As I write this, it is a frigid Saturday morning, the type of morning where you just don’t want to think about going outside but you also kind of do want to go outside just to feel the piercing cold on your lungs. It has been over a year of full time iPad usage for me, and in that year I have had my iPad in a plethora of configurations. From the simple Smart Keyboard Cover to nearly duct taping it to the wall. What I have come to realize over this past year, is how portable and manageable the iPad as a desktop machine is.
That is a tad odd to say, that a desktop can be so portable, but I am also writing this in the kitchen right now with a mechanical keyboard in tow, and none of it seemed overly cumbersome to move out of my office. When I am done with this writing session I will lift the iPad out of the stand it is sitting in and move over to a comfy chair. There will be nothing to unplug, and what was my makeshift desk this morning, will go back to a kitchen table. Not unlike it would for any laptop user, except my iPad is a chameleon of work conditions. Adapting to me, not causing me to find a comfortable arm of the couch to rest the laptop on.
What hit me the second I started properly working (rather than just faffing about with a game or entertainment app) was that way in which the device becomes the app. Yes, there’s full-screen mode on a Mac or PC, but it still doesn’t compare to the iPad experience.
While the user is able to enter into multitasking switcher to kill the Messages app, but is then presented with a single white screen of death when attempting to re-launch the app again. It will then sit like that for a number of seconds before crashing back to the Home screen. A hard reboot of the device doesn’t resolve the problem either, and neither does turning the device off and then back on again provide any relief.
Part of the indignation is that most parents would prefer not to see their kids rack up spending on any kind of game. Yet as our experience with Fruit Pop and other games demonstrates, there is another set of lessons that seems undesirable. The design of many of these games sends potentially confusing signals to children about fundamental economic ideas like value and pricing.
The Modisette family said Apple is responsible for their daughter’s death because of its “failure to install and implement the safer, alternative design for which it sought a patent in December 2008 (later issued by the United States Patent Office in April 2014) to ‘lock out’ the ability of drivers to utilize the ‘FaceTime’ application on the Apple iPhone when driving a motor vehicle, which resulted in the injuries sustained by plaintiffs,” the family says in the complaint.