Confessions of an iPad User

Dear people of the internet, particularly those who feel to hijack the comments sections of every tech web page with your anti-iPad screeds,

I own an iPad. I admit that I didn’t intend to buy one originally. I wasn’t a scoffer—I’d simply hoped to wait for the second generation. But then I played with them in the stores, and more particularly, got to sit down with one that a friend had bought, and I was hooked. I could easily see how I could fit one into my everyday life and work style.

So yes, I made a reservation and picked up an iPad a week and a half later. And here’s the thing: I really like my iPad. One of the first things I did was to put two-hundred and thirty-six of my favorite books on it, so that I could use it as a reading device. (And I haven’t even begun to score my classic favorites from Project Gutenberg, yet.) Yes, I could read books on my computer. I don’t like doing it though, any more than I enjoy watching movies or television programs on my computer when I could do it on my, you know. Television. Why do I like reading on my iPad so much? Because I can take it to bed. I can turn it sideways and read lying down. It weighs practically nothing. The screen is big. I can adjust the brightness and the typeface and the type size to suit my whims. I can hold it with one hand while I do my business on the john.

I use the iPad as my portable music library. The ForScore app allows me to organize PDF files of piano sheet music and have them all in one lightweight and easily transportable device. One that’s backlit, thank you very much. When I tap the glass, the page flips, and stays flipped. I can annotate and highlight sections. The app came with 1300 pages of sample piano music already installed. My repertoire consists of classical pieces in the public domain, so I’ve easily doubled that just by looking on public score repositories for stuff I already knew.

I’ve got access to all the internet services on my iPad that I really need. And I like the device because it’s slim and portable. I can stick it into its carrying case and take it out on the town without feeling compelled to drag along accessories and power cords and all the little things that my everyday computer would require. The battery lasts me a good dozen hours. I can use it at a table, or sitting in a comfy chair, or while I’m flat on my back. It carries a decent chunk of my music library. I have a word processor on it, so I can carry around copies of my latest manuscripts and work on new ones. It’s easy to type on. Easier still if I flip on my tiny bluetooth keyboard. It’s silent, cool, and suits me perfectly. And I suspect the thing hasn’t even come into its real heyday yet.

So this is what I don’t get, trolls of the internet. If I like a device, and if I find a lot of utility for it, why do you care if I bought it or not? I didn’t, as far as I’m aware, use your money for the purchase. That came out of my own bank account.

You can lecture me all you want about the alternatives. I can’t see myself propping a netbook up on a piano rack to play, much less annotating my score and flipping pages easily. I’m not going to take one into bed to read, either. I’m happy with what I have. Why do you care so much?

It seems to me that though they purport to be higher-minded and smarter than Apple fanboys, the Apple haters are an even more obnoxious breed. They hijack any internet forum they can to disparage Apple products, malign Apple users, and say anything they can to make themselves feel better about their own purchasing choices. Yet their pretense of despising anything ‘trendy’ is trendiness itself; jumping on a brand and its users on the internet isn’t a way of expressing your superior individuality. It’s just anonymous dog-piling, and takes no more thought than farting.

Dudes. Buy what you want. If it’s a Droid or a Windows product, it makes no never-mind to me. I don’t think any the less of you. Say what you want about me, but I honestly don’t believe that one’s computing purchases define me as an individual, any more than I believe wearing a shirt with an Abercrombie and Fitch logo will turn me into a sun-tanned catalog model, or slapping on American Apparel will turn me into an urban hipster. Bashing people for sport doesn’t make you a superior person. I buy what I like, if I like, and I let other people do the same.

Why don’t you?