gazcoop

Beings on other planets and dimensions have commented on the iPad by now, one day after it’s announcement. But if someone travelled back from the future, someone who is aged between 5 and 15 now, and wrote a blog post today what would they say?

Now, note that this person would not be a tech geek, an industry analyst, an Apple fanboi or even a Microsoftie / Googleite or any other kind of godforsaken geek. They’re less bothered about storage or ports, screen resolution or the kind of things that turn geeks on. They’re the kind of person who has grown up digital and does not know a time before the Internet, having grown up with smart touchscreen devices. I’m talking about my 14 year old niece. And to save her blushes I wont quote her by name. :-)

So this is maybe what she’d say:

“Thing is, all the people that said the iPad was rubbish, wasn’t going to change thing yadda, yadda, had grown up with defined lines of what a computer should do. Infact, back then in 2010 computers were still mostly those things sat on people’s desks. They’d got smaller, yes, but even portable computers were still ‘laptops’, or ‘netbooks’. Fundamentally they were still a portable version of what had computers had been since the dawn of the PC, albeit with a screen and a keyboard build in, foldable and portable. I remember years back when my Uncle asked me how I would make a netbook better. I thought for a fraction of a second and said “I’d make the screen bigger”. You see I had no conscious knowledge that having a big screen wasn’t the point of a netbook, nor was having a mega battery life the point of having an Amazon Kindle back then. All I wanted was what I wanted. And at the time, after I saw the video of the iPad and that dishy Mr Ive (who was Knighted two years later) all I could think of was “I want one!” Clearly that was just impulse and pretty much what that Jobs bloke would have wanted me to say as a 14 year old girl, so that I’d nag my Mum into getting one for the following Christmas. I’d been using an iPod Touch since I’d had one the previous Christmas - it was the ‘must have’ item of Xmas 2009. I’d got a phone - some LG thing that was pink and did good texts and you could look at Web pages and stuff - but I didn’t want an iPhone cos I liked the phone I’d got and I don’t mind having two things to do two jobs. My Dad also said that the battery life of an iPhone was really poor anyway. Why would you want one thing that does EVERYYYTHING!? Surely it isn’t going to be very good at each thing it’s trying to do.

But, anyway, the iPad. It wasn’t until I got chance to go to Birmingham that I actually saw one and had a go myself. Tell a lie, I first saw one when my Uncle brought one over to our house that he’d bought pretty much the day they came out but he would hardly let me have a go. The video made it look funky. I used to like that ‘lollipop’ Dell advert where they make laptops out of pink cookie dough or whatever. It was cute. These old guys kept going on about apps and stuff and they used words like ‘magical’. Yeah, yeah.. I was sold pretty much straight away. But when you’re a kid you want everything. But when I saw one, touched it, and had a go in the Apple Store I thought this is the giant iPod I’ve been wanting. Bigger screen - but works the same! Easier to read stuff, watch stuff, and surprisingly light compared to big laptops. Going back to using my fingers to type (instead of just thumbs) was a bit of a chore but I found myself using real words again! [Yeah, right!] Videos, even books! The kind of books I wanted had got pictures in them - mainly of the Jonas Brothers back then, but I came to my senses) and all these ebook readers were crappy and black and white. This thing made books and magazine look cool again! And they joined up to the Internet and you could get updates and videos and stuff. Pretty awesome. So, anyway, it was like totally cool. We did get one that Christmas. But I had to share it with my brother, who just wanted to play Need for Speed - turbonutters - or something on it. When Sim’s Touch came out for it later I was enthralled.

We got an Apple TV a bit later and when the apps came out to drive the Apple TV from the iPad it suddenly all started ‘joining up’. The iPad wasn’t like a netbook or laptop - which did get left lying around the house - it was like a coffee table book. It was like, always there. We’d take turns to go on Facebook and stuff. I wasn’t too fussed about it having a camera because I’d got a phone for that. But it was much better for looking at photos on and doing stuff with them. We got the iWork thing - which I’d never used before because we didn’t have a Mac - and it was like a billion times easier to use than a PC. It actually prompted me to get my homework done, which is saying something because I couldn’t stand homework. Tapping away on a screen was fine. I’d been doing it for ages on the iPod and they don’t get crumbs in when you’re eating Doritos while typing like normal keyboards do. I remember when I spilled some pop on the screen once and I thought ‘I’m dead’, but I just wiped it off with my sleeve. Ta da!

I was in about early 2011 when Apple brought out their first all touch screen iMac. It had no keyboard. I mean, you could get one, but the idea was that you’ve drove it using an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad. The iPad WAS the keyboard for the iMac. But it did different stuff, changed from being a keyboard into being something else when you didn’t need a keyboard, (mostly for games and entertainment stuff). I was like the Apple Remote thing for the iPod / iPhone but like times ten! We could drive everything from it, TV, music etc. And then it was also a Internet browser too. The first day I took it to school my teacher saw it and said “This seriously is the future”. He even graded my homework ON the iPad.

So that was just the start. You see, almost everything else followed this over the next few years. Touch screens ended up everywhere and on everything. The second gen iPad did come with a camera and did bring apps with Actual Reality on them. But for a time they were pretty much the same as on the iPhone. It’s bizarre now, but I find it strangely difficult to go back to using a PC and have to deal with ‘installing’ stuff, folders and files and all that. Even using a mouse is laborious. And here was me, just old enough to properly remember keyboards and mice. Kids 10 years younger than me hardly ever used them. And as for computer screens that don’t react when you press something on them with your finger - no way. That’s so 2000’s.

So although the iPad itself wasn’t perhaps as ‘magical’ as it was supposed to be when announced, it definitely changed things. And although the ‘old fogies’ moaned, I thought it was brilliant.”

Or something like that.

G.

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