Sunday Snapshots: iPad

January 31st, 2010 by Brooke Warner

“Wise and prudent men—intelligent conservatives—have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

Wow. It’s sort of hard to look at this week’s trends and refrain from speculating about just how much Apple’s iPad is going to impact the way we read.

I don’t have the scoop from inside the trenches of publishing, but I do have a sense of the mixed feelings industry professional have about e-readers. Publishing is on a rollercoaster ride right now, the latest industry to be seriously rocked by the changes imposed on it by the Information Age.

But here we are. This week we’re getting a glimpse of the future of books, reading, and publishing. Apple practically has a cultlike following among Mac loyalists, and Steve Jobs generally seems to be incapable of making missteps. So for all the criticism in the media about this and that, the iPad experience is going to become the new norm, eventually.

The primary reason people aren’t into this week’s announcement, as far as I can tell, is that we all already have computers and phones and iPods, so why do we need another product? And at $499, it’s not a no-brainer purchase. And it is a good question—do we really need more stuff? But this reminds me a lot of when CDs first came on the market and eventually replaced the tape cassette. I remember when my friends started getting CDs and how much I clinged to my tape-buying persuasions, in part because I didn’t want to give up the collection I’d amassed. A year later, I didn’t own a single tape.

I would highly recommend not buying the first generation. I’ve had a Kindle for just over a year and I wish I’d waited for the dust to settle in the storm that is e-reader product development.

As a supporter of writers, and an avid reader myself, I’m all for e-readers. It’s another venue, and as much as I love love love books, what I really love is the content. I love a good story. I love a great mind. I love the power of words to change the way I see the world. And like a lot of readers, I also books. I like the feel of a book in my hands. I like the way they smell. I love libraries. But we have a new format, and it’s not going away. My only hope is that unlike cassette tapes, we keep buying books. That libraries continue to thrive. It’s a new frontier, and change is coming. I see a world where physical books and e-books coexist. And I realize, even as I state this, how absolutely nostalgic this vision is.

Where do you land in all of this?

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”
—Arnold Bennett

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