Wouldn’t you just give your eye teeth for an iPad?

Date Published: 02-Jun-2010

DO you ever long for a time when an apple was merely something you ate, and an iPad was probably a soft patch you used if you had an infection in your eye?

These days Apples cost a whole lot more, but on the other hand you wouldn’t need one every day to keep the doctor away – and an iPad is a device that’s half a computer with everything you need except a phone.

Northern Ireland went nuts last week when the iPad went on sale, as though Apple were only going to manufacture a limited number of these little beauties and if you didn’t get your hands on one by Friday night you were doomed to spend eternity looking enviously at your iPadded nearest neighbour.

We have to wait until July before the iPad is unleashed onto the market – in fact, even if you desperately crave one, you’d be well advised to wait until the second version comes out because they always have fewer kinks and more bells and whistles.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs modestly described it as a “magical and revolutionary device”, the 9.7-inch touchscreen tablet is designed to be used for browsing the web, playing digital media such as photographs and video, playing games and reading electronic books sold through the iBookstore.

In Japan, Apple fans queued to be among the first to get the device the day of its launch, with some lining up from Wednesday – but then this is a race who get up in the middle of the night to queue for a place in a multi-storey golf driving range to hit balls under floodlights.

Apple has already sold more than one million iPads since it was unveiled on April 3 and it has been acclaimed as everything from the future of technology to the saviour of the newspaper industry. Unlike a newspaper, however, you cannot fold it up and put it into your jacket pocket, and it would be foolhardy in the extreme to use it for swatting flies or lining the bottom of the budgie cage to catch their bird’s droppings.

Hell will be well frozen over too before you’ll wrap a couple of iPads around your fish and chips or scatter them across the floor when you’re decorating the sitting room walls so you don’t get paint on the good carpet.

The reality is that nobody needs an iPad but a million people want one; it’s too big to carry around in your pocket – although, like the early mobiles, if you had one you’d want everyone to see you using it – and unless you live alone or in the doghouse, you won’t be watching movies on it either.

The next logical step for Apple is the iChip, a digital implant inserted into your brain just behind your eyes so that when you close them and use your nose to adjust the volume and your ears to locate the station, you can watch television as you sleep. Remember where you heard about it first.

For more from Dave O’Connell see page 13 of this week’s Connacht Tribune