Okay, I’ve been thinking about it, so I’ll post about it: this tablet dealio.
I really don’t get it. I have a computer for creating content; I have an iPhone for keeping in touch and viewing media on the go. The iPad falls into an uncomfortable netherworld in-between that I guess I’m just not the target audience for… And the intended target audience seems to be “people with unlimited amounts of money for constantly buying stuff from Big Media”.
I used to be one of those awful Apple zealots when I started computing, and I’d honestly never used a Windows machine. Now I’ve been in both camps, and I have to say I do like using Apple devices. They facilitate creative work (like making a podcast) that it had never occurred to me to do before. But ultimately, all these things are tools; what matters is what you do with them, not which object you’re seen with. (To quote Chuck Palahniuk, “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive…”)
I’m thrilled to find that, facing the unprecedented nuclear blast of iPad hype, I am unmoved, undesiring. It feels like a spiritual win.
Seeing books on this thing makes me want to rush home and print out a real book. Confession: When I buy e-books, I often print and bind them. What Apple shows in their demo looks like a document, not a book. (That wide line-spacing, for starters, makes my eyes want to wander elsewhere.)
I know the traditional publishers are looking at these things with $$s/££s in their eyes, and I don’t wish them any ill. If this is the chemo they need, fine. And if this drives more people to read more (and more diverse) fiction, wonderful!
(And, phew!, they chose the e-book format I’ve already released my novels in.)
But the art of making books will not go away, and the hospital-room fluorescence of these ‘pages’ can only underscore the pleasures of real paper and artful typography. I don’t think the skills or demand of book designers will be adversely affected by this development, as it’ll be some time yet before these devices rival the deliberate customisation of a typeset page — if ever they could.
Computer-wise, I used to use Pocket PCs and a small “Ultra-Mobile PC”, so I know the pain of:
- using stripped-down versions of programs
- not being able to open files my client sends me while I’m on the road
- having to maintain more than one computer, and discovering at the coffeeshop that the file I need is at home because I forgot to synchronise
Nice work, but… I pass.
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