One of my friends loves her Ipad so I decided to get one. On the same day I started looking at options Microsoft announced their tablet, the Surface. It sounded good. I decided to do more research.
I went to the Apple Store in Palo Alto. The main things I will do with my Ipad are read books and magazines and watch movies. I asked to see a movie on “the new Ipad”. No movies were available, so I watched a trailer for Brave. It was not a good experience. Lots of glare. How much worse could the Surface be? I wondered.
I was curious about the new naming policy. No “Ipad 3″, just “the new Ipad”. “Why isn’t this called the Ipad 3?” I asked an employee. “Company policy,” he said. “What’s the reason for the policy?” I asked. “They don’t tell us that,” he said.
I left the store thinking I would wait for the Surface. Later that day I had lunch with a friend, Steve Omohundro, who (with colleagues) long ago predicted the tablet computer and won a design competition (possibly sponsored by Apple) for doing so. He and his colleagues gave a talk about it and Steve Jobs was in the audience. I forgot to ask him what he thinks of the Ipad and the Surface.
Did he predict it before the movie 2001? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo
Totally random post!
In other news, Google is announcing its tablet tomorrow. Seems there’s a multitude of tablets to choose from now…but I must say the Surface does look compelling.
I love my new iPad (iPad 3 to me). 1. The retina display is really easy on the eyes. I like reading it on the elliptical much better than physical books.
2. It makes it very easy to keep up with email.
3. The Wall Street Journal app was the deal sealer; when I tried it on my daughter’s iPad, I knew my android tablet was history.
4. A few, 10%, of my business students would pull up the powerpoints in class. I predict this use will only grow.
I use the iPad more than my phone or computer. It is at the sweet spot of usefulness and portability.
I hate glare too. It give’s me killer migraines. Most people don’t get migraines quite like I do from glare but I guess my eyes are extra sensitive to reflected light. However, a sizable # of people are sensitive to it and a website was created to petition Apple to offer a non-glare laptop option, which they ended up giving in to. I really dislike the fact that a lot of the new laptops and flat screen computer monitors have reflective surfaces and essentially look like a mirror. I prefer the old TFT LCD screens which do not have me headaches. If it was not for self experimentation it would have been very tough to discover the trigger (it took me many years before starting to self-experiment, and not long afterwards I figured it out).
I have an iPad 2. I don’t use it very much. I far prefer to sit at a regular desktop computer (the iPad’s on-screen keyboard is very awkward to use).
When I do use the iPad, my main use is reading articles that I had previously save in my InstaPaper account. The glare doesn’t bother me (I never even noticed it, to tell you the truth).
Frankly, I’m a little puzzled by all the hoopla surrounding tablet computers and smart phones. Using either type of device is an exercise in frustration, in my opinion. I can see how they might be useful, though, if you don’t have easy access to a regular desktop PC. Luckily, though, I am almost always in close proximity to either my work computer or my home computer, and I rarely travel.