In the landmark 1999 film, She's All That, Freddie Prinze Jr., with the help of his sister, Anna Paquin, makeover the dorkiest girl in school, Laney Boggs, and turn her into, well, one of the hottest girls on the planet, Rachel Leigh Cook. All it really took was removing the glasses and throwing away those paint-covered overalls.
Well, Steve Jobs and Apple have done the same thing to the iPad. When news of the device first came out, many people, myself included, compared it unfavorably to a certain feminine hygiene product. But the gripes went beyond the name. The criticism boiled down to this: it was a giant iPhone without the phone. The iPhone software, which allowed one application open at a time, made sense for a phone, because how much multitasking can you really do on such a small device? But for the iPad, it was limiting. Why buy an iPad for a netbook price when it won't even allow you the basic functionality of a netbook: mainly, to be able to surf the web, type, and maybe watch a movie or something all at the same time. The iPad seemed like a total dork: a gadget with no real use to anybody.
But yesterday, Apple announced that the new iPad/iPhone software will ALLOW MULITASKING. Suddenly, the glasses are off. The iPad is wearing a skimpy dress and walking slowly down the stairs to the tune of "Kiss Me," by Sixpence None The Richer.
Now, the iPad CAN be like a netbook. It can handle more than one thing at once. Instead of having to hang out in a dingy basement while you paint, you can IM with friends or upload your collection to Facebook. You can move back and forth between apps effortlessly, without resetting the applications and losing data. And for goodness sakes: now some of the apps that were crappy because you had to leave them open for them to work, well, they can actually function normally now.
I may have made fun of her before, but with this new feature, the iPad changes from a gadget into something more closely resembling a fully functional computer... and that's a device any guy would like to bring to the prom.
Gratuitous Additional Picture Of Rachael Leigh Cook
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[For my ultimate cell phone ideas: Click Here. For other ways to use your cell phone for FUN! Click Here.]
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