In Bed with iPad

A couple of days ago, my back went.

The thing is, Elise had a small operation on her left hand last Wednesday—a CTS problem, not atypical for women of her age—so I was doing the dusting on Saturday morning. Actually, I always do the dusting. It's a task that was allotted to me by Upper Command when we arrived in Spain just over four years ago, and one that I have yet to be relieved of. Anyway, that paints the picture of the domestic situation.

Elise heard a click; I felt a pain; Elise said, "That clicked;" I thought, "¥$€**#!," and shortly after was lying flat in bed.

It was probably a small compression fracture. I've had them before, so know the feeling (horrible) and what to do. In fact, there's not a great deal that can be done: just lie flat in bed with the legs sightly raised. It then only hurts when you move or breathe deeply. Pain-killers help, of corse, especially for those times when nature calls and movement becomes a necessity.

So, what do you do when you have to lie flat in bed for a few days?

I used to read, but it can be rather monotonous to spend hour after hour with the same book, and having a large selection of books within non-moving reach is impractical. Chess and Backgammon are out, unless magnetic boards and a willing partner can be found. Boggle offers the same restrictins, plus the added difficulty of writing when lying flat. There's music, either through a bedside set (difficulties of manipulating the controls from a prone position), or through an mp3 player (another piece of equipment to locate amongst the books, playing-boards, crossword puzzles, and sundry other past-time equipment overflowing the bedside table).

Nope, none of these, yet all of them at the same time: an iPad.

Wonderful! Dead easy to operate from the prone position, the iPad offers me a whole library of books, a plethora of word games, access to the Web, communication via email, music (my own collection or through online radio), and numerous other diversions.

The iPad is much more convenient than all the books etc. on the bedside table and spread over the bed itself. It is also far better than a laptop, being not only lighter, but also lacking the encumbrance of a laptop's physical keyboar. Instead, the virtual keyboard of the iPad is a joy to use.

Here you are, Apple, a new advertising slogan for you.

Go to bed with an iPad!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

iPad at 100

My mother uses an Apple iBook, which is a few years old now (well, in technology terms, it's ancient, practically prehistoric) and really needs to be replaced. I've thought of giving her my PowerBook G4, which has a larger screen and should be more than powerful enough for her requirements. Now, you should know that my mother will be blowing out 90 candles in a few weeks time (2nd of August, in fact), assuming she can keep the false teeth in whilst attempting that feat, so I reckon she does a great job of using her iBook, especially as she had never laid hands on a computer before that one. She emails and surfs the Web, and uses a couple of applications to help her find answers to crossword clues, too. Not bad at all.

When I got my iPad about six weeks ago, I thought that it would be an even better replacement for her than my PowerBook: it's handier, easier to hold, easier to use, has a better screen, less prone to mishaps (such as removing items from the Dock)…

And now I've come across this remarkable story of a 100 year-old lady, named Virginia, who has just received her very first computer—an Apple iPad—and is getting along great guns with it. This is exactly how technology should be: easy and fun to use—forget the moaning geeks who seem to see only the technical aspects of things, instead of their true usefulness.

Enjoy the video:

Falling In Love Again

As Elvis said during his so-called Comeback Special in 1968 (the mother of all unplugged shows), "It's been a long time, baby!"

The wait, that is.

For my iPad.

Heck, I even wrote about it back in early February. I knew then that the iPad would be something special, so waiting four months to actually get hold of one (or even to see one in real life) has been quite a challenge.

Well, the waiting came to an end yesterday afternoon, one day before the official release of the iPad here in Spain and in several other lucky countries around the world. I had already received an email from Apple, to let me know that the iPad, which I had ordered as soon as that was possible from Apple Spain, would be delivered this week. Yesterday morning, a delivery company phoned me to say that they would deliver a package from Apple between three and six o'clock that afternoon (that's a pretty small time scale here in Spain). Finally, at about four, the van stopped in front of our drive and the delivery chappy announced that he had two packages for me. I had also ordered the special Apple iPad Cover, so that was no surprise. Things started to get hairy when delivery chappy kept on searching in the van and scratching his head.

There was only one package!

Fortunately, it was the good one, the one with the iPad, and a quick call to Apple Spain confirmed that the iPad Case would be delivered either the next day (today) or on Monday. No problem there—who needs a case when they've just received a new iPad to set up and play with?

Incidentally, photos of this momentous event can be seen in this specially commissioned Picasa album (photos by She Who Must Be Obeyed).

And how is the iPad?

Need you ask? It is wonderful, gorgeous, beautiful, easy to set up, easy to use. Emailing is so easy; surfing is so easy; reading ebooks (I've tried with epubs and PDFs) is easy, displaying photos is a dream, watching video is a cinch…

The virtual keyboard is a lot better than I thought it would be and the iPad reacts to alignment changes quickly and smoothly, so that moving from portrait orientation to landscape poses no problem at all.

I still say the geeks are wrong (actually, I think a lot have changed their opinion since February). They need to look at what the iPad is and not what they think a computer should be. Two different things and I love the iPad the way it is.

Oh, and the Apple iPad Case arrived this afternoon and is equally gorgeous and perfect for the purpose for which it was designed.