Apple: I'm Not Biting

I've got 70+ books on the Kindle that Ms. Buce gave me for Christmas a year ago, so I guess you could say I've more or less amortized the purchase. I tell people (strangers still ask) that it is a kludgy, overpriced laptop. I suppose that's true, but I need to add that it is my kludgy, overpriced laptop, and as a guy who likes to read a lot, I like the fact that it will slip into a lot of coat pockets, and that it's got a battery strong enough to get me to Sydney (not that I plan to go to Sydney, but it's nice to know that my Kindle will get me there).

So now, the (tee hee) Ipad. I'm not a compulsive early adopter, but I do admit I've been waiting for this one with more than usual interest. And--remind me again, why exactly? What is it that I need that would impel me to transfer 700-odd George Washingtons to the Silicon sage?

I guess I can think of one thing: backlighting. Ms. Buce would deny it, but I think one reason she gave it to me is that she assumed it would allow me to read in bed without shining that big ol' bedlamp in her eye. I thouoght so too, and we were both disappointed. Ipad has backlighting, you say? Hmm.

But other than that--well here's the thing. I don't watch a lot of movies. I'm not a gamer. They say this is "the machine for everything else." But for me, reading and writing and surfing is everything else. What I really want, I guess, is a netbook with a 10-hour battery--plus maybe a data plan, if it is cheap enough (I do think I saw one of those float by me a couple of days ago; I must not have cared enough to want to make it stop). I laugh at how dorky the Kindle is. I'm one of those who said Jeff Bezos made a mistake a year ago by trying to do something he wasn't very good at--build a machine--when he could have farmed that part out to Hewlett Packard or, hell, to Apple itself, and concentrate on delivering content.

Dorky, then, yes, but it's my dork, and for the moment I think I'll skip the Ipad and keep my money and my Kindle in my pocket.