Tell me something: why are so many people I know so excited to watch a movie or television show from their iPad when they’re at home?
I know what you’re going to say. While your significant other is watching their favorite show in the living room, the iPad (or another tablet) gives you the chance to watch what you want in another room without being forced to sit through another episode of a show you don’t like.
I was recently sitting in my living room, thinking about what my next column topic should be here on SlashGear. I considered a discussion on Microsoft’s Kinect. I thought about talking about my experience with set-top boxes that have clunky menus. But then I remembered the iPad 2 is now on store shelves. And it quickly became clear that it was the perfect time to talk about my issue with Apple’s tablet.
For a while, I believed that I could effectively keep away from 3D gaming. Even as it was brought to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and as the 3DS launch nears, I believed that my distaste for even the idea of 3D gaming would be enough for me to stick in the 2D realm forever.
But then Killzone 3 arrived at my house. And a perfect storm erupted in my living room.
When I walked into Square Burger for the second time, it wasn’t hard to notice that the staff was treating me a little bit differently. The bartender remembered my name and the beer I had drunk on my last visit. They have a few dozen beers on tap, so that was something of an accomplishment on both counts. I sat at the counter and ordered lunch. The first time I had eaten a burger with bleu cheese and balsamic onions. This time I went for a cheeseburger with bacon. I stuck with the sweet potato fries, because they were awesome. I’ve been to Square Burger five times in the last year and a half, and I’ve never tried the regular fries. Those sweet potato fries are better than they deserve to be.
For Apple, the mobile market is a cash cow. The company’s iPhone and iPad are proving to be the top mobile companions for people around the globe. Apple has sold over 100 million iPhones. Its iPad sales have hit 15 million. The company understands the mobile market and it knows how to capitalize on it.
When I was 14 my parents bought me an account on the Prodigy network. This was back in 1989, before I had a clue the Internet existed, and four years before the first graphical Web browser would be introduced. I did all the things on Prodigy that you did when you first discovered the Internet. I had email conversations and grew addicted to the chiming sound when I fired up the 2400 baud modem and discovered I had new mail. I posted messages on bulletin boards and got into long-winded arguments with people for no good reason. I did research for school projects, played games and read news, and generally poked around the seemingly limitless world the growing network offered. I also pretended to be someone else.
With few surprises, techies were underwhelmed with Apple’s iPad 2 announcement, but I’m confident that consumers will be thrilled with the product. Apple already had a massive lead in the consumer tablet market it created, and these “underwhelming” upgrades should keep the company comfortably ahead. Apple has given competitors an opening by sticking to 3G, and it did not further pressure them with a lower entry price point or higher-resolution display. However, Apple has three critical advantages.
The “post-PC” world. Sounds great, doesn’t it. No more malware headaches, none of that awful association with dull cubicle work. Steve Jobs sits in a comfy chair and pages happily through his latest productivity-slash-entertainment apps; we imagine ourselves soaking up the WiFi in our local coffee shop, whiling our days shooting 720p video, editing it and uploading it all in one fell swoop. Dump your desk chairs, throw away your mouse mats. The iPad 2 has saved us from our shackles and shown us the light.
If you’re anything like me, you spend quite a bit of time at Best Buy looking at the televisions. You don’t necessarily want to buy one of them, but you’re interested in the changes that are going on in the marketplace. And you want to see what makes some sets so special.
I worked in the North Orange, New Jersey school district for one day. It was a training day. I had accepted a job as a teacher in a fine High School (read: rich) teaching Journalism and Theater Arts. As a challenge, this was a step down from the English teaching I had been doing at inner city High Schools for the past five years, but it would have been a very cushy teaching job. I had been offered a salary of $75,000, which is more than I thought a teacher could make. On my first day of training, a couple weeks before the school year started, I got a call from a Web site to which I had also applied for a job. They wanted me to work for them as a product reviewer and news writer.
Having reviewed some of the worst movies of the year for this SlashGear column, I can finally set my sights on the best of the best, just in time for the Oscars. I’m only going to focus on one category, the most important one, the Best Picture. Full disclosure: I haven’t seen all of the movies, but I’ve seen more of the ten nominees this year than in years past, and I’ve probably seen more than you have, because you didn’t want to sit through the movie where the guy cuts his own arm off.
My love for video games is unconditional. I’m just as much a fan of the Nintendo Entertainment System as I am a fan of the PlayStation 3. I love the PSP as much as I love my old GameBoy. And I’m just as willing to pick up my Nintendo DS as the Sega Dreamcast. Simply put, I’m a gamer to the core.
But I just don’t think I’ll be waiting in line for the Nintendo 3DS when it launches in the United States on March 27.
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