Hi, I'm Enon. If you know your Arthur C. Clarke, you'll see I'm conceited enough to borrow my online surname from Yarlan Zey.
CC is my girlfriend. Level-headed, sexy, with not much patience for spending a lot of time getting the computers to run. I'm a lucky man; CC thinks my particular geekiness is cool.
AT is 'Aunt Tillie', the proverbial geek's nemesis. Mostly treated contemptuously by the IT industry, Aunt Tillie has no intrinsic interest in computers, much to the geeks' disappointment. AT is a composite of friends, clients and acquaintances. AT finds computers frustrating, confusing, difficult, necessary and infuriating.
IT is also a composite. He's the manager who buys enterprise software based on a checklist, without ever talking to the people who will actually use the software. He's the technical support guy whose voice drips with condescension when you don't know all the specs of your computer. He's the tutor who grabs the mouse and goes through fifty clicks faster than you can follow. IT hates and has no patience for AT and shows it.
At its best, Apple is the anti-IT. At its worst, Apple is just as bad as the rest of the industry.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Purchasing the new iPad
So on March 16, 2012, the new iPad (3G) is released to retail. CC & I go stand in line at 6 AM at our local Apple Store. We needn't have come so early as there were only about a hundred people waiting for the 8 AM opening. We still got local TV coverage.
The Apple Store folks were great. First they came out with a cart of coffee, then bottled water, and then another cart of coffee. We got so fully hydrated and caffeinated that CC had to drive home to pee.
I don't do this early adopter stuff. I'm glad there are folks who always want the newest, shiniest gadgets and software. More power to them - they report all the bugs the rest of us want to avoid. But CC is traveling to Europe shortly and will need connectivity & I want to know how sufficiently well an iPad will function as a substitute device, if and when my MacBook Pro is out of service.
We talk to the lady standing next to us in line. She has a new Lexus with MiFi hotspot and wants a smaller form factor device to take traveling.
A few minutes before opening, the Apple Store staff - at least forty of them - run down the sidewalk. We cheer and give them high fives as they run by.
CC & I have our iPads purchased and in hand by 8:12. Mine: 32GB WiFi. Hers: 64GB 4G (Verizon) + Wifi. After I leave for work, one of the staff helps CC activate her Verizon account and sync her Yahoo email account to her new iPad. He does not setup her iPad to sync her Yahoo contacts. That's going to be one of our first problems; more on that later.
I should have started this blog the day we purchased our iPads, but I didn't know how much I would be surprised and disappointed, as well as, in Steve Jobs words, surprised and delighted by our new devices. I have even written to Tim Cook about some of my disappointments and difficulties.
CC has a slow and decrepit XP laptop that I've been trying to get her to deep-six. The iPad for her is an experiment in using an iPad as a person's only computing device. Are we already living in a 'post-PC' era, or do we still have a way to go? My iPad is an experiment to determine how much work I can get done on a device that won't let me install arbitrary code or even give me a bash command prompt. When my laptop was in the shop last summer, I realized how much I've become dependent on this 21st century tech to just live my life day to day. It doesn't make sense to buy an iMac that will mostly sit, just to have another computer. I want to see how much an iPad can really substitute for a 'real' computer.
More soon.
The Apple Store folks were great. First they came out with a cart of coffee, then bottled water, and then another cart of coffee. We got so fully hydrated and caffeinated that CC had to drive home to pee.
I don't do this early adopter stuff. I'm glad there are folks who always want the newest, shiniest gadgets and software. More power to them - they report all the bugs the rest of us want to avoid. But CC is traveling to Europe shortly and will need connectivity & I want to know how sufficiently well an iPad will function as a substitute device, if and when my MacBook Pro is out of service.
We talk to the lady standing next to us in line. She has a new Lexus with MiFi hotspot and wants a smaller form factor device to take traveling.
A few minutes before opening, the Apple Store staff - at least forty of them - run down the sidewalk. We cheer and give them high fives as they run by.
CC & I have our iPads purchased and in hand by 8:12. Mine: 32GB WiFi. Hers: 64GB 4G (Verizon) + Wifi. After I leave for work, one of the staff helps CC activate her Verizon account and sync her Yahoo email account to her new iPad. He does not setup her iPad to sync her Yahoo contacts. That's going to be one of our first problems; more on that later.
I should have started this blog the day we purchased our iPads, but I didn't know how much I would be surprised and disappointed, as well as, in Steve Jobs words, surprised and delighted by our new devices. I have even written to Tim Cook about some of my disappointments and difficulties.
CC has a slow and decrepit XP laptop that I've been trying to get her to deep-six. The iPad for her is an experiment in using an iPad as a person's only computing device. Are we already living in a 'post-PC' era, or do we still have a way to go? My iPad is an experiment to determine how much work I can get done on a device that won't let me install arbitrary code or even give me a bash command prompt. When my laptop was in the shop last summer, I realized how much I've become dependent on this 21st century tech to just live my life day to day. It doesn't make sense to buy an iMac that will mostly sit, just to have another computer. I want to see how much an iPad can really substitute for a 'real' computer.
More soon.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)