On the iPad and early adopters

Rob Walker:

I suppose it’s possible that the device will so improve the owner’s quality of life, productivity and social standing that he or she will enjoy a kind of competitive advantage over nonowners for a few months or a year. But there’s an inverse relationship between how long this advantage lasts and how good the thing is. If the iPad is so wonderful, I’ll just buy one, too; I’m pretty sure Apple will happily meet all demand. And if it stinks, then there was never any advantage to buying it early, now, was there?

Read more:

iPad Envy (New York Times)

(I have no plans to buy an iPad, now or in a few months or in a year. No need for one.)

Clever NYT crossword clue

A clever clue for an eight-letter answer in today’s New York Times puzzle, an example of what in crosswords is called misdirection:

64-Across: “Safari sights.” The answer: WEBPAGES.

[No spoilers here. Highlight the empty space to see the answer.]

Trying the iPad

I tried an iPad briefly last night (with just enough time to take a photograph). My impressions:

The display is beautiful.

Typing — with the iPad propped up at an angle on a low table — is easier than I had expected but still tedious. I was reminded of what it’s like when I catch and correct typos on a cellphone. Because I’m looking at the keys and not the screen, I don’t see typos until I’m well past them. Tedious.

The touchscreen is not as intuitive as I had imagined. In Pages, for instance, swiping a finger across a stretch of text seems not to highlight that stretch for copying or deleting. The iBooks application does allow for highlighting and bookmarking a passage with a swipe but does not allow for annotating (according to the Apple employee I asked).

Web pages display slowly. I wondered for a moment whether there was a wireless problem. The lack of speed and the absence of tabs — it’s one page at a time — might make the iPad well suited to limited, purposeful browsing — check e-mail, check news, check stats — but I can’t imagine using this device to go surfing down rabbit-holes.

Nor, as of now, can I imagine buying an iPad. Maybe later.

¹ What? You don’t correct typos when texting?

Roger Lathbury and Hapworth 16, 1924

Around this time, I unwittingly made the first move that would unravel the whole deal. I applied for Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data.

Roger Lathbury tells the sorrowful story of not publishing J.D. Salinger’s Hapworth 16, 1924:

Betraying Salinger (New York)

John Gruber on typing and the iPad

John Gruber has written a lengthy and overwhelmingly favorable review of the iPad. His observations about typing though make me think not for me:

You absolutely do not need a hardware keyboard for it. But if you’re hoping to do any amount of serious writing with it (and, for obvious vocational reasons, I plan to), you’re going to want one.

Then why not just use a MacBook?

Five sentences about clothes

Another Google search: write five sentences about clothes you like to wear. Okay:

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Levi’s 550 jeans.

I really like my Carhartt B18 jeans.

I really like my Carhartt B18 jeans.

I really like my Carhartt B18 jeans.

Update, November 2, 2010: That’s one sentence for each pair of Levi’s I own, and one new sentence for a new pair of Carhartt jeans. Recent production Levi’s, I’m discovering, are alarmingly prone to fray at the back-pocket corners.

Update, November 18, 2010: Two more pairs of Carhartts.

Doers of homework: instead of searching for five sentences, just write five sentences, about clothes you like to wear.

Related posts
5 sentences about life on the moon
Five sentences for smoking
Five sentences from Bleak House
Five sentences on the ship

Domestic comedy

“Are you having your fancy-pants cereal?”

[I.e., Cascadian Farm Cinnamon Raisin Granola. And it’s our fancy-pants cereal.]

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts

The rules of the game

The rules of the game, as spray-painted on a piece of plywood: U HONK WE DRINK. Ah, colledge. And it’s only Tuesday.

[Colledge: my word for “the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan.” Colledge cheapens the experience of students who are in college. Colledge students and college students are often found on the very same campus.]

Related reading
All colledge posts

On this day in 1327

On this day, the poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) first saw (or claimed to have seen) the woman he called Laura. From sonnet 211:

In 1327, at exactly
the first hour of the sixth of April,
I entered the labyrinth, and I see no way out.

Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac noted the day’s Petrarchan importance and made me remember that I once translated these lines. Three of the strangest lines in all poetry, I’d say.

Brookline Booksmith

From a June 2009 post:

Brookline Booksmith is a great bookstore, even better now that a nearby Barnes and Noble is gone. It is exciting to walk into a bookstore on a Tuesday night and find it crowded with paying customers. The moral of the story: if you have a great (or good) bookstore, don’t use it as a library or as a source of information for Amazon purchases. Buy books.

The Boston Globe reports that Booksmith’s future is “up in the air” — not because of poor sales but because seventy-eight-year-old owner Marshall Smith is planning to step away from the book business. Read more:

What’s the story with independent bookstores? (Boston Globe)