The First-Generation iPad: 1 Year Later

They’re close. I could almost buy one. Probably will. Can I have one more goody, please? I’d like that neat, compact Apple bluetooth keypad to be able to be latched on to the iPad. Why? If I’m going to use it *like* a laptop, I want that laptop functionality of being able to control it physically by putting my hands on the keypad, and not having to prop the display up *somehow* or other and have it slipping around. On the Acela, the two separately are going to be an unnecessary pain. Mr. Jobs and co., if you can’t do that, could you make the keypad and the display units of a Mac Book Air detachable? You’d get to the same best of both worlds.

Glad to see some love for the iPad, especially after the article by Ben Wieder earlier this week.

My life changed significantly the day the wife and I had a rendezvous with the UPS delivery man to pick up our iPads. On the home front, the most significant change made was terminating our cable service. We now view shows on the iPads and AppleTV using Netflix, Hulu, ABC Player, and PBS.

Like the authors above, the iPad hasn’t replaced my desktop at work or my laptop at home. But I no longer feel the need to carry my laptop and cache of flash drives. I actually bought a smaller messenger bag to just carry my iPad, a note pad, and my coffee mug. In addition to the apps mentioned above, I also use Note Taker HD (it’s particularly helpful to also use a Pogo Sketch stylus), Diigo, Mendeley, and Parallels (works like LogMeIn, but it’s a Windows emulated session on my Mac).

As an early adopter of technology, I remember early on how I became an informal sales person for Apple showing colleagues and students my iPad. My peers in my PhD program used to tease me because I kept talking about the iPad so much. Now close to a third of my cohort peers have an iPad. My students thought I was crazy because the only thing I would bring to the classroom was my iPad and a VGA adapter. To this day, my students would joke about how the iPad is glued to my left hand whenever I would lecture or walk around campus. But I’m seeing more and more students reading from it or using it for homework. It’s amazing how quickly society has adopted the iPad. I’m now shifting from talking about how great the iPad is to now showing people what they can do with the device and showing them how incorporate the device at work.

In my evolving role as an educator, the iPad didn’t replace anything. Overall, the iPad has made my work accessible. I no longer have to remember where I saved files or sift through flash drives. When I work on a document or slide deck for classes, I can start it on my iPad and then continue working on it using my desktop computer.

Because my work is now more accessible, there is a greater danger I can access my work at any time, any place. Working full-time (in the University of Cincinnati Honors Program) and being in a doctoral program (Student Affairs in Higher Education at Miami University, Oxford) creates a distinct separation. But if I wasn’t in a doctoral program, I can see how the iPad could easily blur the work-life balance. Blackberries Droids, and iPhones already facilitate that process. But the design features of the iPad facilitates an exaggerated blurring of that delicate balance. Like smart phones, the iPad is an everyday and everything device (yes, it can also become a TV remote control). We just need to continuously be mindful of how the device could make life more efficient and that it should not replace how we live life.

I’ve gone through a number of devices hoping to lighten my load for trips, stretching back to a Zaurus and most recently an eee laptop. The iPad is by far the winner. And while I did feel nervous the first few times I left my heavy laptop home (and wince at how much I’ve paid for apps like LogMeIn and basic SSH and FTP), it’s now nearly my constant companion. Enough so that I may actually save up for the iPad 3 when it comes out in October, rather than doing my usual “give it a year” take on new tech.

Is it perfect? Of course not. Stupid stuff like not being able to project everything, or hobbled versions of Keynote, is annoying for a teacher. And despite an intuitive interface, there are still frustrations with moving images around and the like (as noted above). But on the whole, this was the rare tech expense that didn’t lead to a little cognitive dissonance / buyers remorse.

And maybe the Roman Catholic Church also misjudged the assignment.

I think it is common practice in classes that teach grantwriting to give students the assignment to write a grant–one that will actually be submitted to a real funder on behalf of a real client. For those who have made such assignments, how do you handle the grade? If you thought it was competitive, does it pass even if the funder declines to support it?

