Magical

We're now used to living in a world where the iPhone and its larger cousin, the iPad, have spawned a thousand imitators.  It's hard to think back to a time when a smartphone meant having a keyboard, web browser, and graphical texting.  In retrospect, it seems obvious that the way people want to use mobile devices is with little purpose-built apps they can mix and match in any combination they please, customizing their handheld computers for the tasks they want to perform.

But the success of the iPad should remind us just how big a gamble and how bold a piece of imagination our taken-for-granted world once was.  Creating the iOS took an early decision to be user-focused rather than hacker/hobbyist-focused.  Putting the file system and the guts of the operating system of out reach, and allowing access only through a controlled system of miniature programs predictably angered do-it-yourselfers.  When the iPad came out, a lot of frustration was vented about Apple's decision to make it an iPhone writ large rather than a computer writ small.

Making that move required futurist thinking that broke free of the computer operating system models that dominated our experiences five years ago.  Starting from scratch and thinking about how we could interact with a mobile device -- how we could buy, install, update, and use software -- and what we really cared about in our computing interactions (hint: it's not folder hierarchies or knowing where things are stored) -- led to an unbelievably risky proposal that now feels simply inevitable.

Six times a year

I believe in the purpose-built device.  As opposed, you see, to the all-purpose device.  I find great pleasure and utility in having a Kindle that is built for reading.  Sure, I could read e-books on my phone or my computer screen, but that's not what those devices were built for, and so reading long passages on them has significant drawbacks.  If I value reading, then I don't want to struggle through the compromise it takes it read on a device that will present e-books, but not well.  I want a purpose-built device so that it disappears and doesn't constitute a barrier to my work.

For years now I've had a tablet PC at work.  I insist on it because there are six times a year, at minimum, that nothing other than tablet technology will do.  Those are the three student essays I typically need to grade every semester.  I want to receive the papers electronically and give them back electronically.  And although I could type up my comments or use Word's track-changes feature to interpose them, I find this process extremely clunky.  I just want to write on the page, cross out things, add things, bracket things, make marginal notes.  And so only a tablet will do.

I like my tablet PC (Lenovo's X series of ThinkPad tablets) just fine.  But my current X200 died for the second time today, the predictable victim of connections through the swiveling hinge.  I can always tell when I'm in trouble -- the swivel suddenly becomes difficult, and after pushing the screen into place, a few days later, the tablet pen won't move the cursor anymore.

So I took it to the help desk, and I expect to get it back with a new motherboard again in a few days.  But it's made me wonder whether the hybrid nature of the tablet PC (it's both a laptop and a tablet) makes it especially vulnerable to this problem -- and whether it is almost time to go with a new purpose-built device for this important task of grading essays in a natural, speedy, and paperless way.  I wonder whether it is time to get an iPad.

A few weeks ago I did some poking around to see if any teachers were grading papers on the iPad, and I saw that some people have cobbled together little ad hoc suites of apps that annotate PDFs or Pages documents.  I don't want to spend time inventing something, really.  I just want to grab a tablet and write on a paper that I can then send back to the student in a form they can read.

How about it, iPad owners and instructor or editor types?  Are you using the iPad to mark up text?  How do you do it, and do you think this use of the device is ready for prime time?

Joining the human race

I did it. And it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be.

Today at lunch I was confessing to a staff member that I'd made it my goal to get myself a cell phone by the end of the summer. After we got back to the office, I decided -- why wait? I know where the AT&T store is. I'm going to lick this sucker once and for all.

I walked in with some trepidation. Anything where credit checks and two-year contracts are involved seems pretty complicated to me. But Kari walked me through it with ease. She got me the 15% discount and waived activation fee to which holders of my university's ID are entitled. She asked the right questions and was patient when my cell phone virginity got in the way.

In thirty minutes I walked out with ... a SIM card. And a cell phone number. The phone itself isn't kept in stock at the store, but ordered on a per-case basis. Mine ought to be here next week, if all goes well.



I know people who get iPhones tend to get excited. (A number of the people I follow on Twitter have posted a series of such comments as "Tracking number says it will be delivered today!" and the like.) And they're people who already have cell phones. For me, this is like a leap into another century -- a futuristic world where people have wristwatch communicators and carry movie screens in their pockets.

