Owners of the 3rd-generation iPad who are whining about Apple introducing a new one need to buck up and cope: this is the reality of tech.

The most ridiculous tech meme of the day is "angry iPad 3 owners." You started seeing them on Twitter as soon as the fourth-gen iPad was announced. They're the fatally confused folks who think that just because Apple gave its tablet computer a spec bump, somehow it launched a remote kill switch and turned all of their existing devices to useless piles of slag.

The insane idea is that every Apple product buyer gets a magical yearlong period during which they are a special snowflake with the Best Device Ever. First of all, they never were. Second of all, welcome to the real world. In the real world, device makers rev products all the time. How many times has Samsung revved its phone lineup this year? Can that even be counted?

I refuse to call this Apple's fault because the idea of completely reliable annual Apple release schedules is entirely imaginary. Ever hear of the iPhone 4S? That came 18 months after the iPhone 4. Macs, meanwhile, re-up whenever they feel like it.

More to the point, Apple-watchers with longer memories will remember a similar wailing and rending of garments when Apple bumped down the original iPhone's price by $200 three months after its release. That time, the sobs were so deafening that Apple had to apologize and issue $100 credits. But it just proves that the "Apple annual cycle" is the sort of rule that exists to be broken.

Apple: Stop Making Stuff, Please!

So what do the iPad 3 whiners want? I don't think $100 would satisfy them, because their complaints are more existential. Do they want Apple to not release new products so existing device owners can get some sort of exclusive period knowing that they have the absolute hottest gadget on the block? Do they understand how absurd that is?

Apple's goal is to sell devices, and it does that by releasing the best products it could possibly make. For the critical holiday season, if it can put out an iPad that's aligned with its new Lightning dock connector, uses the latest processor, and works with additional wireless carriers, it will.

If you just bought an iPad, you are "safe" for Apple. You're unlikely to shatter your $500 device over your knee in rage and go buy a Galaxy Tab. You're also probably locked into the Apple ecosystem and are likely to buy a new iPad two to three years from now, because by then you'll be running 76 iPad apps and the idea of switching to Android would just be too traumatic. And yes, the new product just reduced your product's resale value, which means that you'll probably hang on to your iPad for another year or so.

iPad 3 owners, you are not the target audience for the fourth-generation unit.

The iPad 3 is Perfectly Fine

Complaints about fast product cycles are valid if the fast product cycle makes older products obsolete. But that's just not the case with the iPad 3, which will be well-supported for at least the next two years. It is not "obsolete," "old" or "out of date."

As an iPad 3 owner, you don't have to worry about case makers abandoning it, because it's the same size and shape as the fourth-gen. And you don't have to worry about app developers supporting it, because two of the three iPads still being sold (the $399 iPad 2 and the iPad mini) use the same A5 CPU (albeit without the "X" graphics acceleration) as the third-gen iPad.

Apple's trying to move away from the 30-pin dock connector, but that will take years. The iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPad 2, all currently on sale, all use the 30-pin connector, ensuring 30-pin accessories for the future.

So the iPad 3 will have tons of cases. The iPad 3 will have tons of apps. It will have tons of accessories. All it is missing is special-magic-snowflake-bestness. If you think that this is some sort of "betrayal" by Apple, you've been spending way too much time in a reality distortion field.

For more, see PCMag's and the slideshow above, as well as our .