers have slashed prices on to move out excess inventory?

The back and forth when considering Apple products is agonizing. One minute, a 4S is a slam-dunk; the next minute you decide not to jump on the bandwagon.

In the end, I got the 3GS fixed. For now, I have a functional iPhone again, which will suit my needs and, as important, provide some more time to decide whether to get the 4S.

In many respects, Steve Jobs has picked the perfect time to leave Apple. The company has become a cultural, technological and business monster with an aura hand-crafted by Jobs over the past decade. Apple is firing on all cylinders, seemingly unable to do anything wrong. The iMac, MacBook, iPad and iPad have established Apple as the world’s coolest brand and a design titan.

But where does Apple go from here?

When you’re at the top of your game, it can be a huge challenge to keep getting better. Arguably, the only place for Apple to go may be down given the competition over the horizon from players such as Google and Samsung.

On one hand, it would be probably be pretty cool to be Tim Cook, who is replacing Jobs as Apple’s CEO. On the other hand, Cook may have the world’s toughest job. Every move he makes, every new product and every quarterly result will be scrutinized and compared against the Steve-o-Meter. No matter how well Cook performs, it may never be good enough.

But that’s the reality of replacing an icon. There is no way you can compete so Cook needs to put his head down and let Apple continue to be Apple.

One thing that will be interesting is whether Apple employees, including Cook, will be allowed to enjoy the spotlight. During Jobs’ reign, he was the centre of attention, and it was rare to read about some of the other uber-talented people who were driving the company’s product development and marketing. Maybe Jobs’ departure will give them a chance to shine.

Jobs will be missed, although it doesn’t look like he’s disappearing. That said, no one is irreplaceable, even Steve Jobs. Apple will continue to roll along but it may never enjoy the same kind of amazing momentum it has seen over the past five – with or without Jobs as CEO.

For some more thoughts on what Apple means without Steve Jobs, check out this good piece of analysis by Econsultancy. Wired has a story on why Cook is the best choice to lead Apple.

So let’s get this straight: Hewlett-Packard spends $1.2-billion to acquire Palm so it can move into the tablet computing business. It then launches the TouchPad (creative name, by the way!) with a marketing blitz, only to see sales go nowhere, leaving retailers such as Best Buy with loads of unsold inventory.

Then, HP shocks the world by announcing it’s going to abandon the tablet and PC markets to focus on software. Fascinating….except the story gets better.

After HP makes its decision, Best Buy goes back on its original decision not to sell its stash of 245,000 TouchPads by blowing them out at discount prices – $99 for the 16GB model and $149 for the 32GB model. (betanews has some colour on the TouchPad buying frenzy.)

People who would have never considered buying a TouchPad are now drooling about picking up a cheap unit, even though it’s built on an OS that could be orphaned.

If anything, it just goes to show that everyone likes a deal, even if it involves a product that is being discontinued.

At the same time, it does put a intriguing issue into the spotlight: could low-price tablets keep the marketplace from being dominated by Apple’s iPad?

There are some great tablets from companies such as Samsung and Motorola (I’m really enjoying my Xoom) but the iPad’s appeal and Apple’s brand mean the default choice for most consumers is an iPad.

Many people suggest the iPad is so compelling because of the 100K+ apps but truth be told, Android has an apps portfolio that is more than good enough. Heck, even the much-maligned Blackberry World probably has enough apps to do the trick.

So the iPad has the marketing aura and the apps but what it doesn’t have is a low price, although there’s rumbling Apple could introduce less-expensive models. This leaves a window of opportunity for someone to step up with a low-cost, user-friendly tablet likely built on Android that would have mass market appeal.

As much as overall sales are soaring, a cheap tablet would push the tablet into the mainstream, making it available to just about everyone, including people who look at them as a nice to have as opposed to a must-have. And the nice thing about playing in the low-price market is there’s little chance Apple will join the fray.

Of course, the key consideration for a supplier who decides to make low-cost tablets is having low enough costs and high enough sales volume to have decent profit margins. It would also help if there were add-on services available (storage, security, etc.) that would generate additional sales to support the low-cost model.

Given the strong sales of the TouchPad, there’s clearly a market for a cheap tablet backed by a reputable brand. Either that or people love a deal or they’re looking for a souvenir to sell later on eBay.

More: Daring Fireball offers a “simple explanation” about why HP abandoned Palm and decided to exit the PC business.Update

In the past month or so, the patent marketplace has gone crazy. A consortium happily coughs up $4.5 billion for Nortel’s 6,000 patents. Google wants to spend $12.5-billion for Motorola Mobility and its 17,000 patents, and Wi-Lan has bid $480 million for Mosaid.

For all the talk about patents protecting innovation, it is looking more and more like patents will be used as a weapon to discourage innovation….unless you’re willing to pay for the privilege. We should have seen the writing on the wall in 2006 when RIM paid $612.5-million for NTP, a patent troll, to go away.

