“It only comes in one color”

After three decades of computing some people cannot accept that things evolve; and evolve quickly.

Example number 1…

What the iPad Can’t Do | The New York Review of Books.

By the time the article was printed, the functionality was announced for the end of the month.

The big difference with computing is that you can radically change a produce after it has shipped. You’re often buying potential not a product.

“I couldn’t use it because my fingers are too large.”

“I couldn’t use it because of the finger marks on the screen.”

This I confirm from experience. You quickly get fed up of the web on an iPod. However, the iPad is a very different beast.

Deagol’s AAPL Model: iPad web usage passes iPod.

Should be published in every school and stuck to the desk of every journalist.

UK public spending by government department | News | guardian.co.uk.

Sitting on the train reading my RSS feed.

Young man with backpack sits down next to me and watches over my shoulder for 5 mins. I’m used to this now and let him until the point where his head is almost on my shoulder. I nudge him off me.

He sort of says to nobody “Apple are too expensive!”

He then gets a notebook out of his backpack and proceeds to boot it. 5 mins later he’s in Excel. Then he folds the screen into a tablet form and tries use Excel with his finger. After struggling for a bit he produces a stylus. Finally, he’s off to the races.

After about 5 mins in Excel the PC shuts down because his batteries are gone. Cue big sigh and another “Apples are too expensive” under his breath.

Standing in the office coffee room.

“The iPad is really nice but it can’t read PDFs!”

I reply, “yes it can, look”. I open a PDF file and show him.

“That can’t be a PDF file because they said in the paper that PDFs don’t work on iPads. Anyway, it’s a waste of money.”

Sitting in a restaurant with the iPad surfing the web when a waiter walks up…

“How big is the hard disk?”

“Erm…”. I turn it over and check the back, “64 Gb”.

“As I thought, useless for films”

And with that he walked off with a spring in his step having put me in my place.