Why I'm Stupid Enough to Buy an iPad

So, I have this water bottle, right? I've been filling it with $20s since late January.  Saving up for an iPad.  No, really, I'm doing this the way an elementary school kid saves up for a new Nintendo DS.

I figure that way, if I don't pull anything out of my bank account, I can't be struck with that tinge of "I don't actually need this product" anxiety.  I'll tell myself that I've had months to save up and to think about whether I really want to buy one, and therefore if I do, it will have been a responsible, mature exercising of my American-born purchasing power.

But then, iPad doesn't do Flash, does it?  And it's still a closed-development environment, just like the iPhone and the iPod touch.  Why buy a keyboard-less non-computer that doesn't do Flash, when I could buy a high-end, full-feature netbook for that price?

Well, as anyone who's surfed the net or watched a favorite TV show on their iPhone knows, there's something about the intimacy of holding your content in your hands, and interacting with it directly, without the abstraction of buttons, that goes far beyond the thirty-year-plus convention of a keyboard/mouse/screen interface.

Pictured: M-Edge "Trip Jacket" for iPad

My iPad will be like a universal journal.  It will be where I scribble notes for story ideas when they hit, where I go for immediate web references and location information (In lieu, as a Verizon customer, of an iPhone).  It will be my entire media library, more than my iPod touch can hold.  And it will be a fantastic canvas for creating digital illustrations on the go:



Games like this one will be experiences on this device, when you put your headphones in and get sucked into them.

Plus, my god, what a relief it will be to forgo the physical textbook in favor of digital, searchable, weightless copies.  iPad, where were you when I was in junior high?



Lastly, I'm going to Italy for a month this summer, and bringing this instead of a laptop will be much preferred.

In fact, the only things it won't be are 1) A way to watch Flash-only video sites, 2) a torrent-grabber, and 3) a mobile video editing suite.

So, yes, I am dumb enough to buy an iPad.  :)