My seven-year-old nephew got an iPad for his birthday. As you can imagine, he's pretty excited about it. After a lightning-fast recap of his holiday photos, it was straight into a Shaun the Sheep video, and then on to the delights of Cat Piano. Half an hour later, when the adults had resumed their usual dull conversation, I saw him chuckling to himself. It turned out he was looking at us "upside down" on his iPad. Yes, when all is said and done, you don't need Wi-Fi to enjoy the decidedly low-tech reflective properties of Apple's pricey new tablet.
As the owner of a rather pedestrian iPod Classic, perhaps I should be jealous of Gadget Boy. I'm not. But the green-eyed monster has certainly been on the rampage recently, and I'm not talking about the latest instalment in the over-extended Shrek franchise. No, as summer holidays loom, and the news cycle lurches once again into "silly season", Apple and its many fans are getting a pasting from some frivolous, irrational and very mean-spirited writers.
Unless you've been holed up in a Tibetan monastery, you'll probably have seen last week's screaming headlines about "horrible" iPad users being part of a "selfish elite". MyType, a world-renowned purveyor of psychological insights for users of Facebook, revealed the results of a survey of 20,000 people about attitudes towards Apple's new toy.
In the interests of research, I did look at the analysis of their "Elites vs. Geeks" survey. Unfortunately, pie charts have long been a bit of a turnoff for me, and it turns out that a mere one percent of those surveyed actually owned an iPad. In blunt, unscientific terms, I thought this was a load of bull****. I was also none too impressed by the so-called journalist on one of the UK's most right-wing organs who claimed: "A survey has revealed the typical person who has bought Apple’s latest gadget is unkind and has little empathy for others."
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