What will Apple ruin this time?

Today, at ten o'clock PDT (five o'clock this afternoon), Apple will host a 'Keynote' event on their website.  I suppose I ought to be excited – after all, I use Apple products, and I love them.  Instead, I feel an impending sense of doom.

Ever since Apple killed off the iPod Classic (the only real iPod) in 2014, I have suspected that Apple CEO Tim Cook treats these events as some sort of social experiment, to see just how much Apple can inconvenience and irritate their consumers before they abandon the tech giant altogether and switch to another brand.  So, instead of launching exciting, innovative, cool new products – like they used to – Apple now focus on making people's lives harder by (for example) changing the shape of the chargers for their laptops and phones, so you constantly have to buy new ones, and it's harder to lend one to your friends.

The latest rumours about the next iPhone suggest that Apple will ditch the standard 3.5mm headphone socket, meaning everybody in the world will have to buy a new set of headphones in a non-standard size – because obviously, that's what consumers really want.  (Not.)  Y'know, the same way everyone was crying out for a computer which couldn't play DVDs.

So, what pointless and inconvenient change will Apple foist on us in their event later today?  Maybe they're going to launch a computer without a screen – and announce that they are ceasing support for screens within twelve months, and that soon no computers will have screens…

The Apple Watch will no longer have an actual strap, you'll just have to balance it on your wrist and keep very still; but at least it will now come with a set of Apple Cufflinks (for £179 extra), which will be WiFi enabled, for some reason…

And the new iOS for iPhone and iPad will change the direction you 'swipe' across the screen to unlock your device from left-to-right, to right-to-left.  Just because.

And we'll still all just nod along with it all, and queue up at their weird shiny stores to buy the stupid things.

Modern entertainment

In the following post, I finally make the full transition to grumpy old man moaning about how things were better "in the good old days"...

Yesterday, I was having my hair cut, when a chap walked into the Barber's shop with his son (about eight years old) and sat down waiting for their appointments.  I heard the father ask the boy "did you bring your iPad with you?"  "No, I forgot", was the rueful response.  "Well, you're going to be bored, then, aren't you?!"

Why?

Why should the boy be bored, because he forgot his iPad?  I've nothing against iPads (indeed, I have one myself, and I love it!) nor against electronic forms of entertainment in general - but the idea that, without these electronic devices, one's existence is nothing but vast expanse of unrelenting boredom seems a little severe.

I started to think, when I was eight years old (and nobody had iPads), and I was sitting waiting somewhere with my Dad (possibly for a haircut), how would we have amused ourselves?  We could've played "I Spy", or some sort of word game.  We could've made up some game from watching the other customers coming and going, or from the rhythmic clack-clacking of the barber's scissors.  Or we could just have talked.

Yeah, that's probably what we would've done.

Why do people need to be "entertained" all the time, these days?  Not every second of you life has to be filled with the most fun you can possibly imagine having.  It is possible just to be, sometimes - to talk, to reflect, to contemplate - without having to fill your time with high-intensity hair-raising fun and excitement.  (Or, at least, things that are supposed to be fun and exciting - all the stuff you're supposed to enjoy is never as good as you're always told it's meant to be!  But that's really a topic for another time...)

When I was a child, I never understood other children who always "got bored", unless they were being provided with some sort of activity to amuse and distract them.  I still don't.

It is just one short step from here to sitting out in a lawn chair in front of my house, smoking a pipe, and shouting "damn hooligans!" at a gang of kids riding past on bicycles, before muttering something about "the war" into my nicotine-stained beard.

Rationalising the iPad

So, Apple's famous tablet computer, the iPad, is now available here in sunny Blighty, and the adverts are already all over our televisual devices...  It's not a medicinal gadget, to be taken twice daily with meals (oh c'mon, did you really think I'd be able to resist the obvious pun?!) it's essentially an enormous iPhone...  No, better, an enormous iPod Touch - since the iPad doesn't seem to have any telecommunicative functions...

I'm not going to review the iPad...  Partly because I've never actually seen one in real life, let alone used one, but also partly because other people have already done it, far better than I could ever hope to...

What I am going to do, is try and decide whether I actually want one or not, right here, live on air...  Well, live on this Blog...  How exciting?  No, not really, I know - but don't grumble!  You suggest a better topic!

OK - here we go!  So, why would I want, or not want, an iPad?  I'm going to start with the "cons" - reasons not to get an iPad...  I shall express this, in the form of a diagram, thus -

As you can see, I'm not really sure what the need for iPad is...  It seems to overlap parts of what you can do with a laptop, and parts of what you can do with a mobile phone...  What I'm wondering is - is there anything an iPad does, which can't be done with either a computer or a smartphone?  (I don't actually know the answer to that, and I can't be bothered to do my research, so I shall simply presume that there isn't...)

So, what reasons are there for wanting an iPad?  I clearly don't *need* one - but, every time I see the rational, logical, clear-thinking arguments of the diagram, a little voice in my head wheedles "yeah, but - it's shiny!  It's cool!  It's made by Apple!"

And that's the thing - on a purely emotional level, the iPad really appeals!  So, it's head vs. heart - iPad vs. no iPad...  And, although I claim to be a "rational and intellectual individual" (I love words that end in "al") I know, deep down, that the base desire to have the latest in status-symbol-based gadgetry, to own it, to caress it, to been seen owning and caressing it by others, will win me over every time...

All of which is merely academic - I couldn't possible afford one anyway...!