Love your iPad
I agree with Brother Rob to a point: The last thing I need is another gadget to haul around. After a while your stuff starts to own you. I get that. So I wanted to avoid the iPad; needed to hate it, in fact. All the hype about transforming publishing, transcending laptops: just another Reality Distortion Field.
Time out for full disclosure: I earn my living developing high-technology medical gizmos, so it’s hardly surprising that I’m what marketers call an “early adopter” – essentially an easy mark for overpriced, half-finished products. I already own a bevy of mobile phones, computers of every size running a rainbow coalition of operating systems; there’s the inevitable Kindle, of course; and don’t get me started on my assortment of ham radios and digital cameras. Could I possibly need an iPad?
Unfortunately, yes.
Much as it pains me to say – I’m fighting a strong urge to strangle a stuffed animal right now -- iPad lives up to the hype. It is a truly disruptive product.
It all started a few weeks back when I had a flash of insight: One day soon your physician, electronic chart in hand, will review your web-based physiologic data in the hallway just before knocking on the exam-room door. (You will be found perched atop the white-paper-lined table, bumping your head against the ancient wall-mounted otoscope while arranging your gauzy open-backed gown for maximum coverage – sorry, I'm a technologist, not a fashionista.) When the doc finally comes in and asks how you’ve been doing, he already knows, thanks to the new wireless monitor you’re wearing. And in my mind’s eye the doctor’s electronic chart is an iPad.
iPad offers the best UX – tech-speak for “user experience” – of any high-tech consumer product: technology so advanced it simply goes away. Apple's latest computer requires no booting-up, shutting-down, applying patches, configuring drivers, attaching accessories, or backing up drives. Nothing. You press the single button and the iPad is on. You touch the screen, move your fingers and start navigating -- herky-jerky at first, then with increasing confidence, until in minutes you stop thinking about the interface at all. The remaining technical worries are so minor -- battery drain is imperceptibly slow -- that even obsessive-compulsives like me forget to fret. You read, organize, surf – whatever – without really thinking about the machine at all. And while my fellow nerds and I derive perverse satisfaction from worrying about our machines, most people don’t, and now they won’t have to.
And if you’d rather be bored, well, okay: send me your iPad; I bet I can put it to good use.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Love your iPad
Welcome to the dark side. I kept visiting the Apple store to play with the iPads. I didn't need one, right? I have an iPhone and a netbook. I resisted for about 6 weeks.
You are right the machine disappears when you use it. The experience is all.
But there are two things that will jerk you back into reality with the iPad: landing somewhere with Flash and trying to post comments to Ricochet.
May '10
Re: Love your iPad
You're a ham radio operator, George? So am I! But, I mean, how retro is that?
Jun '10
Re: Love your iPad
I have no doubt that someday a 3D viewing screen will be part of your Apple sunglasses, and maybe the touch screen will be the outer surface of your front pants pockets, left and right. Every time the internet becomes more portable and accessible, it's very cool, and also a little sad. It's less time in the real world.
Re: Love your iPad
Caroline, your comment reflects the torrent of requests pouring into the inbox of Ricochet's own Busy System Admin. And I for one truly feel your pain. I've been experimenting with traveling with the iPad plus Bluetooth keyboard instead of my laptop, and the one thing I can't do from the road is post to Ricochet. Rest assured that a fix is in the works.
Daniel, very retro, I'm afraid (K6TSR). I remember when placing a telephone call -- half duplex and very public -- from a walkie-talkie in a shopping mall literally stopped pedestrian traffic. This was in the late 70s when appearing to talk to yourself was viewed as evidence of an incipient psychotic break. Now everyone waves their arms while seemingly talking to the air. Is that progress?
May '10
Re: Love your iPad
I'm still working up to buying a phone that does more than text messaging (which I don't use). I'm a tech junkie as well, but lack the funds to support my addiction.
Re: Love your iPad
Here's why I love the iPad: it's the closest approximation to the kind of mindless, intuitive browsing I love to do with magazines and newspapers. The touchscreen is really a huge leap forward from the non-intuitive click and point, where every move you make is a specific choice.
What I love about the iPad is that it makes aimless reading fun again.
Jul '10
Re: Love your iPad
I am accused of being an Apple fanatic because I prefer buying a Mac desktop for business (writing & photography). My Mac laptop was "annexed" by my youngest daughter and I rarely see it anymore. That has reduced me to scribbling in a Moleskine when in the field.
Understand: I am a tech geek with degrees and job experience to buttress that claim. I prefer Macs. I want get my work done without the computer hardware and software fighting me to a draw.
Descriptions of the iPad vexed me and woke an itch I have steadfastly refused to scratch.
James Lileks talks about sitting in his back yard gazebo reading on his iPad.
Then George Savage whispers sweet and low about UX and an imperceptible interface.
Now Rob Long dangles aimless reading fun, the twinkle in his eye betraying his knowledge of the insidious temptation.
How many Moleskines would I have to fill to pay for an iPad?
Nooooo!!!
May '10
Re: Love your iPad
Hey, all, love your iPad! Now let me stick with my cheap netbook with keyboard and flash.