We carefully avoided the iPad when it was first released because we knew better. In fact, it was months before we even saw one in real life. And even longer before we actually touched one. (Hmmm, sounds like a similar story from our junior year in high school.)
Then our good friends at Apple graciously sent us an iPad to “test out” for three months. Three months? Are they for real? That’s like giving a doe-eyed orphan a cute, cuddly puppy and telling him he could only love it for three months. Or finally getting our long dreamed-of superpower of invisibility and having it taken away just seconds before we reached the locker room door after the Super Bowl.
On the contrary, it only took three days hours before we were hopelessly, madly, deeply, unequivocally in love with the damn thing. And now they want it back? They’re going to have to pry the 64GB, high-res, LED, backlit love of our life from our cold dead hands if they want it that badly.
And we’re not the least bit fooled. We know it’s part of Apple’s master plan to create the world’s coolest products because they know nobody in their right mind has the will power to resist.
The worst part is that the iPad really has changed our lives. Our boyfriend used to bitch every night because the light on our side of the bed was too bright while we read our latest from Chelsea Handler or David Sedaris. Now, we’ve downloaded all our must-reads and set the iPad to its lowest brightness setting, changed the “paper” to a pleasant sepia tone and memoir the night away. We can highlight passages, instantly look up words we don’t know and even search each book for specific words and phrases. If they’d had this back when we did book reports, we might’ve actually read the novels we were assigned instead of using our three minutes in front of the class to compare A Tale of Two Cities to the latest catfight between Alexis and Krystle on Dynasty. (We got an “A” for that one regardless, so maybe that’s not the best example.)
We now play Words with Friends in larger-than-life high definition and destroy our friends’ self-esteem in the process because of our vast knowledge of the English, oh what’s the word, language. 108 points for ballcock? Take that, LinAnnM!
We control our DVR from it. We Grindr. We play Pac Man. We listen to Pandora Radio. We Manhunt. We eBay. We watch movies. We watch TV. We downloaded the special version of Hulu just because of it. We prop it in the corner and play photo slide shows from our latest Moroccan adventure while our dinner party guests ooh and ahh over the fanciness of it all.
So yes, Apple, we promise we’ll send it back. But we implore you: Next time you create something we can’t live without, please be kind and don’t send it to us. Because you know it, we know it, even the UPS delivery guy knows it. We’ll go without food, we’ll skip a car payment or two, and we’ll “forget” to buy our boyfriend an anniversary gift just to pay for the latest and greatest gadget you create.
But until then, let’s say you float us another three months? Maybe nine just to make it an even year. Surely we’ll lose interest by then. Ah hell, who are we kidding? We’ll drop it in the mail tomorrow and cherish the memories. It’s all we’ve got left.
16GB models start at $499
www.apple.com/ipad
