I should have known. Let yourself be pulled into watching an actual network television show (although they seem to be calling them television “events” now), and before long, it will become just as stupid as everything else.
I’m talking about ABC’s Modern Family here. It’s a surprisingly good comedy at its best, though it’s been prey to the horrible convention that’s developed in the last few years, the closing musical sequence. You know—the part in which some angst-ridden hipster croons and cracks away over a melange of boring drums and jangly guitar, the whole midtempo mess building to a heavily compressed high note that’s held till the royalty checks pour in, all while some character offers confident pop-psych “wisdom” about, you know, life and stuff. But then everything’s that way, when you think about it—you watch some show, and then it ends, just like it began, and then it all happens again.
Anyway. The March 31 episode was basically a mildly amusing infomercial for the iPad, complete with a character fondling the thing at the end and saying “I love you” to it. Wow, is that funny. Or more accurately: wow, is that funny? Have the tendrils of Apple’s drive toward monocultural gadgetry gone so far that they can order up a sitcom devoted to the latest upsizing?
I don’t get the iPad fascination. From the look of it, you could just buy yourself an iPhone and a magnifying glass, and you’d be all set. The thing would look best in the hands of someone in red shoes named Giggles T. Clown.
What’s next—the iTable? Come to think of it, that might be better. You know, virtual Twister and stuff. Or heck, the iWall would be nice. Why go halfway with these things? Seeing Jane Fonda in Barbarella take up an entire wall is much more appealing than typing emails on something the size of a Hungry Man frozen dinner.
Granted, I’m not the target audience—I don’t own a cell phone, let alone an iPhone. But what really bugs me about the thing is that, without add-ons, it takes away every form of input save fondling. And yeah, yeah, I know, it’s got some sort of touch keyboard. So do debit card machines and cash registers—but would anyone want to type a story on them?
The current ad for the iPad depicts lots of Web browsing, checking out photos, and answering an email. Absent? Anything creative. Apple isn’t pushing the apps that help people create.
Just check out the copy from Apple’s website: “Imagine being able to page through websites, write an email, flick through photos, or watch a movie. All on a big, beautiful Multi-Touch screen. With just the touch of a finger.”
Lame as it is, that’s the pitch. It’s being sold as another device to browse the Web and stuff.
Another Apple page declares one of the weirdest advantages yet: “It lets you see and touch your email in ways you never could before.” And indeed, who among us, while reading another missive offering “discount Vi3gr@,” has not wanted to reach out to the 12-point Palatino Linotype, trace its pint-sized serifs with galloping abandon until we run our fingertips across the very essence, the calligraphic flights into the seraph-drenched haze, of Gianbattista Palatino?
I don’t think Steve Jobs has that in mind so much. His plan is apparently that we will download applications from Apple and sit around pawing our iPads as if they were umbically attached TVs. That brings consuming to a whole new level, and deifying consumption is the best way, I’m convinced, to accelerate devolution.
The iPad can clearly do more—creativity apps are no doubt out there—but it’s sold on the notion that you can customize your consuming. Your consuming, that is, of products loaded with DRM (Digital Rights Management) limitations, obtained with and only with the aid of Apple and its iStore and iTunes and iOwnYourMoney. That’s simply not exciting.
There is a glimmer of hope, though. These machines could become something more in the right hands. Just as audiophiles can bypass Apple’s iPod software to play more kinds of music files, it seems certain that tinkerers worldwide are aiming for that kind of ploy here. They’re doing everything they’re not supposed to with their new iPads: opening them, hacking them, and ignoring the monopolistic niceties of Apple-sanctioned app development.
While most users will go happily about their business, viewing photos and watching movies with lots of eye candy, the indefatigable forces who want to remove the veil of mystery from machines will go to work. Maybe with their help, iPads will become what they ought to be: interesting pieces of hardware that can be made to do whatever end users decide they should, whether Apple sells it that way or not.