![\"If](\"http:\/\/www.justaguything.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/ipad-photo1-530x297.jpg\" "\\"ipad")
<\/p>\nIf the iPad has its way, might this be the future landscape of your favorite bar or restaurant?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe past decade has demonstrated that the more dynamic our phones get, the more obnoxious people can be with their phones. Now that cell phones aren\u2019t even primarily used for talking, the chatty Cathy has been replaced on the cultural shit list by those who check Facebook during first dates and text while nodding \u201cuh-huh\u201d while you discuss your day. <\/p>\n
Those were with wallet-sized microcomputers. With the iPad, it will get worse. <\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n Picture the person who \u201cdiscreetly\u201d checks their email under the dining table, creating a lull in the conversation. Annoying, right? Now imagine that same person reaching down to the ground, pulling out a tablet PC and perusing US Weekly or Harpers while you\u2019re trying to discus whether or not you think you should get your yacht reupholstered. An action like that says something. What it says is \u201cFuck you. I\u2019m more interested in this\u201d. With cell phones, this announcement was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the action was discreet. When someone does toss a (relatively) unwieldy iPad on the table, they\u2019re actually now using their action to say, \u201cFuck you. I\u2019m more interested in this. And now you know. And I STILL don\u2019t care.\u201d Great. <\/p>\n My only hope here is that things get so bad that people don\u2019t tolerate the behavior and it gets better. Nonetheless, there is something daunting about the evolution here. If people get torn away from me for a text message or an email, I now that they\u2019ll be back in a second. With books now available to iPad owners, the threat is two-fold. Fold one: if someone dumps you to start a book, they probably aren\u2019t coming back for a while. Books are longer than texts. You might as well say goodbye then and there. Fold two: I\u2019m more interesting than almost any text message, tweet, or status update. I\u2019m LESS interesting than a lot of books. What\u2019s my recourse when my driving companion digs into a digital copy of Catch-22? I\u2019m charming, but not \u201cJoseph Heller charming\u201d. Game over. <\/p>\n Another thing to consider: how are people going to carry these things around? They don\u2019t fit in pockets. They might fit in cargo pants, but I try pretty hard not to hang out with people in cargo pants, so that\u2019s not really an issue for me. Backpacks? Maybe. But those really aren\u2019t professional, even to the unemployed. Briefcases? No way. People like Apple products because they are the anti-briefcase. Man purses? Yup. Those and messenger bags. Ugh. Can\u2019t say I\u2019m thrilled about the iPad\u2019s impact on men\u2019s fashion in the coming years. <\/p>\n So what do we do? Probably not much. Wait and hope that the critics are right that iPads don\u2019t become the game-changer that Apple hopes they will be. Other than that, when it comes to fighting Apple, you might as well fight the wind. <\/p>\n Who knows? Maybe we can count on peoples\u2019 sense of decency and manners to do the right thing. Eh. We probably should count on the iPad failing rather than manners succeeding. <\/p>\n Related posts:<\/p>\n If the iPad has its way, might this be the future landscape of your favorite bar or restaurant? The past decade has demonstrated that the more dynamic our phones get, the more obnoxious people can be with their phones. Now that cell phones aren\u2019t even primarily used for talking, the chatty Cathy has been replaced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6885,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6885"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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