The iPad That Came to Dinner

The iPad that Came to Dinner

A guest at Easter dinner tonight brought the iPad he had purchased the day before when iPads first went on sale. It caused almost as much excitement as the new baby he and his wife had brought along.

I had decided to wait until the 3G model becomes available in two or three weeks, but after getting my hands on this iPad, it’s going to be very hard to restrain myself from going to the Apple store tomorrow and getting my own non-3G model.

I tried out its capability as an e-reader. Like most people who have delighted in books, real books, I have been cool to the idea of e-books, until tonight. Just wait until you realize that the pages not only turn with your fingertip, just as with a printed book, but the page will even stop in mid-curl if you stop “turning” it. You can leaf back and forth, just as with a real book, no buttons or commands involved. There is the feeling that you just can’t cosy up to an e-book in bed or wherever, but in its leather case, the iPad felt just as sensuous as a bound book, and along with that realistic page turning, the absence of buttons or keys or a menu, it’s easy to forget that this is an electronic device. And when you are ready to put it down on your bedside table, the case closes with an adieu just like the cover of a book.

In addition to having the feel and manners of a bound book, the iPad is capable of adjusting the size of the text and the brightness of the page to suit one’s physical needs, an important consideration for declining eyesight or restrictions in one’s environment such as a partner who would rather sleep or in, say, a situation with no ambient light. I could even adjust the text so that I could read without my eyeglasses. It should put the joy back into reading for anyone for whom the act of reading is becoming or has become somewhat uncomfortable.

At the end of dinner the owner produced his iPad claiming that it wanted to say “Goodbye” to me. Well, it almost said “Goodbye” to its owner instead. But I knew I couldn’t run away with it fast enough, and besides he knows where I live.