My iPad and the Tanuki Suit.

 

Why is it when you find a feature on a Mac it is a cool and thoughtful thing, but when you find one on a PC it pisses you off and you feel like the geeks at Microsoft are fucking with you?  

 

Now that I own a Mac (iPad) I understand why Mac people look down their noses at PC people.  It really comes down to Features and Bugs.  The Mac has features that are generally not documented, but you feel pleased when you run across one.  The PC has features as well and they are carefully documented, but you can’t find them when you need them.   This bugs me.  A lot.

My iPad came with a manual that said “Charge it before playing with it, don’t be rough or it will break, oh and don’t submerge it in water.”  That’s basically it.  With PCs it is a bit different.  The book stores are filled with thousand page manuals on how to use Word.  College courses are held just to learn to format a document.  My iPad does what I want it to do intuitively, but it also has a bunch of stuff I didn’t know I needed built right in. 

 

It’s like playing the old Nintendo Mario Brothers video games.  Sure you could complete a level playing it straight, but it is much more fun to hunt around and find all the extra goodies hidden inside blocks and shadows.  I can’t tell you how many lives I wasted hunting for coins, mushrooms, or that elusive, but powerful raccoon (Tanuki) suit.  I just love the raccoon suit. 

 

Owning an iPad, is like finding a raccoon suit every day. You really don’t know all the things it can do until you try it, on purpose or by accident.  For example I downloaded an e-book app.  Sure it looks like a book, flips pages like a book, and I can even change the brightness, size, and font.  I expected it to do all of that.  However, while I was reading a book I held my finger on the screen for a bit longer than I normally do to change the page.  It asked if I wanted to highlight the word, add a note, or get a definition of the word.  That was quite thoughtful, but I would rather just read, so I lifted my finger and it immediately went back to displaying the text.  I didn’t have to click a box, or scroll down, or click alt F3 or some such foolishness.  Another Raccoon suit found. 
Now I am looking for that suit where you can spit fireballs.  Then I can take care of the pesky old HP desktop I have laying around.

 

-pF