iPad – its a vowel changer

Yeah Yeah. I know everyone thinks I’m an apple fan-boy, perhaps I am, but I do owe a lot to Apple computers because it was the first time I ever felt I knew what I was doing, and could actually understand stuff and really wanted to persevere.

In 1983, I had very little to be proud of on my academic abilities, it was this year that we started computer studies for 1hr a week on Apple II, Apple II+ (euroPlus infact) and eventually the luxurious Apple IIe in 1984. To say I became obsessed with them is an understatement, I would go to my school library (where there was an Apple IIe) and used that until I was thrown out, then go to Chatswood library until I had to realistically go home and do my real homework.

I wrote simple programs(nothing amazing, just me tinkering and playing) or learned new programming concepts by following written programs out of AppleUser magazine, ultimately what I learnt apart from way too much about appleBasic, I also learnt some great problem solving skills — and a heap of confidence.

Eventually in 1986 I got my first Macintosh a Mac Plus. It was a game changer to me, I slowly stopped “programming” and actually doing stuff, I had PageMaker 1.0 Excel 1.0 Word 1.0 and MS basic 2.0 – I started to write crappy stories, and laid out woeful pages in PageMaker, but I was not using a computer I was writing and designing, I was doing MY work, I stopped tinkering.

I can of course only speak for myself, about how I changed my computer usage behaviour. My sister had started working for a publishing firm and she had just started to use Macintosh there. So we got one at home, we sold our Apple IIc and we got a MacPlus, I was sceptical because I had heard you cant program by default on them, I was really annoyed and finally found that Microsoft made MS basic, and so we got that as well so I could keep doing what I did on a computer.

We go it and sure enough I programmed, for about a week, and then less and less on it and started using pagemaker word and excel and mac paint, the computer/device I thought I KNOW how im going to use it changed when I got it, started to use it.

I know how I use my laptop and my iPhone. My laptop is great for this, writing and seeing stuff big when i need to type. – it’s too hard on an iPhone if I have my laptop handy. And yeah, I am used to having a lot of tech around me so – what ever works best is what I use. But if I want to lie down on the couch, and hey – who doesn’t? watch some TV or just do some casual surfing read a few basic posts, twitter Facebook etc then i use my iPhone.

But sometimes, and in fact more often or not, I wish there was something in between these two things, is an iPad that device, hey I dont know, but I do know that that is where the gap is. If I want to do more – ‘casurious’ work ( a bad join of casual and serious) then I would love a biger iphone or way smaller laptop. A small lightweight apple Laptop isnt what people sem to want. the Air isn’t setting the world on fire, neither did the Apple Duo. The iPad being a bigger casurious device that the iPhone seems to be something that is not NEEDed but perhaps fills that annoying gap for those that tech isn’t an aside but part of our daily life.

Will i get an iPad, not now, if I was loaded with the extra cash to happily drop it on one then you bet I’d get one, if my life was recording and writing everywhere I went, yep Id get one, if I didn’t have a laptop then yeah I’d get one. But I dont have the cash, I dont need to write lengthy stuff all the time everywhere I go and I do have a laptop. So my need isn’t great (at this time). Do I think its a game changer, I dont know either way. I could be , it might not be. I do know how I use my tech that I have and I do know that if I had one I would definitely be my in front of the TV social media computer.

I guess its a bit like a photographer – do I take my entire kit, just my SLR and a couple of lens, or just the SLR and a single lens, or my pocket digital. (do I really need to explain which? in my analogy)

It reminds me when my parents got a photocopier in 1987, it was something they kinda needed for their publishing business, the thought of how we would use it was – we would copy pages out of diaries or galley proofs to be able to make markups on without damaging the camera ready art.

How we ended up using it was infinitely more – I used it to copy all sorts of stuff – photocopying unto tracing paper, layering stuff – using it for my photographic work – it was genius. How I imagined it to work and how I used where two different things, – it was just a photocopier and thats all I did and thats I did do with it, but how interacted with it – how it became a great tool to use in different ways, because us humans are creative – we define ourselves as users of tools.

So if my fun iPod/iPhone will ultimately become my iPad/iPhone thats a great vowel change, and perhaps change how we work and interact with what we do. I don’t know how i will use it, because I will adapt and change my behaviour – it’s a new device, so I don’t know how I would use it day-to-day if I’ve never used it before.