Slightly More Positive Reflectiveness.
Yes yes, the iPad. No, no, I’m not an Apple Fanboy or Apple Evangelist. After all, yesterday on the Twitters I did declare: “@Rage_DyingLight I just hate Apple Evangelists. I’m quite attached to my iPod touch, but it’s hardly curing world hunger.” And later yesterday evening I did declare: “I have to say, I can see nothing that tempts me towards an iPad. Even the ‘ooooh shiny’ isn’t really working for me right now.” And then I got scolded and down I was a cold, heartless person, and I got cranky and yelled back – because that’s what I mean by Apple evangelism, the assumption that everyone should want an Apple product and if they don’t there’s something wrong with me. And no, not everyone who owns Apple is an Apple Evangelist, it’s just that those who are are SO LOUD. And that puts my back up, and I get stubborn and declare that ‘I don’t want anything Apple except my iPod.’
But here’s the thing, when I’m really honest that’s not entirely true, and I do get why people like Apple tech so much. A few years ago my first iPod died. I’d only had it 18 months, which was annoying, but then I had dropped it quite a lot so I wasn’t completely blaming the tech, and I wanted to buy a new one. I was going to the States in the next couple of months, so I figured I’d survive a few weeks without one and pick up the new one on the other side of the Atlantic. When I got there, I stopped into a general electronicsy store when I had some free time and asked if they stocked any. No, they said, insulted and proceeded to try and sell me a Zune instead. No, said I, I’ve actually thought about this, I want an iPod. But why, they said, and reeled off a bunch of flaws. But, says I, I know all that and I still want an iPod. I like the feel of them. And they laughed and said, “Feel?! What’re you going to do, stroke it?” I blinked, slightly baffled, and left, realising later that they just didn’t get the intuitiveness and sheer shiny appeal of the iPod, which, yes, you do actually stroke.
I like my iPod. The one I eventually bought that trip is still working, four years later, although it has largely been superseded by my iPod Touch. When they first came out I said, ‘Oh I don’t want an iPhone’ – I didn’t want that kind of phone bill, or long contract, and I wouldn’t make use of all it could do. However, after six months with an iPod Touch I now do want an iPhone, because I will make use of all that it can do. Or at least, I’m going to want a smartphone of some kind, and the iPhone is currently frontrunner because I like it’s iPoddy music playing skills (I like iTunes and the iPod, they work very well for me).
But this isn’t the opportunity for an Apple Evangelist to start cackling and rubbing their hands, and preparing to welcome me to the ‘light side’. I don’t want an Apple computer. Not ‘not ever’. Perhaps if I had a small fortune bundling up somewhere at some point I would consider it – they are pretty, and they do work well, and I’d like to try Aperture for my photography. But I object to paying twice the price for the same specs of my current laptop, and I can’t afford to get all the software I use in Mac-friendly versions. It would be the equivalent of a photographer moving from Canon to Nikon and having to re-buy all of their lenses. It’s hardly financially sound. I also like the fact that, with a little bit of learnin’, I can metaphorically hammer my Windows-7-running Dell into doing a many many different things. If I had more learnin’, I’d go linux. Apparently my dad’s installed linux on my old laptop, so I’m going to play with it when I go home and get some of this learnin’. A Macbook is actually not what I want in my computing life right now.
So, here’s the thing with the iPad. Stephen Fry, bless his apple-labelled cotton socks, has reminded me of something – game changing importance isn’t always evidence on first appearance, and it’s what Apple do to the iPad from here that’s really going to mark out what it’s going to become. It has to grow up and become a real boy. Or something. It may be in time, the iPad becomes something I do find a use for in my life – or more likely, another company’s tablet will become something (although I am glad that the tablet is not so outrageously expensive as I find Apple’s laptops to be). On closer examination, where the iPad looks less like a giant iPhone (whilst the rows of icons on the iPhone work for it, I like a clean screen on my computers, all the icons squirrelled away in docks and toolbars), the shiny begins to work for me. I can see the appeal a bit more than I could last night. But right now, it is absolutely nothing I want. I have no use for it. If I want 24/7 information, I want it in my pocket, so I want an iPhone or iPod touch. If I’m at home, I’m happy with my laptop and a bunch of external harddrives – and as an amateur photographer I want more than 64gigs of storage, thank you very much. If I’m trekking my larger-than-an-iPod-Touch computer around with me, I want it to have a cover for the screen – preferably a lid, because I do drop stuff. If I’m typing a lot, I actually want a keyboard, because I like the feel and sound of a keyboard buttons going up and down – it makes me feel like I’m writing. And – and in a lot of ways this is what might keep me away from this tablet for a while – if I’m using it for photo editing and displaying them, I DON’T WANT greasy finger smudges all over the screen (or the screen protector, if you go in for them). I hate having smudges on my laptop screen enough when I’m editing photos. That’s going to get exponentially worse on a computer that is all about touching it – is it a bird, is it a cloud, is it a spot on the sensor, NO, it’s a bloody great finger smudge.
So, whilst I’m starting to get the sense of ‘Oh shiny’ and the fact that they might be joyously intuitive to use, I still have absolutely no use for an iPad, and I’m not yet ready to succumb to the marketing and rhetoric of ‘Oh but your life will be better if you have one.’ No it won’t. If for no other reason than that I’ll hate myself for falling for the rhetoric and spending money I could have put to good use somewhere else (seriously, that’s a return plane ticket to Kenya right there). So go buy one and play with it and love it, but STOP trying to tell me I should want one.
Tags: Apple, computers, iPad, stubborn