Those instances of fund raising money don’t buy you a raise in your grade.

llanorealists says ‘these weren’t tips’. Actually, at $25 and $50, they were. $25,000, another matter.

Who is the victim of such a “violation”?

I see no reason why libraries, academic or otherwise, should be exempt from observance of copyright law.  These books are ALREADY available through the University of Michigan libraries, and probably, also other libraries and on the used book market. It’s not like the U of M is really making unavailable works available.

This action seems designed to generate a copyright test case, much like the suit against Google for scanning the books in the first place. Not all the authors, illustrators, and other copyright owners will appear within 90 days, consequently their works will be e-distributed without their permission, probably with no DRM so that the works will be all over the world, free, in a short time.

Two versions of the proposed Google Settlement have been rejected by the courts, and an opt-in-only arrangement has been suggested by the US Justice Department, among other parties. So what, now the libraries are testing whether a nonprofit free distribution–by entities that, unlike Google, are not currently being investigated by the Justice Department–will fly by the courts?  The proposed Google Settlement promises that Google will pay for all lawsuits against the libraries. Even though that Settlement has been rejected by the court, is Google paying the U of M’s legal fees for the lawsuits this project will undoubtedly spark?  Mr, Courant–how exactly is Google involved in this action? Other than, of course, scanning all those books free of charge for you?

Hehe, he doesn’t seem to mention philosophy – ‘incoherence’ is the thing that will flunk you out of philosophy.

flotsam,acutally a better understanding of history might be a better course of action.

“I tell them that during the Pax Britannica (1815-1914), France’s economic growth lagged behind that of Britain, Germany, and the United States in part because of the peculiar French habit of buying government bonds, including ones such as Czarist Russia’s, that ultimately defaulted.”

One might think that the fact that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815 by the British and the Prussians and then Napoleon III being crushed by the Prussians in 1870 with accompanying payments to the victors, might be more important.  The revolutions,coups and Paris Commune might have also had a impact.  Though it is a common view that the lack of confidence in the reliable payment of French government bonds meant that the French government had difficulty raising money and paid higher rates than the British thus hindering its ability to wage war successfully.   The Czarist default (after 1914) might be laid at the feet of the British and the United States who both retreated from Russia and Red Army of Trotsky and Lenin.

The British Parliament had solved the reliability problem by cutting off Charles I’s head and then chasing out James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.  The earlier stock fraud of the Mississippi Bubble also caused the French to be leary of investments in companies and like gold coins.

It is commonly argued that the massive National Debt was a key element in British success and stability since it was held by those who dominated Parliament so it meant that they had a vested interest in paying the interest and preserving the principal by preserving the British state.  This debt was typically associated with the cost of waging war against the French or someone else.  British economic growth during the latter part of this period was pretty weak compared to Prussia/Germany and the US, probably around the interest rate of consols.  

One key economic lesson is: if you fight a war, win it and extract massive tribute from the loser, or in the case of the Romans and other ancients, take lots of slaves, loot and good agricultural land.

That’s a non-sequitur, if you have been following anything Richard Vedder and his colleagues at CCAP, you would know that the way in which higher education is funded is contributing to its extravagant cost acceleration, and likewise its deterioration in academic quality.

Have you seen this? http://www.theonion.com/articles/historians-politely-remind-nation-to-check-whats-h,26183/ because quite frankly, it’s one of the few true things I’ve seen about the consequences of a) not asking historians and b) historians being far too polite to say it’s been tried before, and failed miserably.

I am happy you teach what you do.  At my college, history and economics faculty have gone so far “to the left,” that many tell students that debt doesn’t matter and they are entitled to a free education:  let the rich pay for it.  However, they don’t tell students who is “rich” or the result of debt.  I recommend a book called “This Time Is Different.”  Same story:  deficit spending does make a difference, even though the economies that say it doesn’t suffer mass inflation or deflation.  I’ve spent my career in higher education, but I’m beginning to wonder of students are better or worse off from having attended many of our schools.  They may have a piece of paper but no ability to think.