iPad

Of course I want an iPad. I don't particularly need one, not in the way I needed an iPhone, because I still do so much actual, real work on my MacBook. But then again, it might be a stretch to say I needed an iPhone — and that's become much more useful to me than I could have anticipated.

And sure enough, the iPad is already weighed down by unrealized expectations, by everything it can't do (or can't do, yet). But there's amazing potential here. Think of everything you can do with an iPhone now that you couldn't do with one when it was first introduced. Not the improvements that have come with hardware, but the software that has made the device so useful in so many ways. I think the possibilities for a device like this are just about limitless.

I wish iBooks were more full-featured, though. (I've heard there's no hyphenation, only force-justified text, which irritates me.) I'm still trying to sort out how the type of books I design — heavily illustrated, with many photos — might fit in that world. (Will the photos be available as links, rather than integrated into the copy? Or is there a way to place them in the text?) Of course, nobody knows how smaller publishers will have access to the platform as of yet.

I think I have better reason than ever to explore my curiousity for programming.

Audrey

I was discussing the newly-introduced iPad with my wife — she's anxious to buy one; I'm impressed, though in no particular hurry — and it struck me that the iPad represents, in many ways, part of a new class of computers as "appliances." Smaller, somewhat less powerful devices that perform a small number of tasks and fill a specific niche. I suppose you could put the iPod Touch in that category, as well, though not the iPhone. (Have you ever considered your phone to be an appliance?}

And then I remembered that Palm Computing (or rather, their parent corporation 3Com) had tried to introduce something very much like this many, many years ago — the Audrey. It was a simple, but useful device: "users could access the Internet, send and receive e-mail, play audio and video, and synchronize with up to two Palm OS-based devices." (Ironically, it was also $499.) But the product never caught on, and was discontinued after less than a year. I don't think there was any place in the market for a device like that — a decade ago, we didn't use the Internet in the same way we do today, and it wasn't as pervasive as it has become, so the idea of spending a great deal of money on a simplified device for Internet use when you probably already had a desktop computer (that cost a great deal more) would have seemed absurd. And 3Com was never able to build on the success of the Palm platform in the way that Apple has built on the iPhone platform.

Devices like these have been long-promised, and we might see more of thm in the years to come — though the iPad comes to dominate that category the way the iPhone and iPod have theirs, perhaps not so many.

Hype

I loved using my Newton MessagePad. As much for what it could do as for what it represented — it was tomorrow. The day when a portable computing device would be really, truly portable, small enough to be carried in a pocket (almost). We're there now — or here — of course, but it all seemed much further away. This was more than a decade ago, when the desktop computer I was using at work had a processor not quite as powerful as the one in my iPhone.

In fact, I loved my MessagePad so much that when it was discontinued, I spent close to $1000 on a second model, out of concern that they might become difficult to replace in the years to come. (I tried using a Palm Pilot — smaller, closer to pocket-sized — but it seemed inelegant by comparison.) I didn't know then that years later, I would give it up when I left work to be a stay-at-home parent. There were no projects to keep track of, or schedules to follow, and what time I had for reading was lost, once I wasn't commuting by train.

The MessagePad is — mostly, I think, to people who never had the chance to use one — largely thought of as a failure. It was introduced as a revolutionary product with extraordinary capabilities (particularly handwriting recognition), but the initial models (which had been plagued with problems during development) were never able to deliver on that promise. In the end, it had become a powerful and very capable device (the handwriting recognition was never all that good, though the print recognition was greatly improved), but it was a product that was several years too soon, and it was never able to overcome the failure to meet expectations.

Even if you don't obsessively follow Apple, you've probably heard that the company is about to introduce a new product (in just about five more minutes as I write this), almost certainly a sort of tablet computer. Apple is famously, notoriously secret about new products before they're introduced (often with good reason), but that leaves a vacuum of information — and I'm wary that the hype and speculation surrounding this device have raised expectations so high that nothing that will be unveiled today could possibly hope to meet them.

Since I do obsessively follow Apple, if you'll kindly excuse me...

Forbidden

There's a part of me that wants to believe in the notion of love as seen in a Frank Capra movie, circa 1932. Somewhere out there, Barbara Stanwyck is waiting.

Divisions

I've been watching the ice flows on the Hudson. At first glance, it appears to be a solid sheet of ice covering the water, but then a large piece will slowly, gently float into view, and the impact of collision causes the divisions to be revealed.

When all is silent, you can hear it cracking in the distance.

Forget

Wouldn't it be as wonderful if it were as easy to change history as it is to erase a few long-forgotten email messages?

Old Haunts

Today was spent in wandering through a place that was once familiar. There was a time, I thought I might settle there, but that all seems as illusory as any reasons I had for being there (then, or now).