Last week Apple announced a new tool for content creation -- iBooks Author. The free software was part of a broader mid-January event heralding Apple's new thrust into education. The Cupertino-based company also unpacked deals with major K-12 textbook publishers including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw Hill Education and Pearson. As well, it introduced a revamped iTunes U, which will allow university and K-12 instructors to provide full, rich-media courseware for free through iTunes U.

Human being settle. Not settle, as in "contents may settle during shipping," although that does happen with age. I mean settle in the sense of "make do." When given a chance, we almost always pick the adequate option over the optimal solution. The cognitive psychology word for this quirk of human nature is "satisficing" -- a mashup of satisfy and suffice.

It's natural, given over 50 years of experience, to imagine our computers as devices that have screens and some sort of keyboard input, real or virtual.

Those two design elements constrain the device's form factor since the screens need to be big enough for us to see and the keyboards must make room for our fingers or thumbs.

But a number of technological hurdles are being overcome that will, in the coming year, dramatically alter the shape of our computing and communication devices. We are about to enter the world of wearable computing. Before the end of 2012 many of will be sporting bracelets, watches, fobs and other fashion doodads that will send us messages or convey data to our phones, computers and the Internet. These devices already exist.

Starting today the future will come more slowly.

For the last 10 years it has been rushing headlong into our homes and hands. But the man most responsible for that heady pace has passed. Yesterday, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs lost his battle with cancer. His death at 56 was not a surprise, he had been ill, visibly so, for many long months. His iconic black turtleneck began to sag and drape during his keynotes at which he introduced the iPhone, iPods, new Macbooks and the iPad. His jeans seemed the attire of a larger man, slipped on by accident before Jobs took to, and then owned, the darkened stage.

We're not even half way through January and we've already seen more tablets than at a Hunter S. Thompson house party. It seems like every major (and a lot of minor) computer manufacturers whipped up a tablet computer for the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. A tablet computer? Imagine a netbook with the keyboard torn off. Or, an iPod the size of a trivet. Or, just watch a Star Trek rerun.

We saw tablets that popped off the top of regular laptops, tablets with double screens like an open book, tablets with e-ink screens. Tablets with colour screens. Tablets with both. Frankentablets. It was like looking at a swarm of tablet lifeforms before natural selection culled the herd.