This post is coming to you from an iPad. I have the Apple folio thingy, it is sitting on top of my net book on the coffee table, and I’m already seeing some of the compromises on the keyboard. It does a good job with some of the autocorrection, but also makes two words of netbook and doesn’t give me an apostrophe without using the shift. It also makes ozone curious decisions on what not to correct. That should be “some”, not “ozone”. You see the problem.
in the grand scheme of things, though, it isn’t bad. I daresay it’s as least as typable as the much maligned keyboard on the Dell Mini 9. Obviously I’m in landscape mode and counting on the spell check, but even so – it’s miles beyond trying to do the same on an iPhone. I wouldn’t dare try to write anything this long on there.
(An aside: Duke got freerolled into the Sweet Sixteen with a one seed they didn’t deserve, then managed to be two points better than a five seed in a game where the refs basically let them play Red Rover under the baskets. Least impressive champion of the modern era. And I’m all the more bitter that Vandy got skunked in the first round, because that Duke team is one we could easily have beaten. Douchebags.)
I’m not having quite the OMG IT IS THE FUTURE experience that I see in the reviews, but it is a nice piece of work. It’s not $500 nice, for sure, but this is going to kill a lot of what would have been Kindle and Nook sales. It will also light a fire under somebody to get an Android-based tablet experience out the door sooner than later. From a philosophical point of view, though, the thing I can’t stop thinking over and over is “it’s the Dynabook”. Alan Kay’s landmark vision of a super-thin 9×12 tablet weighing not more than two pounds was a theory that drove the development of portable computing for the better part of a half century. And now, this is pretty much it. If Apple gets an edu discount going on these things by August, they are going to sell a trillion of them. One device the size of a magazine, pound and a half – and it’s all your textbooks, all your notebooks, your mail, your TV, your damn near everything. If I were starting college this year, I would move heaven and earth to have one before I headed out the door.
Well, now to see if it can replace the DVR for strategic “V” purposes…