iPad

I finally just went to the FNAC and bought one. Thinking it over since April is long enough, and this month in France is the first time I’ve ever been anywhere where they were actually available for sale: in Atlanta (April) and Iowa City and Chicago (May) they were completely out of stock. Egypt didn’t have them for sale yet, last I knew.

As mentioned here before, when the iPad was first rolled out, it seemed to me like useless market clutter from Apple. But then I actually saw one, and that changed things. It was at the Barnes & Noble near Georgia Tech, but it was a display copy only and they were absolutely positively sold out. Probably you’ve all at least played with one by now, but the last time I was this physically charmed by a device was probably the gumdrop-looking iMac in 1998 or whenever that was.

There’s also a genuine utility for me, a so-called “killer app”: reading PDF’s and checking email on our university buses, on which I will be spending approximately 10 hours per week this year. The email I can already do on my phone, but there’s not been an easy way until now to read PDF’s. No less a figure than China Miéville himself told me that he does the vast majority of his reading on his iPad now, and I’ve discussed this with him before: neither of us has any real fixation on paper books. I’ll stick with paper books only for as long as they have features that can’t be replicated easily on electronic devices. It may still be awhile yet, but I have a feeling that a lot of people in my age group are going to be trying to get rid of a lot of paper books during our sixties.