Monday, February 1, 2010

iPad for iPricks

Having just got my iPhone a few weeks back, I am not very keen to spend some more money for an oversized version- the iPad- which will be available here starting March.
While I must confess that my iPhone has not disappointed, I would rather wait for version 2 of the iPad which will most probably come fitted with a camera, allow for multi-tasking, and support flash. However, that will not be.
My girlfriend’s birthday is in June, and she seems to be besotted by the iPad. All my attempts to convince here have failed>> > so I guess I will just have to go ahead and buy a version of the tablet that will be outdated soon.
Meanwhile, here is a hilarious column by "Charlie" Brooker in The Guardian. In case you do not know, he is a British journalist, comic writer and broadcaster, whose style of humor is savage and profane, with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism.
Read the entire column here.
It's an iPhone for people who can't be arsed holding an iPhone up to their face. A slightly-further-away iPhone that keeps your lap warm. A weird combination of portable and cumbersome: too small to replace your desktop, too big to fit in your pocket, unless you're a clown. It can play video, but really – do you want to spend hours staring at a movie in your lap? Sit through Lord of the Rings and you'd need an osteopath to punch the crick out of your neck afterwards. It can also be used as an ebook, something newspapers are understandably keen to play up, but because it's got an illuminated display rather than a fancy non-backlight "digital ink" ebook screen, it'll probably leave your eyes feeling strained, as though your pupils are wearing tight shoes….
The iPad falls between two stools – not quite a laptop, not quite a smartphone. In other words, it's the spork of the electronic consumer goods world. Or rather it would be, were it not for one crucial factor: it looks ideal for idly browsing the web while watching telly….
Absurdly, Apple keeps trying to pretend it'll make your life more efficient. Come off it. It's an oblong that lights up. I'm sick of being pitched to like I'm a one-man corporation undertaking a personal productivity audit anyway…
Some people are complaining because it doesn't have a camera in it. Spoiled techno-babies, all of them. Just because something is technically possible, it doesn't mean it has to be done. It's technically possible to build an egg whisk that makes phonecalls, an MP3 player that dispenses capers or a car with a bread windscreen. Humankind will continue prosper in their absence. Not everything needs a 15-megapixel lens stuck on the back, like a little glass anus. Give these ingrates a camera and they'd whine that it didn't have a second camera built into it. What are you taking photographs of anyway? Your camera collection?
And don't bring up videocalls to defend yourself: it'd be creepy talking to a disembodied two-dimensional head being held at arm's length, and besides, the iPad is too heavy to hold in front of your face for long, so you'd end up balancing it in your lap, which means both callers would find themselves staring up one another's others nostrils, like a pair of curious dental patients. …
I just hope buying an iBook won't turn me into an iPrick. I want a machine that essentially makes itself invisible, not a rectangular bragging stone…

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