This is gonna be a quick one.
It is weird to me that maybe the strangest thing about a piece of technology as advanced as the iPad is how completely isolating it feels. I can support this with evidence to a certain degree, but at the heart of it it's just a palpable sensation: with this device, I am not merely focused on one application at a time. I'm not just reinventing my ideas about multi-tasking.
I am actually cut off slightly from life around me.
Sure, I can use the internet, and - for the most part - it's going to do what the internet does best. But when it glides me to new site after new site, it opens new windows that are, esentially, new applications. I can be logged in to my instant messenger, but I don't actually see it's there. I can check Facebook through the web or Twitter through an app, but the act of checking them is as purposeful as checking them on my phone while I'm stopped at a light on the sidewalk, and I retain just about as much knowledge. Most apps don't have built-in share functionality, and the ones that do of course have to bump me out of their environment in order to punt me anywhere I can tell all of my friends.
It's a little weird and a bit hard to explain, but I have to say, it feels surprisingly lonely. It is still possible that this is a good thing.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Problems With Everything
So I've been spending a lot of time with my iPad.
This makes sense, of course, because my iPad serves as my main computing device. At the same time, I've alluded in previous posts to this newfound sense of purpose and clarity with what my "computing device" really needs to do: no longer do I hang out in front of the screen idly checking Twitter and Facebook and email while chatting and streaming a Netflix movie at the same time.
So, what am I doing with all this iPad time?
There's a lot of productive what-have-you happening, of course; I'm getting marginally (only marginally) better at responding to emails, and I'm getting a lot of writing done on the side. But one thing I am finding is that I'm spending more time developing new habits I never had before. Namely, I check the NY Times headlines every day (because the app for it is so clear-cut and newspaper-formatted), and every day instead of aimless Facebook / lost-in-the-ether time, I do the NY Times crossword puzzle.
The NY Times crossword puzzle app, I have to admit, is the reason I wanted an iPad in the first place. I saw a friend post a picture of him using his, and I thought to myself that if doing a crossword were so clean, simple, and non-pencil-involving, I might be able to convince myself to actually do it. After all, you don't even have to seek out a newspaper to purchase. It's right at your fingertips, and with the click of a button, you can check out all of the clues you didn't get the next day.
How many articles have I read in the last few months that allude to crossword puzzles saving the brainpower of mankind?!
And so on weekend mornings, I sit with my muesli and fruit and cold-brewed iced coffee at my kitchen counter, and I do as much of the crossword as I possibly can before giving up and passing the torch on to my roommate or whichever friend(s) happen to be hanging out at our apartment that day. It feels strangely centered, and a little bit old-fashioned, which is funny for obvious reasons.
This simple sense of contentment, however, is countered by the realization that there is nothing remotely resembling proper formatting in any word processing app available for the iPad. I've been wanting to write about this for weeks, but at the end of the day that's all there is to say about it. If you really need to write a functional outline that you want to show people, or you need to use tables in Pages, or you need to do basically anything at all that requires presentation-style formatting, you're totally screwed. Which is funny because this is really meant to serve in place of a computer when you're on business trips and might very well need to use that sort of formatting most.
You win some, you fail some.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
This makes sense, of course, because my iPad serves as my main computing device. At the same time, I've alluded in previous posts to this newfound sense of purpose and clarity with what my "computing device" really needs to do: no longer do I hang out in front of the screen idly checking Twitter and Facebook and email while chatting and streaming a Netflix movie at the same time.
So, what am I doing with all this iPad time?
There's a lot of productive what-have-you happening, of course; I'm getting marginally (only marginally) better at responding to emails, and I'm getting a lot of writing done on the side. But one thing I am finding is that I'm spending more time developing new habits I never had before. Namely, I check the NY Times headlines every day (because the app for it is so clear-cut and newspaper-formatted), and every day instead of aimless Facebook / lost-in-the-ether time, I do the NY Times crossword puzzle.
The NY Times crossword puzzle app, I have to admit, is the reason I wanted an iPad in the first place. I saw a friend post a picture of him using his, and I thought to myself that if doing a crossword were so clean, simple, and non-pencil-involving, I might be able to convince myself to actually do it. After all, you don't even have to seek out a newspaper to purchase. It's right at your fingertips, and with the click of a button, you can check out all of the clues you didn't get the next day.
How many articles have I read in the last few months that allude to crossword puzzles saving the brainpower of mankind?!
And so on weekend mornings, I sit with my muesli and fruit and cold-brewed iced coffee at my kitchen counter, and I do as much of the crossword as I possibly can before giving up and passing the torch on to my roommate or whichever friend(s) happen to be hanging out at our apartment that day. It feels strangely centered, and a little bit old-fashioned, which is funny for obvious reasons.
This simple sense of contentment, however, is countered by the realization that there is nothing remotely resembling proper formatting in any word processing app available for the iPad. I've been wanting to write about this for weeks, but at the end of the day that's all there is to say about it. If you really need to write a functional outline that you want to show people, or you need to use tables in Pages, or you need to do basically anything at all that requires presentation-style formatting, you're totally screwed. Which is funny because this is really meant to serve in place of a computer when you're on business trips and might very well need to use that sort of formatting most.
You win some, you fail some.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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