The people's historian has died this day. 87 is a long time to live, but it doesn't lessen our need for men like him. And so it goes.
Apple released the iPad today. For my needs it's virtually useless. I would rather it have the full version of OS X than the iPhone version of the OS. It would be way more versatile then. I can see it's usefulness in education, though. One to one laptop program? Screw that! Buy this. It's a closed environment meant to fail very infrequently. The ability to use it for text books and the web is nice. It has iWork for $10 an app. The only issues I see are a) how would you deploy them with all of the curriculum needed, b) since you can't just drag and drop documents to it, how exactly does one work with iWork, c) how would one print from this thing (srsly this is an issue in education even though printing paper should be irrelevant by now), and d) in order for the program to work these things need to go home with the kids. Is it durable enough to do that? I don't know, but we have two months for Apple to solve those issues or explain how they "just work." Regardless I think it has potential. Having seen quite a few kids with backpacks so heavy you wonder why their backs aren't broken yet, the idea of having all those books in a slim 1 pound computing device is very intriguing.
*Update* Arstechnica has a post-op that disaperates some of my fears.
Today I have owned my house for 4 years. PMI it was nice knowing you.
