Stephen McGinty: Touchy subject of new iPad

DO YOU think David Cameron got a heads up about the launch of the new iPad? Or, to use its proper Sunday name “new iPad”. (No, not “the iPad3” as you might have thought the successor of iPad2 would be called, because as Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, said: “We don’t like to be predictable.”

Well, Francis Ford Coppola didn’t want to be predictable either. After The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, he had wanted to call the final part of the trilogy The Death of Michael Corleone, but he saw sense and gave the public what they wanted: The Godfather Part III, but, oh no, Apple has to go and confuse everyone. Take, for example, my good self: having been bestowed with the gift of an iPad2 for my birthday, I can no longer show it off as my “new iPad”. People will peer over their spectacles at my four-week-old iPad2, sneer, then say: “I don’t think so.”

Frankly, having spent so long nervously waiting to jump onto the bandwagon, I feel a little disappointed that, after just a month of riding around, they have unhitched my caboose and rocketed off on “the new iPad” powered by “superlative retina display, quad-core graphics and an AX5 processor”. (I do not know what any of that means.)

But my feelings are as nothing to our Prime Minister’s. Imagine the scenario: you ask the government’s eggheads to develop a special, super-duper, super-secure PM app, which allows you to check unemployment stats, economic data, policy papers, well, pretty much everything a normal iPad app will do for 49p, but they shake their heads and say: “It’s gonna cost you twenty grand, at least.” He says: “To hell with the trillion pound deficit, I want my PM app.”

Then, after months of waiting and anxious to be the coolest, tech-savy leader in the G8, he takes delivery of his new upgraded app, only to discover his model has been superseded and the public purse will not stretch to the purchase of the “new iPad”.

Is it appropriate to stroke your iPad? Or lick it? Have you felt that tangy taste of steel under your tongue? One thing I have decided is that it is inappropriate to take my iPad to bed with me. The first week or so, when the sheer novelty factor was at its height and there was the opportunity to catch up with Borgen and Birdsong on the BBC iPlayer, I confess that I did cradle it in my arms, but there is a difference between slumping asleep while reading a book and the clattering, and potentially expensive, din of a dropped iPad. But then I began to notice my sleep was actually becoming impaired. Where once all it took was a chapter or two to harness me to the Carousel of Nod, I noticed, like popping open a tin of Pringles, with the iPlayer there was always a desire for just one more episode or programme until hours had slipped by and the din of Danish politicians was replaced by the dawn chorus.

On the issue of the iPad’s keyboard, I would now consider myself an expert. For those content to use the glacial screen to type and for an e-mail or so, it is fine, but I couldn’t bear to type an article on it. So I began to look around.

At first I went for a rubberised Bluetooth keyboard. However, after a week of trying it out, I was averaging four typographical mistakes per line. I didn’t like the rubber keys or the sunken design and so, shamelessly, and, successfully, I took it back to Comet and secured a refund.

I was quite impressed with myself as Comet has a neat little get out clause which says items can be returned within 28 days with the appropriate receipt AND if still wrapped in the original packaging. So, if you brought it home, stared at it for a week and then brought it back, cellophane wrapped, you should be alright, anything else and I expected a shake of the head, a sigh and the response: “Computer says No”. On this occasion, however, computer said Yes.

I then spotted a review for the Zaggfolio and ordered one for… guess what?

Just a second ago I wanted to type how much I paid for it, but when I looked for the pound sign, I have now discovered there isn’t one. I can type that it cost $85 and you will have to imagine the dollar sign is a pound sign. Hmm. (That’s not very good. In fact, it reminds me of when I bought a car, drove it out of the showroom and home and then went to open the back door and realised it didn’t have any. It was a two-door and not a four-door.) OK. I’m going to scan every line in case its lurking elsewhere. Back in a minute. No none. (I tried that with the car too with the same lack of success.)

OK. I had planned to eulogise the Zaggfolio, but clearly, despite the presence of “cut and paste” keys, the total absence of a (pound sign) will mean marks off, but not too many. It is not as if I write for the business pages and I’m sure there will be an app that will come to my rescue. Anyone with a solution can e-mail me at [email protected].

This is another point of which I am extraordinarily proud, despite the fact that Apple has been doling out e-mail addresses for 20 years, I would appear to be the first “Stephen McGinty” to actually want one. None of this steve1061 nonsense for me. Perhaps the rest of the world’s McGintys are PCs.

My first attempt at buying an e-book was unsuccessful. Having been given a Waterstones’ voucher for my aforementioned birthday, I bought one from them. Only to discover that Waterstones ebooks use Flash which, apparently, Steve Jobs hated and wouldn’t support or something, so it doesn’t work with the iPad or any Apple device.

Another refund later and I was tinkering with the delights of free sample chapters, including my own book, Camp Z: The Secret Life of Rudolf Hess. (I was gripped.)

The haste with which I have been seduced by e-book is rather distressing. I’m hopeful that the white heat of a new passion will soon burn off, but I’m already viewing the mountainous piles of hardbacks in the office and pondering how easily every one could now fit under my arm. Then I think of them, imprisoned behind glass like General Zod at the end of Superman II, and feel quite sad.

While I think the hardback as a beautiful collector’s item will remain, I can see the market for paperbacks all but swept away. This was most brought home to me by Alan Yentob’s recent Imagine on the future of the book, where he visited Oxford University to inspect 4th century books and pondered how, with its hardback binding and stitched pages, it would remain unchanged for another 16th centuries. Until now.

We’ve re-embraced the scroll. When it came to (excuse me for a sec, I have to click off pages and scroll back to check whether it was initial caps) FaceTime, my sense of wonder was swiftly beaten up by my sense of vanity. How about a little Vaseline or gauze on the lens, chaps? My first thought when my wife’s face appeared on the screen and her voice emerged from the iPad was: “My God: This is like Star Wars.” My second thought when glancing up at the corner of the screen to see the sagging fleshy pallor of the digital image of me was: “My God: I look like Alec Guinness.”

“Thank God, we’re already married,” said Lori as I began tilting the iPad in a bid to discover my most flattering angle. Filmed from below I was the Walrus King, but from above, with my arm fully extended at a 45-degree angle and my wrist bent to 90 degrees I had adopted a certain rakish charm for the few seconds with which I could hold it in place. Finally I discovered that my most flattering angle was on the phone.

Yet, for all its technological wizardry and, make no mistake, the iPad (with a Zaggfolio keyboard) is the perfect “journalist’s toolbox”, it is the little audible touches that I adore. I remember an old episode of Rab C Nesbitt in which Govan’s inebriated philosopher was lingering around the electronics department of House of Fraser, phuttering with the ghettoblasters. As he pressed a button and watched as the tape flap silently opened, he turned to the camera and said: “Soft eject. I do love that.” I’m sure he’d feel the same way, as I certainly do, about the iPad’s slide lock and its deliciously satisfying click.

For me, the wonder of the iPad is that it resembles a gadget of such sophistication, brilliance and power – one which literally folds the world (see Google Maps) and the sum of all human knowledge into a titanium rectangle – that in the past it could only have been in the possession of presidents and Prime Minister.