It's shameful, and just a little bit humiliating, but I could not wait. I had to set the alarm on my iPhone, because Steve Jobs is my master now, and haul myself downstairs to the multiscreen iMac ecology in which I spend my working days, because Steve Jobs is my master now, and link not just to one, not just to two, but to an entire media wall of live blogs and webcasts and streaming video of The Most Transformative And Important Moment In The History Of The World, the iPad launch, because Steve Jobs is my master now.

You think I'm joking, don't you? But you do not joke when Steve Jobs is your master. Not unless it's about Microsoft's Zune or Palm's app Store.

And I'm not joking now. Because Steve Jobs is my master.

As I read Engadget’s live blog from the launch I’m shaking with excitement. I don’t want to be. I was kind of hoping to avoid buying yet another one of Master’s expensive toys. As iLounge editor Jeremy Horwitz wrote two days ago: Apple has a history of launching base model first-generation devices with too little capacity, too high of a price, and some other random issue that turns away half or three-quarters of the potential early adopter market. This happens so often that we’re becoming convinced that it’s a deliberate strategy to either skim the market or limit demand for a product that the company knows it can’t yet produce in sufficient quantities to sate larger crowds.

But Steve Jobs, he’s my master now.

And I have been jonesing for this bad boy since the days of the Newton. (Hmmm, better not mention the Newton. It makes the Master twitchy and liable to distemper.)

Why the fanboy neediness? Because although I love print and I surround myself with it, although I have built two libraries in my home, and still have more than enough books to fill a storeroom and a third, informal children's library, I have seen the future and it is a thin slate of silicon and plastic, probably powered by the sun or an infinite improbability drive one day real soon, permanently hooked into the net, and blessed with such capacious digital shelving space that the hundreds of titles I own might, just might, chew up one tenth of 1% of its storage capacity, leaving lots of room for tentacle pr0n, all those back episodes of 24 and The Sopranos I haven't yet watched, this year's Hottest 100 with every one of Doc Yobbo’s faves, a couple of dozen games, maybe half a dozen magazines, the morning papers, my daily fix of blogs, newsfeeds, Twitter streams, Facebook updates, emails and celebrity sex video developments.

And all screaming along on Apple’s new IGHz A4 chip in glorious high def, running for 10 hours without a re-charge. Every rumour was true. Every app will run on this thing right out of the box. Book publishers and games companies have already begun migrating to it and their titles look freaking gorgeous on the Pad. The Kindle is dead. And why?

Because unlike Apple traditional strategy, their game plan for the iPad is aimed squarely at the mass market from day one. Quoting Horwitz again, ''At $399 or $499 – without a required cell phone contract – these things go mainstream in a huge way.''

And at 5.18 am local time we get the price for a base entry model. $499.

And Steve Jobs is your master now too.