producttech

My Pad

Anyone who has hired a graphic designer or other Apple geek today might wonder why it’s all gone a bit quiet. If the bewildered employer asks, they might get told anything but the truth, which is that the designer is too busy wetting himself—a ‘herself’ will likely be much less distracted—over Apple’s new Next Big Gizmo to recycle any second-rate, wishy-washy design right now, sorry.

It’s the iPad’s fault.

The iPad is a whopper iPhone without the Phone, a pumped-up netbook computer without a physical keyboard (though one can be docked on), an eBook—sorry, iBook—reader and something that an awful lot of people are going to accidentally drop on their polished concrete floors because they bumped their elbow on the arm of their original, fibreglass Eames shell rocking chair while looking for what’s hot right now on notcot.org.

It’ll be the next big thing in… er… well, hmm. I can see one on my coffee table. Ah, yes, that’s it, coffee. It’ll be the next big thing in cafés: gone are the days when you can knowingly look down upon those café-wifi Windows 7 users from behind your glowing-Apple-logod screen, for on the next table is someone with an iPad, wiping their fingers clean of lemon-poppyseed-muffin grease before every pinch or swipe of their glorious LED glass screen while they pretend they’re not buzzing soaking up ill-veiled looks of jealousy like a family-pack of Bounty.

Stateside, $499 will see an iPad in your bag. Just be extra-careful securing it in there before you swing your leg over your cafe racer. (Fixies are so last year.)

—Chris Noble, 27 January 2010