I carry a camera, iPhone, keys, reading glasses, ballpoint pen, and sometimes a wallet (I don’t like carrying it in my hip pocket). They fill up a sport coat and then some. So when I saw the Scott eVest, I had to have one.
I’ve had it a couple of days and I’m still finding pockets. This line of clothing is designed for for folks with lots of gadgets. And while the pocket depicted above was not designed for the iPad (as far as I know), it fit perfectly.
“The secret to Farmville’s popularity is neither gameplay nor aesthetics. Farmville is popular because in entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity. It is rude to refuse a gift, and ruder still to not return the kindness.[11] We playFarmville, then, because we are trying to be good to one another. We play Farmville because we are polite, cultivated people.” — From an essay by y A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz
I’ve never played Farmville. Or any other Facebook game. I don’t have a Facebook account anymore and find myself unable to explain why I do not. So it’s hardly fair to use this thoughtful essay as an explanation. But the very essence of Facebook seems to be social obligation. I hate obligations and avoid them wherever possible.
Facebook/Farmville fans can tell me where Mr. Liszkiewicz misses the mark with his essay.
The Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop (Minnesota) School Board approved $265,000 to purchase 230 iPads for students, upgrade all school buildings with Wi-Fi and provide technical training for everyone starting next year.
Apple Computer is providing the school with some assistance. If this works out, the school in Winthrop could become a model for the nation. Bet this isn’t the last time we see this.
Think of the possibilities.
Tests are on PW protected website. Software could determine right/wrong answers on the T/F and multiple choice questions. Huge time saver for teachers. Parents could see student’s answers to help them.
It’s been a week since we got our hands on the iPad and I must say I am very impressed with the device. I use the term “device” becuse it doesn’t feel like a computer. Or a PDA. Or anything else I’ve used. I honestly believe this is a new… thing.
One of the more interesting things I observed this week is how people physically relate to the the iPad. Let me see if I can explain by describing something that almost never happens.
Woman A is sitting in a coffe shop with her laptop computer in front of her and Man B comes over and says, “Is that the new (insert name of computer here)?”
“Why yes, it is. Would you like to try it out?”
“If you don’t mind…”
(She gets up, the man sits and begins to open her programs and files and poke around)
Never happens. But a common occurance this week with the iPad. Part of this is just the size and shape. Like a book or magazine, small enough to pass back and forth.
And part is the intuitive user interface. Even if you’re not an iPhone user, most folks find the one button that turns the iPad on (instantly!). Then it’s just tapping the icons and off they go.
And I found myself demo’ing the iPad while standing. Again, something that never (rarely) happens with even the smallest net book.
I encountered the normal sort of anti-Apple resistance from techies:
“So what does that thing do that I can’t do on my laptop?” (Arms folded in convince me defiance)
Non-techies were more inclinded to say, “Ooh. I want one. How much?” …after playing with it for 5 minutes.
I ran in to a couple of closeted OCD’s that couldn’t bring themselves to touch to screen because they could see the fingerprints of those that had touched it before them. Explaining that everything-has-fingerprints-you-just-don’t-see-them did not help.
It was a fun –if less productive– week. And each new app brings fun and discovery. And I have no doubt we will quickly find ways to use the iPad on the job. Seems to me it could easily replace a lot of the laptops our sales staff and reporters are lugging around. Time will tell.
I got so bummed out by all the bitching about why the iPad sucks, I had to take a little art break. I have zero skills in the drawing/painting department, yet find this little drawing app more fun than a Jordanian gigolo.
When you bookmark a website with the iPhone’s Safari browser, it gives you three options: 1) just add the bookmark, 2) email a link to that page or 3) add an icon to the home screen of the iPhone (which has become valuable real estate).
I forgot how simple it is to create a custom icon for your website. If you iPhone users choose #3 above for smays.com, you will get an icon like the one in this screen capture.
It just makes it a little easier to get to a page than opening the browser and going to bookmarks.
