Handsome and sexy... Apple gets to the core of what women want

I know all the things my phone and creaking old laptop can do and have played with most of these functions, but don't have enough time, need or interest to bother with many of them.

Bluetooth doesn't get space in my life although it's fun, and I only very occasionally send a photo from my phone. I keep spreadsheets, a big music

library and thousands of

photos on the laptop and also watch films on it, but can't be bothered to mess around with games applications on either phone or laptop.

I fantasise about being able to download books on to a small machine, avoiding the need to pack several bulky paperbacks when going on holiday. But

e-books are just another

single-use gadget. How dull. I

still adore real books, by the way, and would never replace them entirely.

I detest the shoulder-numbing weight of my cumbersome seven-year-old laptop. It packs an embarrassingly hefty whack if it accidentally swings into

someone else as I wait on a station platform.

When you're looking for a change, feel technologically restless and a bit behind the game, it's very dangerous when a handsome

and sexy new stranger arrives on the scene. I'm ripe for the picking if you know what I mean, Mr Jobs, but wary that 400 is a high price for a date that proves unworthy of my even putting on my high heels.

Somehow, though, and albeit glimpsed from afar, I have a hunch that my date with the iPad will not disappoint. Rarely has a gadget been so hyped and clothed in so much secrecy as this newly-launched creation from Apple, whose iPhone put a rocket under the mobile phone market. It looks as if the slim, sexy, iPad may be set to do the same and set the competitors scrambling to mimic the technology.

By the time they do, the Apple will have galloped ahead again, creating myriad applications and accessories that exponentially and mind-blowingly extend the basic iPad's capabilities.

The iPad allows users to surf the web, send emails, watch movies and TV, read newspapers and magazines, play games, cruise social networking sites and listen to music – all in a slim "tablet" format that weighs one-and-a-half pounds.

Apple founder Steve Jobs

proudly pulled back the curtain on his new baby before a salivating crowd in San Francisco. He walked them through how the unprettily-

named iPad and showed why it will be the ber-cool accessory that everyone from James Bond to Cheryl Cole will be ostentatiously toting before you can say solid-state memory.

Within days, Chanel, Gucci

and Prada will have designed special sleeves to protect

its glass screen, but this toy

is one that many people might want to wear on

their sleeve.

As with the iPhone, you gently prod, and stroke the iPad, caressing it into obeying your every whim. To turn the page on an electronic book you swipe your finger across the screen, to zoom in and out of a picture you pinch your thumb and forefinger together. It's simple, uses stunningly sharp and responsive graphics, what you see is what you get and it doesn't need its own bag or a fixed position in the house.

Men instantly started to moan about the technological

drawbacks of this basic iPad – it's not a computer as we recognise it; nor is it a phone and you can't write a Word document on it, so where does it fit into our lives, they asked; women across the blogosphere, Facebook and way beyond began to purr. The

widgety concerns of men mostly left us cold.

After all, as one pundit pointed out, the success of Apple is not that they invented the MP3 player, for instance (they didn't), but that they developed a version of it that was so sleek, so fabulously covetable and generally screaming "design classic" that millions instantly wanted that gadget in their lives. Their products are also fun, both to look at and to use. That's why, with revenues of $15.6bn, Apple is the largest mobile-device company in the world.

The iPad is so slim and light,

you can cuddle up to it in bed and read a magazine on it or catch up with your favourite TV series without a TV cluttering up the room or shuffling any paper.

Men nit-pick that it's nothing

but an advanced version of

Etch-a-Sketch; women are

making space in their handbags (and their beds!) already, in anticipation of the iPad's arrival in the UK in March.

If previous experience of

Apple's products is anything

to go by, the present iPad model

is just an opening gambit,

showing off the look and friendliness of the "user experience", to whet the appetite.. Within months a whole series of add-ons will be available that mean we customise it to our individual lives.

(PS I don't own shares in Apple)

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