Crazy Apple News Site

Much has been said about the iPad’s large display, attractive design, and custom silicon. These features are well known and well documented. However, there is another element to the iPad that has yet to be thoroughly explored.

Until now.

“We had suspected that there was a significant gain in this area,” said Dr. E. Gobost, “but it wasn’t until we ran the actual tests that we realized exactly how significant Apple’s achievement was.”

“We feel the boost is due in part to the large Apple logo on the back of the iPad,” he continued. “The Apple logo on the iPhone was depressingly small, and was often covered by the user’s hand. This made it harder to show off the fact that you were using a top-of-the-line Apple product, and thus reduced the pretentiousness of the device. Apple has completely solved that in the design of the iPad.”

“It’s true,” verified Abus Ryder, iPad owner and pretentious snob. “With my iPod touch I had be really obvious that I was using a multi-touch device to properly impress the other passengers on my commute to work every day. Now the big glossy Apple logo lets everyone know that even though I’m riding the bus to work, It’s not because I’m a loser who makes very little money. It’s because I’m choosing to do so, you know, for the environment. So it’s a double score for me! Score! Score!”

“The iPad was designed to improve owners’ lives by being an excellent touch screen computer that allows you to effortlessly do all the things you love without being tied to a desk or a keyboard,” said a faceless Apple PR spokesperson¹ . “Any increase in ego or pretentiousness is merely a side effect of owning a well-designed device, and wasn’t included by design.”

Dr. Gobost finds this hard to believe.

“I find that hard to believe. I mean look at these numbers,” he said, opening a Numbers Spreadsheet on his iPad and showing us a graph. He then decided that the graph wasn’t pretty enough in Numbers and re-created it in Keynote. “See how easy that was? That kind of simple, swipe-tap-drag simplicity is just for making life more fun for users. Tap! Swipe! Double-tap! Two-finger-tap! Done! That’s pure showmanship, friends.” Gobost did not explain the measurements used in his chart, other than to note that the values were in “SPUs”² .

He may just have a point.

“He may have a point,” conceded Punny Name, a person. “With the iMac, or the Power Mac, or even the Mac mini you have to get the person to come to your actual desk to show off your Apple awesomeness. The MacBook Pros are portable, sure, but hard to really show off in settings like the bus, the train, or standing in line at a fashionable whole foods store. The iPhones and iPods are easy to use anywhere, but showing them off is a challenge. Apple has finally hit that sweet spot: Big enough to show off, small enough to show off anywhere.”

1. It was really creepy. I had to look away [↩]
2. Standard Pretentiousness Units [↩]