“The scenario sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie — the doctor pulls out her touch-screen tablet computer from the drawer of instruments. She calls up the patient’s chart with a few taps and proceeds to add a note to the page with her latest diagnosis. A visualization pops up, and she flips the screen over to give the patient an idea of what ails him.
Doctors are presuming the iPad could make this scene a reality as soon as next week. One in five doctors say they plan to buy an iPad, according to a survey of 350 clinicians by the San Mateo medical software vendor Epocrates.
Okay. I’m a little relieved. I love my MacBook Pro and I was a little worried the iPad might steal me away. After a couple of hours with the iPad, I’m no longer fearful of falling out of love with my MBP. But it will take some time playing with the iPad before I can offer any useful insights. But here are some first impressions:
It won’t save newspapers and traditional media. I tried the New York Times app and it was a step down from the browser experience of the NYT (and I could not copy/paste from the app. WTF?). I suspect that will be the case for most media sites.
I think I’ll watch more YouTube videos than I do on my laptop. It was just… handy.
And I’ll read some books (I bought the ebook version of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (Even though I have several hardback/paperback versions). It was fun to search the 1,100+ pages and then copy/paste. Not a big deal unless you’re a reader.
The Netflix app is kind of nifty. I can see watching movies on the iPad. In bed and and on the plane. Very different from watching on a laptop.
And the ABC app. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. The TV just might be how your meemah and pappah watch their favorite shows. The iPad could be how YOU watch them. When you want… where you want.
I’m gonna open comments on this post but don’t bother weighing in unless you’ve had your hands on one of these (i.e. Don’t know a movie/book you haven’t seen/read).
This is a game changer, kids. You’ll have one of these by Christmas.
UPDATE: It’s Monday morning and my buddy David and I have had our iPads for a couple of days. Here’s 20 min of first-impression chit chat. AUDIO
Doc Searls’ fantasy for the iPad involves interactivity with the everyday world:
“Take retailing for example. Let’s say you syndicate your shopping list, but only to trusted retailers, perhaps through a fourth party (one that works to carry out your intentions, rather than sellers’ — though it can help you engage with them). You go into Target and it gives you a map of the store, where the goods you want are, and what’s in stock, what’s not, and how to get what’s mising, if they’re in a position to help you with that. You can turn their promotions on or off, and you can choose, using your own personal terms of service, what data to share with them, what data not to, and conditions of that data’s use. Then you can go to Costco, the tire store, and the university library and do the same. I know it’s hard to imagine a world in which customers don’t have to belong to loyalty programs and submit to coercive and opaque terms of data use, but it will happen, and it has a much better chance of happening faster if customers are independent and have their own tools for engagement. Which are being built. Check out what Phil Windley says here about one approach.”
Of all the early reviews of the iPad, this one by Stephen Fry soars above the rest for me. During his visit to Apple HQ, he gets time with Jonathan Ive and Steve Jobs. Fry is shameless and open in his love of all things Apple reminds me of the decision to buy my first Mac.
“We are human beings; our first responses to anything are dominated not by calculations but by feelings. What (Jonathan) Ive and his team understand is that if you have an object in your pocket or hand for hours every day, then your relationship with it is profound, human and emotional. Apple’s success has been founded on consumer products that address this side of us: their products make users smile as they reach forward to manipulate, touch, fondle, slide, tweak, pinch, prod and stroke.”
On Steve Jobs:
“For some, his personal magnetism is almost of a dangerous, Elmer Gantry kind.”
Jobs on Life and Career:
“I don’t think of my life as a career,” he says. “I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That’s not a career — it’s a life!”
Fry’s hand-on review of the iPad:
“It is possible that the public will not fall on the iPad, as I did, like lions on an antelope. Perhaps they will find the apps and the iBooks too expensive. Maybe they will wait for more fully featured later models. But for me, my iPad is like a gun lobbyist’s rifle: the only way you will take it from me is to prise it from my cold, dead hands.”
[via @jonzissou]