With high-tech companies aggressively building their patent portfolios, we should prepare ourselves for a flurry of lawsuits or, at least, threats of lawsuits as everyone attempts to protect their investments.

It goes without saying this will be a goldmine for lawyers who will be happy as pigs in shit as the patent wars are unleashed. With the stakes so high given how much money is being spent on patents, the legals fees for both sides (the patents owners and the alleged patent infringers) will be enormous.

My take is this is going to be a disaster for the high-tech industry as patents rather than innovation take centre stage. For people creating new products and services, it means having to look over their shoulder for an army of lawyers who will contend that a patent has been infringed.

That’s no way to encourage innovation.

Larkin argues he only needs 10 apps, mostly because the iPhone comes with many of the apps (e.g. Safari, photos, weather, Mail) he uses all the time. It’s a great point that talks to one of the dirty little secrets of the mobile world: most people only use a few apps but they really like the idea of having thousands of options.

It’s one of the reasons for the iPhone’s massive appeal, while the BlackBerry gets roundly criticized for the shortcomings of BlackBerry App World. Truth be told, BlackBerry App World likely has most of the apps people really need but it gets pounded for not offering thousands of more options.

It’s probably not unlike going to Denny’s, which features a menu with dozens of choices. I suspect the majority of people eat a small number of items, which lets Denny’s offer multiple options with the knowledge that many of them will not be selected.

In the technology world, however, perception is often reality. Consumers like the idea of choice, options and features even though they many not use many of them. It’s the same reason why consumers upgrade devices, hardware and software when what they have is perfectly good.

When it comes to my personal use of apps on my iPhone, most of my time is sucked up by TweetBot, Safari and the camera. Once in awhile, I’ll use Yelp, Dialvetica, Tweeb, AroundMe, Tumblr and Angry Birds. In total, that’s nine apps so I’m clearly in the same camp as Larkin. That said, there are 81 apps on my iPhone, which means most of them collect a lot of digital dust.

So how many apps do you really use or need? And if you had to pay for apps, how many would you have on your device?

In what can only be a riddle wrapped up in an enigma, Research in Motion will be launching the much-anticipated PlayBook next week that is, at best, work in progress. From Walter Mossberg’s review, the PlayBook lacks many of the key features that would make a reasonable consumer consider purchasing one, let alone make the PlayBook a viable rival to the iPhone.

For one, the PlayBook lacks cellular connectivity, as well as built-in apps such as e-mail, a calendar, contacts and BlackBerry Messenger. To use these bread-and-butter apps, you need a BlackBerry, which then synchs using software called Bridge. For non-BlackBerry users, they have no choice but to use Web-based applications.

To be frank, the PlayBook’s shortcomings are stunning given RIM announced the PlayBook’s launch months ago. With so much lead time, it’s a complete head-scratcher as to why it would launch something that isn’t ready for prime-time.

RIM says the PlayBook will see many upgrades and improvements in a few months but the biggest danger is it may be too little, too late. High-tech consumers are fickle and not terribly patient so the PlayBook’s half-baked finish will likely see it dissed and dismissed long before RIM can push out newer, better versions.

RIM is clearly hoping consumers will give it the benefit of the doubt for putting out a product prematurely. RIM must believe it needs to move now, otherwise it will give the iPad even more time to dominate the market, and provide Android-powered tablets with the opportunity to stake out more ground.

As someone who has sat on the tablet sidelines to see if an alternative to iPad could emerge, the PlayBook’s launch is disappointing. There is no chance I would buy one, particularly at $499. In fact, the PlayBook’s launch may be the final push for me to finally purchase an iPad.

RIM has never been a terrific marketing company but if this will have to change dramatically if there is any hope for the PlayBook to recover from what appears to an inauspicious debut.

For more, check out Matt Hartley’s story in the Financial Post.

But in the scheme of things does size really matter? Does it really offer a distinct competitive advantage? Here’s where I’m coming from: On my iPhone, there are about 50 apps – many of them downloaded on a whim because they’re free. Of these apps, you know how many I use on a regular basis? Less than five, and I suspect that most people fall into the same camp.

It means if every mobile platform offers the same small group of must-have apps (let’s aggressively assume 250 apps will account for more than 80% of total usage), then having more than 100,000 or even 50,000 apps doesn’t matter.

Yes, I accept the argument that having more apps offers the opportunity to serve the needs of many niche markets. And I recognize there’s marketing mojo in having a large app collection. But if push comes to shove, size doesn’t matter at all as long as consumers have their “basic” needs covered.

I’ve been thinking about this thesis for awhile but it was thrust into the spotlight after reading Randall Stross’ column in the New York Times yesterday on Nokia’s use of Windows Phone 7. One of the people quoted was Thomas R. Eisenmann, a professor at the Harvard Business School, who said:

“What is often missed is the diminishing returns after 1,000 applications. If a platform attracts the thousand-most-popular apps, then it provides almost anything a reasonable person would want to do with a smartphone.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.