Me vs. the Apple Fan Boy

Sometimes I hate public transit.

This morning as I settled into my seat on the Skytrain for the 25 minute trip into downtown Vancouver, I pulled out my Samsung Slate 7, running Windows 8 Customer Preview, to catch up on some email. About two stops later a guy got onto the train, sat beside me, and pulled out his iPad.

I didn’t even notice him until I heard a “Hmmmm” from beside me. I ignored it.

“Hmmmm. Is that Windows?” he asked?

“Yes, Windows 8 Customer Preview.” I swiped across the screen to show him the Metro start page, then swiped back to Microsoft Outlook and went back to reading my email.

A few seconds there was another “Hmmmmm” from beside me. I looked up from the Acrobat attachment I was annotating to see what he wanted.

“When I open things they automatically fit on the screen. Look, you have all that empty space on your screen!”

I used my fingers to resize the document to fit to page width, as it seemed to make him happy and might shut him up.

“Mine does that automatically! Look, when I open a PDF it fills the screen! I just had to convert it on my computer at home so it would be available here.” he said happily.

“That’s nice,” I said, “I suppose I could buy an app for Windows that would require me to convert PDF files before I can put them on my tablet and open them, I haven’t wanted one like that though.“ I wasn’t really sure of his point. “Does your app allow you to edit the document as well?” I asked.

Silence.

I opened a PowerPoint presentation and a Microsoft Word document attached to the next email message and started using the stylus to edit the documents.

“Hmmmmmm – I can do that too” he commented. I didn’t remember stating that his iPad could NOT open a PowerPoint or Word document. I winced.

“That’s nice,” was my response. “I like being able to use the same version of PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and Outlook on my tablet that I use on my desktop computer at the office or at home.”

“Oh I can too, I just have to download an app from the iStore. There is an app that gives you the same abilities on the iPad that you have in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. You can buy an app that will do almost anything!” he said excitedly.

“That’s nice,” I said, not really caring. “ I guess I just like to not have to buy and figure out how to use another app when I already have applications that I know and like.”

I closed all of my open documents and found myself at the Windows 8 Metro screen.

Before I could put the tablet to sleep I heard the dreaded “Hmmmmmm” again. He started waving his iPad and pointing at the apps on his start menu. I’m sure he had a point, I just stopped caring. I think his point was that he liked the way all the apps on his iPad were arranged. I didn’t bother showing him how I could rearrange and group the app tiles on my start page. He wouldn’t get it.

“So I paid $700.00 for this, how much did you pay for that?” he asked.

I really didn’t want to get into this debate. “$1400, but it’s an 11.6” display compared to 9.7”“. . . blank stare . . . “My screen is bigger. For the extra money I also get 4 Gb RAM,” I added.

“Oh, I have 32 Gb!” he jumped in excitedly.

“Yes, you have 32 Gb storage for $700,” I agreed. “I have 128 Gb storage  – lots more than you. And I have 4 Gb RAM.”

“Oh.”

“And I have a USB, Micro HDMI and Micro SD ports for plugging things into.” I’m sure this point was lost on him, but I was getting annoyed by now.

“And I don’t have to spend money at the iStore every time I want to do something I can do on my work or home computer.” Again, the point was lost on him.

Thankfully he finally got off, still waving his iPad and chattering about some great feature as he left.

I really don’t hate iPads. They are just not useful for me. For some people they are the perfect device. If they are useful for you that’s great. I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise. I wish others would have the same courtesy.

That’s 20 wasted minutes of my life. Sorry for the rant – now back to my work.