An Apple a Day

Hubby and I were in the mall the other day and came across an Apple store, so of course we had to go in and brave the crowds. I couldn’t believe how many people were there – mostly teenagers and young adults who were looking at the latest iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch or whatever (what’s with all this “i”, “i”, “i”, by the way?) for their coming school/university year.

Of course, Hubby was in seventh heaven – the Apple store for him is what a book store is for me. And since he’s spent more than enough time humoring me on our many visits to various book stores over the years, the least I could do was show some patience while he browsed and admired the latest offerings from Apple.

Within five minutes of entering the store, Hubby zoomed in on the iPad. Well, maybe not “zoomed in” – he had to wait his turn as there were at least half a dozen others waiting to try it out. When it was finally his turn, he started waxing poetic to me about its many amazing functions. Now, I’m a self-professed technophobe who only knows what I need to know (and even that’s dubious sometimes) – but I’ll admit that even I was impressed by this nifty little gadget…ummm, I mean “tablet computer”. The salesman sidled up to us and explained that the iPad is a “platform for audio and visual media such as books, periodicals, movies, music, and games, as well as web content”, which left me none the wiser until Hubby started demonstrating it to me.

He was so enthusiastic that he must have forgotten who he was talking to when he explained, with an excited gleam in his eye, that “you can even read newspapers, magazines and books online”! Well, all that comment did was earn him one of my “looks”. Read online indeed – he knows exactly how I feel about that (so many books so little time)!

After a while, when it looked like he was going to handcuff himself to the iPad, I decided to leave him in peace for about half an hour, convinced that that he would have purchased one by the time I returned.

To my surprise, he hadn’t. After going on ad nauseum about the incomparable benefits of the iPad, he then did a complete turn-around and decided to hold off until the next version is introduced, as it will probably have “even more apps to play with”!

Whatever. It makes no difference to me – until Apple comes up with a tablet computer that makes coffee, I’ll stick to my real books, thank you!

[tags] iPad, apple, tactile-feel-books, technophobe, technology-heaven, love bookstores[/tags]