Steve Jobs Announces the iPad by Jesus Belzunce (Click to see photo on Flickr)
The iPad has finally hit the UK, having officially gone on sale on 28th May, 2010 and, not entirely surprisingly, Apple fans queued up to get one as soon as they possibly could – some even beginning the queueing process the day before.
My first thoughts upon reading that news at the time? Get a bloody life. It’s just a computer, FFS! (A point with which Apple fans might argue, but that’s their prerogative – and I’d hold that they’d be wrong!)
There was a time when I considered Apple a possible route for my computing platform. I’m a long standing RISC OS user by choice, and a Windows user by necessity and, looking back now, I’m not entirely sure I was thinking altogether clearly. I would have continued to be a RISC OS user by choice, albeit (as now) not using the operating system as frequently as I would like, and I would have continued to be a Windows user out of necessity (some of the software I use and need is only available for Windows) – except that I would have been running Windows under virtualisation on an Apple computer. So what, exactly, would the point have been?
I suppose one answer to that would be to benefit from a nicer user interface – but, as I said, I’d still be using Windows under virtualisation, so I’d still be using the Windows user interface. I’d just have a brief use of a nicer interface to get me to that point – or, if the option was available, to save the extra clicking to get me into the operating system I need to be using, I’d probably boot straight past the Apple GUI and into Windows. At which point I’d realise that I’d wasted the extra money I would have paid for the hardware and might as well have just bought a Windows computer – so I’m glad I never made that ‘switch’ !