I'm glad I have a week to get used to the idea. Although I don't know if you can ever really prepare yourself to become a whole new person. A cell phone person.

The slow spinning blue line of life

Noel has been cursed with hand-me-down computers for the last couple of years. First Archer sat on and cracked the screen of his iBook, but it seemed too soon to replace with a "real" computer, so he bought a cheap obsolescent model as a stop-gap. Then that failed (predictably), and so I upgraded to my beloved Air and gave him my white MacBook. Now the Airport card in that computer has begun to crap out, and it's not user-replaceable. (Also the bevels around the keyboard casing have been flaking off steadily for more than a year.)

So it seemed only right that he buy an actual brand-new computer. Not the latest model (unfortunately), but a upgraded black MacBook, which arrived today.

I suppose I should be able to remember from year to year how best to handle the migration to a new Mac. I've done it enough. But when Noel called this afternoon to ask if I had a FireWire or ethernet cable, I blithely assured him that there were ethernet cables in the computer-stuff box in the back. What I should have done was to tell him that I'd bring my FireWire cable from the ancient iPod I keep at work. I should have remembered how much faster a FireWire connection is than an ethernet connection.

But because I didn't, the information from his old MacBook -- its keyboard edges held together with Scotch tape -- is sloooooooooooowly transfering to his sleek new black beauty. So slowly that even as the blue line has infinitesimally moved to the right, the window still reads, just as it did when it started two hours ago, "About 18 hours 8 minutes remaining."

I remember when I had to transfer data to my Air that the same very lengthy process pertained. It was necessary because there's no FireWire port on the Air. And it got done eventually (overnight and on into the next day, as I recall). So I'm confident that the transfer will succeed, but I'm kicking myself for not remembering that there's a faster way. I know Noel is eager to use his new computer, and might even be in some need of it tomorrow before it's done. There are backups -- his iPod Touch can access the internet, and my Air is at home during the day -- but he needs his files and schedule and half-written drafts.

I suppose that as a last resort we can abort the process by disconnecting the ethernet cable, and restart it with the FireWire cable tomorrow after I retrieve it from my office. My hope is that if we leave it to churn away all night, we'll see enough progress that we can resolve to wait it out for as long as it takes.

Getting the touch

Noel had a mishap with his beloved iPod Touch while he was in Toronto. He was downloading an update on an unreliable internet connection, and the iPod got hung up; no matter what he did or how he reset it, it would never progress past the opening screen of startup. A visit to a genius bar at a suburban Toronto Apple store didn't fix the problem, so he sent it in for warranty replacement.

Today the new Touch arrived, and Noel has been reorganizing his apps, contacts, and music with a palpable sense of relief. He had a backup in the form of the old pre-Touch iPod that the Touch had replaced, so he wasn't without a way to listen to music. But since he got the Touch at Christmas, he'd come to rely on all the different ways it organized his life.

My birthday is coming up, and I've long thought that I might be getting a Kindle. The manifest awesomeness of the iPod Touch certainly casts a long shadow, though. I'm not sure it would be as useful for me as it is for Noel; nor am I sure that we need two of them in this house. It would certainly be great for me to have a little web device that I can carry in my pocket at work, but my experiment with a PDA a few years ago never really panned out for me. Do I really need a Kindle? Well, in some ways it also fulfills the function of a little web device; I can put documents like syllabi or presentations on it to have them accessible without the bulk of a laptop. And it would be nice to get books to review in Kindle format so I don't have so many huge stacks of printed material around the house; don't know if that's possible for books pre-release, though.

Where the Kindle would really shine is in getting books for class. For the class that I'm team-teaching this semester with my fellow administrators, we had some trouble getting the bookstore to order enough of our five texts for all three sections and 36 students. Students were telling us that they couldn't find the books anywhere. If they had Kindles and if the books have Kindle editions -- and there are for at least 3 out of the 5 -- then you could have the book in thirty seconds from the time you realized you needed it, for less than the cost of a used copy in the student center.

Sure, strictly speaking, I don't need either of these gadgets. But I've been around them enough to know how my life would change with them, and I like what I see.