A new Apple iPad

I have got a new Apple iPad.  I do not need a new Apple iPad.  It cost just over $1000.  Mary said get it.  I think she feels, among other stuff, that here on the western slopes of life, as it were, we might as well indulge ourselves a little. 

It has taken me 3 or 4 days to get it set up.  All by myself.  Blokes don’t read manuals.  There isn’t one anyway.  If you find one on the Web, it’s incomprehensible. The first day was the worst because I simply didn’t know what I’d bought or what it was for.

But my old friend MacCuish had got/been given one, which I think he uses mainly as an eReader, with books downloaded by his wife Robin.  Barrie was seriously cyberphobic… until now.  And then I learned that my son-in-law Simon had one, after informing me quite recently that these things added nothing to life and were unnecessary if you had an efficient laptop, which I have.  Finally, in Brisbane last week, I found my son Rhys had an iPad.  He uses it constantly, amid all the other cyber gear with which he is surrounded.  He does Skype conferences with his London colleagues, holding it in his hands out on the deck.

Mary perhaps realized I was already a goner. 

On the 4^th day I realized most things were now running and more or less clear to me.  There has been endless hassle with codes, passwords and whatnot, hitting the wrong buttons, getting out of silly situations, losing all the data I had entered…  The Wi-Fi modem plays up – or else simply reacts to the wireless environment around here – but we win through.  The iPad is solid state, no moving parts, and so it’s quick, and does exactly what I say, mistakenly or otherwise. 

I love its portability.  The house modem has to be kept on.  But the only way all this can be justified, since I am not running a corporation or researching for a PhD, is that it amuses and occupies an old bloke.

Word processing (ie. writing) still needs to be done on the laptop, perhaps, because its keyboard is better and the whole thing is a bit slower.