Stop Telling Me What I Want Is Stupid

[neadods]

It doesn't even exist yet, and I'm already pissed off at the number of guys who are blowing off the notion of a 7" iPad as stupid. And they're all guys so far, because it takes someone who doesn't carry a purse to bitch that something that's roughly 7 x 5 inches "is too big because it can't fit in a pocket." (As opposed to the current iPad, which at 9.7 x 7.5 is too big to fit into pockets and most purses. Bigger is not automatically better, gentlemen, no matter what they told you in the locker room.)

I've got a friend with an iPad, and it looks like a very nifty gadget, and I have to confess, I'd rather like one. But it's way too damned big and heavy to stick in my car to play music and podcasts while I drive or drop in a purse and schlep around while I travel. If I'm taking something that size, I'm taking my netbook.

On the other hand, I've got an iPod Touch, and while it's portable and convenient as hell, the screen's terribly small and the keyboard is ridiculously tiny. I could read my email and LJ and ebooks while I traveled, but it is a complete and utter bugger to type URLs, shopping lists, and blog entries. (C'mon, Apple, I had a fold-out full-sized keyboard for my palm pilot 10 years ago. I'm just sayin'.)

A 7 x 5 inch machine would be the perfect compromise of portability, adaptability, readability, and type-ability for a daily general-use and travel companion. It was what I started dreaming of the third time I corrected a typo because only 3-year-olds have fingers that will fit that Touch screen. And now I keep being blown off because what I want -- what I think is specifically tailored to my technical specs -- is "dumb."

But what do I know? I'm just a well-heeled customer willing to pay out hundreds for the right technotoy girl, after all. Naturally, only misogynistic morons think I won't buy anything that beeps unless it's pink and explained to me in Very Small Words, because it's not like Apple's all about the ease of use or I work in a technical field or anything.

Seriously... a paperback book is "too big" to be portable? Because dudes, that's the size you're bitching about!

Comments

[swallowedbysky.livejournal.com]

As someone with a reputation for being a Mac/Apple fangirl, I've shocked more people than I can count by saying that I don't have, nor do I want, an iPad.

Sure, if things were different, I might want one. If I didn't have a MacBook Air, I'd want an iPad. If I didn't have an iPhone, I'd want an iPad. If staring at a backlit screen while reading for extended periods didn't hurt my eyes, I'd want an iPad. If it was the same weight as a Kindle or a Nook, I'd want an iPad. If it ran OSX, I'd want an iPad. If OmniGroup would get off their butts and release OmniOutliner for iPad, I'd want an iPad. Etc., etc., etc.

It never once occurred to me to think that if it had a 7" screen, I might want one, but as I think about it? If the iPad stayed exactly the same as it is now but had a 7" screen, I'd want a freaking iPad. (Though, with my current needs, a Kindle's still a more practical choice for me.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I don't *really* want an iPad, and was quite dismissive about Kevin's at first... Until the touch was so useful. But yeah, at 7 inches? I'd leave skidmarks on the way to the Apple store.

(And another temptation is that buying books through iBook may be more expensive than Kindle, but it's a platform that allows you to share across all the tech connected to your iTunes account. So the book I buy and read on the Touch should be transferrable to a future pad, should it exist. I don't know if you can do that with Kindles.)

[benbenberi.livejournal.com]

There's also a Kindle app for iPad, so you can still buy books from Amazon and read them on the iPad.

As a reading device for text, I still prefer Kindle (or pretty much any e-ink device) over the iPad, esp. for the ability to read it in sunlight.

But the main reason I don't want an iPad now is that it's just so big and heavy -- I know it would give me wrist strain if I had to hold it at a usable angle for more than a few minutes, and having to prop it up on something kind of defeats the purpose of ultra-portability. If it came in a 7" size, I'd be a lot more interested.

[fyrdrakken]

The Kindle apps I have installed on my Blackberry and netbook allow me to pull up any book I've purchased through Amazon as an "archived" item and download it to both platforms. I think there's a limit to how many devices I can have registered on my Amazon account (though I also think it allows you to un-register an old device you're replacing), and I make a special point of downloading them all to my netbook to keep because I don't want to trust entirely in Amazon to make them all just as available for insta-downloading three or five years from now as they are today. Also, if I buy a Kindle book not through Amazon (e.g., I've most recently being doing some buying directly from Baen Books) I'm going to have to either seek out a download link via my webbrowser or physically copy the file over.

Mind you, whenever I open the app, there's a second or two where the program wants to connect to Amazon.com (to verify registration, update things like bookmarks and last-page-read), and I haven't yet made a special point of opening the app when I'm somewhere without a decent mobile internet connection. So I don't know if the outcome if I try pulling up an e-book at my father's is going to be that next time I try opening that book it won't have advanced by the amount I read in the offline session -- or if it saves the changes and updates them the next time I open it where I've got a connection -- or if it just won't work at all.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried reading a Kindle book on the road (in fact, I'm in the process of reloading all the books I had on Kindle into iBooks, as they were all freebies from Gutenberg anyway. That way, they're in my iTunes... and automatically backed up on portable HD at the next sync.

[fyrdrakken]

Well, I backup my Kindle books via direct folder-copy. Happily, when I installed the program to my netbook it set up a My Kindle Books folder as a subdirectory of My Documents automatically.

Still haven't been able to find out how the Kindle on my Blackberry reacts when I try to use it in the absence of a decent connection. If I don't find out on the road to, or at, Dragon*Con, I will for sure at my grandfather's on the way back into Dallas afterwards.