Along for the ride:

Monday, January 20, 2014

Freedom, your name is iPad



Thank goodness for a visit from a friend who is knowledge-laden and bowed down with computer lore, as well as carrying great insights about the aspects of my life that needed nurturing by a new technological touchstone. After much puzzling over which digi-friend would be the best companion on my time travels to catch up and become validated as a citizen of twentyfirstdom, there is an iPad Air in the Chiefdom, with a Regal red cloak and a magical, magnetically attachable key-board, in lieu of a scepter.
Said much traveled and foreign-living friend, (dragged) drove me five miles to the new, and previously unexplored, territories of  Bighallways Shopping Mall where many Blueshirted minions were scurrying to arrive at a glass cube, named AppleStore. The secret of the blue shirts was revealed as the glass panels opened before them, whilst a wizard stroked his magic book and waved his fingers in graceful, yet incomprehensible gestures. Several attempts to follow the blue ones through the portal were rebuffed by the gate-keeping Sorcerer, until the spell written on his tome turned from 09:59 to, what must be, the witching hour of 10:00. Open sesame!
We were paired with a charming Blueshirt named Jill, who maintained her composure and lovely smile in the face of a torrent of queries and way too much extraneous information. Lovely Gadabout Friend negotiated "many useful things" to be added to my personal electronic steed, as well as acquiring a 10% employee discount; although she does not own a blue shirt and that is not one of  her colors. May hap we wore them down?

21 comments:

  1. Love my iPad and keyboard and take it with new everywhere.( most times sans keyboard) I like to play games on it too. Comes in handy when waiting in an office to keep boredom down. I'm on it right now. Enjoy your new connection to the world!

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    1. Grey Horse, I think we're all used to working out which random word was altered by the smart-ass technology:)

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  2. P.S. You need to watch out for the spellcheck feature...meant to say me and it changed it to new. I really need to check the spelling before I hit send.

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  3. Does it play DVD's? I was thinking for getting one if my laptop ever dies. I would say "when it dies" but I don't want to offend it. It knows what I m writing....

    Anyway, I bring my laptop with me to work sometimes and if I have time I can watch a DVD.

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    1. Birdie, there's no slot to insert DVD's but there are other ways, or so I'm told.

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  4. May the magic surround you. Enjoy the new adventure of joining the IIPad age. (I don't have one myself. It's OK, I think I will survive anyhow.)

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    1. Jean, I was getting to the stage where visiting a client with a big portfolio of photos was so out-dated, I had to make a change. Wealthy techie clients are used to very visual (and easy) presentations.

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  5. I nearly bought one at Heathrow....a really helpful salesman explained it all....and then said to me...but you don't really need one, you know..

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    1. Helen, how did he know that you didn't need one? That's why I took a friend with me who was qualified to help me judge what my needs are. I went to Office Max and Costco first, to price and evaluate lap-tops v. android tablets v. iPads.

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    2. I didn't need one either, but my iPad mini and I are now utterly inseparable. Best Gadget ever. Welcome to the crowd!

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    3. Minerva, it is a bit cult like, isn't it. Mac was like that too.

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  6. I have a good friend who has one of these and just loves it.

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    1. Stephen, I'm going to a free training session tomorrow. I already know I made the right choice but I expect to learn a lot of new things.

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  7. Congratulations !! You really have joined the grownups !
    I've just spent three days faffing about with Audible and ITunes and am all onlined out . I'm going back to smoke signals ....

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    1. S&S, Thank you. The iPad seems ideal to meet my personal and business needs. I still have my PC for hardcore office/admin work.

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  8. After 16 years working and playing with PCs, I switched to a Mac. It's been a wonderful ride, so far. Have yet to get an iPad and, until I do, the iPhone will continues to get hammered. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts in a couple of weeks. I'm sure you'll be smitten

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  9. Hi Martin, my first computer was a Mac. I went PC for bookkeeping and price but The Artistic One has stayed with Macs for himself. TAO has had an iPad for ages. He has a paintbrush stylus attachment for his. I guess I'm used to a bilingual environment:)

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  11. ^^ Lincoln Madison visited my blog too. How lucky are we? I love all things Mac- iPad meets so many needs in one tiny little package :) Congrats!

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  12. Hostage, it's proving itself nicely, thank you.

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  13. Give me anything Apple and I’m in heaven. Mac, IPad, IPhone, all of them talking to each other even without me telling them too.

    You’ll find the little friend indispensable before long.

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