The iPad that changed my life
Posted by David N. Guy | May 25, 2010 | Comments Off
As the UK excitedly gears up for the launch of the Apple iPad, we hear from David N. Guy, an early adopter of this wonderful technology, and discover how it has revolutionised their life.
I had been unemployed for the longest time. It had been so long I couldn’t even remember what it was like to get up and go to the toilets every hour to stare into the mirror and scratch at the inside of my nose with the longest fingernail I could find in the hope that I could make my nosebleed and watch it drip into the virginal white porcelain sink and drain away out of sight. The closest I would get to that was chewing on the straps of my rucksack as I sat with it on my lap in the queue at the dole. It wasn’t the same. It felt like a life without worth.
All that changed when I spent some of my spare cash on importing an iPad from America last month. Although this is technically illegal, or at least against Apple’s express wishes, which for many of us is the same, I felt that, due my dual British and American citizenship, I was not breaking any laws, legal or moral.
The first thing you notice when you get your iPad is how small it is, and also, paradoxically, how large it is. The next thing you notice is how bright it is. You haven’t even turned it on yet. When you do, the button just works. After turning it on you press it to your ear like it’s a nice warm cat that’s perched on your shoulder. The feel of it is exquisite, the cool softness of the screen accentuated by the inaudible frequency that the processor hums at, giving everything a warm sepia feel, much like listening to a 7inch Duran Duran picture disk on a vintage record player.
The first app I try is inscrutable but the second, which makes the screen look like it is made out of wood, is just astonishing. I stroke my hands up and down the tactile multi-touch screen. Closing myeyes it even begins to feel like wood. I let out a sigh. As I lay there, lost in thought as my fingers caressed the screen, images began to blossom in my mind. Ideas that I hadn’t never had before. Ideas that would have been impossible before.
Within days I have cleaned myself up and signed off the dole. My tattered clothes have been consigned to the bin, my previously unkempt beard is now expensively and ironicly unkempt. Every morning I get up with a new sense of purpose to my life. Today I created. What did you do?
David N. Guy is the Senior Architect behind the highly successful Cats-Online app.