Tag Archives: iPad

UPS has their iPad game face ON

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Just had a visit from Jake Green. Jake is the manager of the local UPS office and, although today is his day off, he drove out to our house to verify someone at this address had ordered an iPad.

UPS had been calling my office number and got no answer. So Jake was just checking. Seems UPS has an elaborate security protocol for iPad deliveries. A few mistakenly got on trucks for delivery and frantic calls went out to drivers instructing them NOT to deliver.

The Jefferson City UPS office is delivering 20 iPads today. Mine is on a truck with 14 others. UPS is taking this as seriously as Apple. Very impressive.

Beyond the iPad

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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.”

iPad guided tours

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I ordered an iPad (which shipped today) without having a clear idea of how we (Barb and I) would use it. Surf the web, check email, maybe read a book or two.

After watching the guided tours that went up on the Apple website today, I think I underestimated this little slab of magic. I was very impressed with the Keynote app. That’s the Apple version of PowerPoint. I can easily imagine whipping up a presentation while waiting for a flight.

Pages looked awfully good, too. I’d call it a word processor but it looks like a lot more on the iPad. I have Pages on all my Macs but rarely use it. I think I might on the iPad.

We won’t know until people get their hands on the iPad and start playing with it, but I think it’s going to become THE computer (or whatever we wind up calling it) for a lot of folks. If I had to guess, I’d say that 90% of the stuff that most folks doing on a laptop will be easier and more fun on the iPad.

Annnnd… click. iPad pre-order

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I assume I was one thousands Apple fans waiting in front of their computers to pre-order the iPad. I imagine a computer deep in the marketing department at Cupertino, with Apple execs standing around, watching a counter whiring ever-faster.

The iPhone had people standing in line. I can’t think of many products that generated such interest and demand. A few gaming boxes but they didn’t have the broad appeal of these Apple devices.

iPads will begin shipping April 3rd.

Books: Analog and digital

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I love books. I love to read but I also love books, the physical object. Hardback or paperback, I love the way they feel in my hands… the way they smell. I like scrawling notes in the margin and highlighting passages. Reading is a very tactile experience for me (and probably for most).

In a couple of days, I will join millions of others in pre-ordering the Apple iPad. I’m looking forward to using all of features and apps (current and future). I can’t imaging giving up my beloved books for a digital experience but I’m trying to keep an open mind. It is possible I will enjoy reading on the iPad.

With that in mind, I’ve been making a mental list of titles I plan to put on my virtual bookshelf.

  • Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
  • Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
  • Complete works of William Gibson
  • 1984, George Orwell (haven’t read since high school)
  • Life After Death, Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra
  • Mac OS X, David Pogue
  • The Religion War by Scott Adams

Some of these are books that I have read several times (or expect to). I assume I will be able to highlight, annotate and search passages of my digital books. It might also be fun to link from the text of the book to a website. I haven’t heard or read anything about such a feature. We’ll see.

Stephen Fry on the iPad

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British wit and tech daddy-o, Stephen Fry, on the iPad (just a couple of snippits from lengthy but excellent review):

“Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic text books, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us. You will see characters in movies use the iPad. Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.”

“How much easier it is to distrust, to doubt, to fold the arms and say “Not impressed”. I’m not advocating dumb gullibility, but it is has always amused me that those who instinctively dislike Apple for being apparently cool, trendy, design fixated and so on are the ones who are actually so damned cool and so damned sensitive to stylistic nuance that they can’t bear to celebrate or recognise obvious class, beauty and desire. The fact is that Apple users like me are the uncoolest people on earth: we salivate, dribble, coo, sigh, grin and bubble with delight.”

Ahem. I confess to all but the dribble. I try not to dribble.