Remember when I said that I won’t be getting an iPad yet until I see more and more people using it and learn what they use it for? Well I ended up getting one in the end. Not for me but for my parents.
You see I thought about it. My Dad is really tech savvy so he’s really comfortable with the computer. My mum on the other hand isn’t. She does check e-mail and surf the net and all but it pains me to see her struggle with it sometimes. For us who use the computer every day, it’s like a second nature. Start up the computer, start up the browser and then we go in.
For my mum, she waits for the computer to start up, then spend a few seconds looking for the Internet Explorer icon. Then she sometimes runs into some problems… like the wifi from the laptop I bought her for her birthday a year ago sometimes has trouble connecting to the wifi network. I mean we ourselves sometimes find it hard to troubleshoot wifi connectivity problems… I can only imagine the pain my mum goes through.
I thought the iPad though would help her solve all that problem. She can just sit on the couch and start up a browser straight away to surf the net. She can also check her mail just by a touch of the screen. Not only that she doesn’t have to lift up her glasses and lean close to the monitor to read the tiny fonts sometimes, all she has to do is just pinch the screen outwards for the words to enlarge for her.
For that I thought it was a perfect gift! When I told my parents that I was buying them an iPad, they told me not to “waste money”. You know parents being parents.. always want you to save whatever money you have for yourself to buy your home or your car.. or for your childrens’ education in the future. They both didn’t see any need for it though. My Dad on the other hand ironically seems to get into all the Apple hype and wants whatever is new. Like when I was in the US he told me to look out for any iPads for him. Then just a few weeks ago when I told him I was going to get him an iPad he said he didn’t want one anymore. Instead he wanted an iPhone 4. Haha!
So when I wanted to buy them an iPad he said “No no.. why not you just buy mum an iPhone 4”.
I guess in the future I might buy her a new phone when I save enough money to but when I look at it right now, my mum does have an iPhone ( albeit a really old one), and she tries hard to read emails from that iPhone. The iPad offers her that lifestyle change: To be able to read her e-mails comfortable on her couch. As Ming always likes to say “Apple doesn’t really sell cutting-edge technology, they sell lifestyles!”.
I still haven’t had the chance to give it to them yet because they haven’t made a trip down to KL yet… so I don’t know if they’ll like it. In the mean time, I’ve been playing around with it and installing some stuff on it that I think they’d want.
When Kitteh and Angela were watching Bucket List the other day, I brought it down to the living room and sat on the couch to read some news.
I thought it was okay for a while and one thing about the iPad is that the flashy OS really really gives you a very good first impression. Really makes you wow. But over extended periods of time I began to feel a little bit uncomfortable surfing the net or doing stuff in whatever position I was in.
Basically the only position that I felt comfortable in was when I was laying back on the couch in the previous picture. Anything else made me pretty uncomfortable. Even laying it flat on a flat surface. Really painful after some long hours.
Also I found it slow in moving between browser tabs and a bit frustrating that it was hard for me to multi-task. Can’t chat on MSN and surf the web at the same time too well.
By the time I got back to my laptop later in the night, it felt really good to be back to the familiar. I Googled around to see if anyone else found it difficult to get into the right positions and found a number of sites that mentioned how the iPad can be ergonomically bad for you. Bad for your posture.
Overall though I still think it’s one of those devices that I may not find an immediate use for but… I won’t mind having anyway. It’s really more for fun than a necessity (although some people tell me they use it for presentations in meetings and other work stuff which is cool) but then again so are so many other things we buy. I won’t mind having one of my own one day for the sake of having one… because I’m such a big geek. I hope my parents like it though. I guess we’ll find out soon.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space