The Fry Side

So yes, last week saw the unveiling of Apple’s iPad. Now, as usual, I’m about a week behind on when something actually happens. But here are my initial thoughts when it comes to where the iPad could be useful.

First I had to think about when I would use such a device. Currently, I work in front of a laptop and a desktop, then I can take the laptop home and use it to look up recipes and email people as well. Plus I’ll have all my favorite tools and programs at my fingertips.

I have no commute. I drive less than 10 miles, sans errands, to get myself and my kids where we need to go. And I can barely listen to the radio in that time because decent music is few and far between and the news would spark too many awful questions from my six year old.

Plus I recently decided to ditch my iPhone for a simpler way of life. I’ve yet to sell the stupid thing, but that’s a digression. So I’m not feeling any loss for not having a digital reading device on me at all times.

So right now, I wouldn’t buy an iPad. Neither would my wife, since it couldn’t play any of her flash-based diversions, nor handle her online classes.

But I would have picked one up by my second year of college for one reason: textbooks. It’s yet to be seen whether Apple has this in the works, but as I see it, if you can make interactive textbooks that are half the price and can be produced without the costs of printing, then you win. Plus, nobody could buy used books since they are a one-shot purchase.

So for the price of $500 and the cost of textbooks cut in half, then you can pretty well see the device paying for itself in a year. I sure would have liked to tote around an iPad rather than huge, awful books. With an iPad to be my dictionary, quick reference, and full textbook, as well as my own handwritten notebook for the sake of building my memories more deeply, it would have worked well.

Another huge piece that would have been a gift to me would be a sheet music reader. That would be a tricky piece of software to come up with, since it would need an auto-scrolling feature. The screen is smaller than a letter-sized piece of paper, which is usually smaller than standard sheet music. But if I kept it all, scanned in images at the very least, with the ability to annotate as I needed, then it’d be quite useful indeed.

I also keep seeing it, if there is a sheet music app, as a pit orchestra with little glowing pieces of music rather than relying on crappy stand lights.

These are all big ifs, but I can see it as very possible. I think a big part missing is a stylus that could really absorb handwriting, even if it couldn’t transcribe the handwriting into plain text. Then you could write notes all over your books and music without affecting the primary source.

The tricks I describe would probably also depend on whether multi-tasking on the device is allowed. We shall have to wait and see.