I wasn’t among the eager ones; I steered clear of the lines and crowds at St. Louis-area retailers with remarkable self-control. Even now, after reading a couple dozen reviews and first-impressions of the device, my often twitchy gadget-loving fingers are still, my heart beats at a regular rhythm and I feel strangely calm for one who took enormous pride in muscling through like-minded throngs to snatch up the latest must-have, trend-setting, life-altering technology.
My uncommon mood could be a sign of aging. I look at my gray hairs and wonder how many were due to past gadget quests (A couple of scars certainly were). I peer through the stacks of dusty high-tech toys in my house and try hard to remember which ones evoked passion and which ones I merely liked and soon cast aside like an overeager kid on Christmas morning.
Or, maybe my calm results from the muscle relaxant I’m taking to ease a sore back (Here, I pause to praise the pharmaceutical industry for assisting me more than any gadget).
Probably both factors are at play.
However, one thing is certain: I have the wisdom of experience, and I point to those stacks of dusty gadgetry as proof.
Much of the menagerie consists of first versions and barely tested concepts launched with more hype than common sense. Some came from companies that vanished along with the hope their devices inspired. Some are third and fourth and sixth editions of good ideas that have not improved by degrees to remain interesting or relevant. Some are simply more strange than useful (Example: a pen-shaped document scanner that even James Bond wouldn’t rely on for important work.)
Yes, gadgets come and go and change, much like fashion. The ones that stay with us though are of prescient design, possess form and function in equal parts, lack quirkiness as a selling point. They are devices with which we need only our hands, and not our brains, to operate.
This is why Apple succeeds year after year with each new idea. The digital music player and mobile phone were time-worn ideas when Apple revealed the iPod and iPhone. So, too, is the tablet computer. Yet Apple’s products become market standards in spite of their hype. They’re monuments to technical simplicity — typical users need not rely on a manual to discern how they’re used; they just press that one round button at the bottom.
But that’s not enough to get me in the door of an Apple store lately. I already expect Apple’s products to be intuitive; what I need now is dependability. I now require some assurance that my first visit to an Apple store, either in person or online, will not lead to several others involving service or repairs.
In over a quarter century of using Apple products, I have taken five such trips, far fewer than with less complicated equipment such as clothes washers and microwave ovens, to be sure, but a majority of the trips coming within the past two years to try resurrecting dead iPods and laptops.
Apple service personnel explained away those equipment failures as particular to the model I owned.
“I’m sorry Mr. Sheets, but we’ve had trouble with these lately,” an in-store “genius” at Apple’s Genius Bar in West County said of my unresponsive MacBook last summer. “All I can tell you is, repairing it will cost a lot more than replacing it.”
Naturally, I heard this about a week after the warranty ran out.
So now, I watch the crowds rush in and out of Apple’s stores with iPads and I skim through reams of user feedback generated through the first 48 hours of our new iPad-infused existence, and I’m waiting for the first complaints to surface. None may arise, but I’m not so sanguine about that. (Apple already warned about a potential problem with excessive battery drain and promised replacement iPads to anyone whose new toy suffered from it).
Important to me at this point however is my understanding, accumulated through years of tech troubleshooting and related disappointment, that the first iteration of any idea often isn’t the best. The marketplace always sifts out surprise, and Apple will respond as always with an improved device that not only addresses current consumer complaints, but also major bugs that even Apple’s accomplished brain trust could not foresee.
Thus, six to nine months from now, the iPad finally will have become the device everyone wishes it was from Day One and truly be worth the $500 to $830 Apple expect you to shell out for it.
Besides, I appreciate all the geniuses at Apple and all the work they do. I just prefer not needing to deal with them.
