[Leica] iPad angst

[zoeica at mac.com (Chris Williams)]

You can tell the iPad was invented by men.

No woman would call it an iPad. Sounds to much like feminine products.

Chris

Developed from my iHolga


On Jan 28, 2010, at 9:51 AM, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> *Like Henning, I too am a little disappointed in the iPad.  
> Apparently Wall
> Street is ambivalent too. Apple's stock price only went up $1 after  
> the
> announcement. We photographers are almost irrelevant. Everyone is  
> waiting to
> see if the teen agers, gamers, and e-text readers bite. Not that it  
> isn't a
> technological achievement for Apple but it isn't quite what I  
> wanted. But
> then neither was the Leica M8 or M9. What I really wanted was a  
> somewhat
> smaller and faster replacement for my venerable 12" Powerbook, say  
> netbook
> sized but able to run all the latest Mac and PC software. The iPad  
> screen is
> big enough. It is even slightly bigger in area than the size of my  
> first
> 128K Mac screen. I used that one happily for several years and then my
> daughter used it in college. A workable compromise would seem to be  
> hinging
> a small keyboard to the iPad, both to protect the screen when closed  
> and
> make typing easier. I'll bet some after market supplier is working  
> on that
> right now. In the meantime I've maxed out the memory of my 12"  
> Powerbook,
> replaced the HD with a 320 gb version, and loaded the bulletproof OS  
> 10.4.11
> software. It runs Photoshop, MS Office and GraphicConverter just  
> fine. It
> should last until the iPad of my dreams appears.*
>
> **
>
> *A year ago my kids gave me an iPod Touch as an Xmas present. That  
> satisfies
> my needs for reading e-mail at MacDonalds. It is certainly portable  
> enough
> and connects reliably to most wi-fi networks. I have yet to buy any  
> music
> from the iTunes store but have loaded most of my classical CDs into  
> its
> memory. Now I can eat my french fries while listening to a stirring  
> concert
> of Luciano Pavarotti and Cecilla Bartoli. *
>
> **
>
> *As far as reading e-books goes, I've been doing that for the last  
> 15 years
> on a HP 100LX palmtop. For free. The first generation family of HP  
> palmtops,
> the 95LX, 100LX and 200LX, were IBM XT computer workalikes which  
> could run
> any MS-DOS software. They were about the size of two packs of regular
> cigarettes and sturdy as a hockey puck, Also they could run 40 hours  
> on 2 AA
> batteries. The books are provided gratis by Project Gutenberg.*
>
> www.*gutenberg*.org/catalog/* *
>
> *Project Gutenberg is a volunteer organization dedicated to putting  
> all
> books in the public domain into digital form. The catalog now  
> contains over
> 30,000 downloadable volumes. I can load 800 of these at once on a 1  
> gb CF
> card and have enough reading for a long, long summer vacation. No  
> Kindle, no
> iPod, no laptop. Just a cheap, very outdated palmtop. There is also  
> a free
> iPod Ap for reading Project Gutenberg books on the iPod. I may  
> eventually
> try that but the screen seems too small for my aging eyes.*
>
> *
> *
>
> *Incidentally, the introduction price ($495) of the iPad is exactly  
> what I
> paid for my HP scientific calculator half a century ago. Given  
> inflation,
> the calculator was twice as expensive in purchasing power than the  
> iPad. So
> it's a real bargain. Buy one. Give one. Help my Apple stock rise  
> enough to
> buy an M9 and kit of lenses.*
>
> **
>
> *Larry Z*
>
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