iPad: Just a Giant iPhone? Am I Missing Something?

The only apple product I own is an iPod. It’s fine minus that it somehow only plays music out of the right ear now (shocking since I only drop it every single time I go to the gym. You know that moron girl whose iPod flies off the treadmill shooting back three feet behind her? Yeah, I’m that girl. No really, I am. Can you grab it off the ground for me, it’s right next to you? Thanks).

I don’t have an iPhone or a Mac Book so maybe it’s just a general thing I don’t get about the amazingness of apple, but really, what’s so great about the iPad?

Maybe it’s ‘cause no one I know has one so I haven’t been inundated with peer reviews. (Unlike when everyone got the iPhone and you would have guessed Jesus had his second coming. I think there’s an app for that?)

Anyway, on my flight out of New York (finally, after getting to the airport at 4 a.m. only to have to be rebooked on an 8 a.m. - obviously I’m in an amazing mood!), I got seated next to two guys who were chatty freaking Cathy’s. Not that I hate all social interactions with strangers, but there’s a time and a place. The time is when I’m not working on three hours of sleep, and the place is not in close quarters where I could be napping, loud talker.

One guy, a bulldog of a man resembling a Soprano Mr. Clean, whipped out his iPad to show me some pictures of his giant English Mastiff dogs. Yes, because somehow people can sense that even though I’m about to die of exhaustion, I do want to talk about puppies! Maybe it’s the chocolate lab luggage tag I have on my bag? No I’m not 12. Maybe?

So he’s showing me pictures of his 260 pound baby – no joke, insane right!? – when the other guy in our row, a late 30s prissy-ish Dallas FJO, started on about how was he "going to get an IPad ASAP because OMFG it’s SO COOL.”

Seriously. That’s how it began. For a solid 80 percent of the next 3.5 hours, I had to listen to two grown men coo over the glorious possibilities of this gadget. You would have thought its owner had given birth to it.

I just don’t get it. I mean, it’s a cool enough product, but it’s not revolutionizing anything. It is basically a giant iPhone.

Then it dawned on me. It IS revolutionizing something. It’s revolutionizing technology FOR OLD PEOPLE.

You know those books with super large font grandparents have? Those over-sized remote controls with buttons fit for giants?

Uh hello, that’s what this is. Instead of having to squint their strained eyes and manipulate a tiny persnickety key pad with their less-than-nimble fingers, now adults can relish in technology in a size they can actually read.

I’m sure the apple secret police will hunt me down for cracking their true branding strategy – the iPad: the giant-sized iPhone for Olds.

So after listening to these two guys go on and on and on about all the features, I was about to lose my shit. This also coincided with the time when my giant cup of coffee had worn off, originally masking my sleep-deprived crankiness.

I almost would have preferred two strangers developing a romance next to me to this PDT (public display of technology), even if it had it included some making out.

Got an iPad? Get a room.