AT LARGE Fake News Friday: iPad Users Pretty Much OK With Them Catching Fire

CUPERTINO, Calif. (CAP) - Reports of the new version of the iPad heating to exorbitant temperatures have not fazed Apple's customers, who say that to have the company's latest technology they're more than willing to put up with slight inconveniences, such as catching on fire.

"It's really not a big deal," said Vallco Mall shopper Pete Hearst, 29, while tossing his iPad back and forth from hand to hand to avoid burning his fingers. "Just don't hold it for too long, or touch it, and it's not really a problem.

"I mean, look at that screen!" he added. "The picture's not even blurry even though I'm tossing it in the air. I mean, wow."

In Cambridge, Mass., longtime Apple products user Jason Knowlton, 22, agreed, noting that the screen resolution was "just awesome - did you know it has more colors than the human eye can see?" Particularly Knowlton's eyes, which were burned when flames shot out of his device 10 minutes after he first started using it.

"But it was the best 10 minutes of my life," he said, noting that the blindness is only temporary, and actually less painful than the time he accidentally inhaled an iPod shuffle.

According to Apple spokesperson Shelley Chambers, the new iPad is actually operating within technical specifications, "give or take a few dozen degrees."

"Early adopters understand that each iteration of a new technology is going to have its own unique facets," and that some of those facets could involve excess heat or the occasional explosion, she said.

"The early astronauts knew about those risks, and so do Apple customers," said Chambers. "It's sort of like the same thing."

Users of the Microsoft Zune have faced similar issues with their devices, seeing early models shut down on New Year's Eve and cause acute dermatitis. Asked whether more recent models have resolved those issues, Microsoft spokesman Paul Schlemp responded, "You mean we still make those?"

Schlemp declined to comment on whether the current iPad problems could be related to the exploding European iPhones and iPads that Microsoft was accused of sabotaging in 2009. "I could tell you, but then I'd have to time out your operation while waiting for a response from the receiving (POP) server," he said.

"Just a little Microsoft humor there," he added, then laughed like a donkey.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

IN AND OUT 2010: Life in the USA

IN:

The iPad. Actually, these tablet computers are sort of in and out. They’re in because people have scooped them up by the millions, and they might revolutionize the way we interact with the Web. They’re out because I don’t have one, and saying that over and over again is the only I can keep from crying myself to sleep each night.

Smartphones are also in because using a phone just to talk to somebody is what the cavemen did right before bludgeoning the guy in the next cave with a giant stick. Just ask your 11-year-old.

2) Social media. Remember when that caveman bludgeoned that guy? Then he went out and socialized face-to-face with other human beings rather than interfacing with them via a social media platform. Cavemen are out, and so are other human beings.

Facebook is in, though — even movies about Facebook are in. But aren’t you glad you aren’t Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, now that you know that for all his billions, he’s kind of lonely? No, me either.

3) Cheap eats. As the economy slowly trickles back into a reasonable state of healthiness (reasonable states of healthiness are in, as long as the co-pay isn’t too high), people are still cutting back where they can. So even if they’re not doing fast food, because Happy Meals are evil (EEEEEVILLLLL!), people are at least sticking with food that moves at a fairly brisk pace and may come with a baguette.

Except for rich people, who are reportedly spending the entirety of their tax cut on foie gras.

4) Jeans that aren’t actually jeans. Denim has served us well for a good 150 years, so why we have to go messing with it now is beyond me. (The last thing we need is a repeat of the great acid wash debacle of 1983.) But for some reason jeggings are in, even though we’re pretty sure these jean-leggings actually prevent the blood from ever getting to your feet. Expect women to start tipping over any minute now.

More our speed are PajamaJeans, which are … wait, let me check my notes … Pajamas that look exactly like jeans! Meaning that from now on, whenever we wear our pajamas in public, fewer people will know.

5) Reading. Reading is back, baby! As long as you do it on a Kindle or an iPad or in little bursts on your phone while you’re waiting for the bus. Actual paper books are out, except to put under the leg of a crooked table. Try doing that with your Kindle, and you’ll be out $139.

OUT:

1) Laptops and iPods. Now that everybody except me has an iPad, carrying around that tremendous, leg-crushing laptop seems downright quaint. As for that PC on your desk, this is the equivalent of the IBM computer that used to take up an entire room and required a team of engineers just to remove the other team of engineers who got trapped inside it looking for a missing punch card.

As for iPods, the ones that just hold music are completely useless since your phone can do that now. However, the iPod Touch is in because you can touch it. Touching is in. (Not you, Brett Favre.)

2) MySpace. If anyone remembers what this was, please message me on Facebook and let me know.

3) Demonizing pot. Now that marijuana is only sorta, kinda illegal, everyone is embarrassed about all those years spent referring to it as evil (EEEEEVILLLLL!) — not as evil as Happy Meals but still bad. Now, we realize our energies should be devoted elsewhere, like keeping kids from texting while driving, which is very much out. Texting while smoking pot will forever be in, though.

4) Baggy clothes. This is bad news for those of us who haven’t given up Happy Meals. We know who we are. These include the infamously shapeless “mom jeans,” although if that means Mom will be wearing jeggings from now on, we’re skipping Mother’s Day brunch this year.

5) Passing judgment. Yes, times are hard. But that just means it’s especially important we all stick together and avoid name-calling, jumping to conclusions and engaging in divisive activities. You know, such as arbitrarily declaring what’s in and what’s out.

Uh-oh.

COLUMN: I’ll take my free iPad now

Regular readers of this column may recall how, in 2005, I made a very public request to the Apple Corporation to send me a free iPod. Their response was a deafening silence, which was better than the anticipated restraining order, but only marginally.

Eventually I had to break down and buy one, but I am undeterred and have decided to get back on the free portable electronics horse (let’s call him “Chippy”) and request that Apple send me a complimentary iPad, their hugely popular tablet computer. Sure, I know that everyone wants a free iPad, but it just so happens that I have a particularly urgent need for the device’s primary function, which is to make you look cooler than you actually are.

That’s a function I’ve always needed, actually, with the possible exception of the period when I was the lead singer in my high school’s most popular rockabilly band. Oh wait, that was just who I wanted to be … I was actually the dweeby guy in the corner whose persona could have desperately benefited from an iPad that Steve Jobs had beamed back to the 1980s from his revolving space station.

Ah, but you say the iPad’s purpose is not to make you look cool but rather to help you better experience the Web, e-mail, photos and video. “You,” of course, are Apple’s marketing department, because everybody knows the real, actual reason you get one is to pull it out at every opportunity — at work, in a bar, at a Red Sox game, during an “intimate moment” — and watch the jaws drop around you. If drool results in some quarters, all the better.

I base this theory at least partially on the new study by the Neilsen Company that says a full one-third of iPad users have never even downloaded an “app” (short for “Appolonia”) for the device. Yes, I know that Neilsen later issued a correction and stated the actual number of users who hadn’t downloaded apps was more like 9 percent, but we can presume that Steve Jobs’ goons got to them in the interim. (I doubt Neilsen could actually be that far off on anything, although it would explain the 1976 cancellation of “Holmes and Yo-Yo.”)

Besides, I don’t need a study to show why people buy iPads. Take the guy in Seattle (where else?) who last week asked President Obama to sign his iPad, clearly to one-up the crowd of caffeine-addled liberal hipsters (including President Obama) surrounding him. Of course, the fact that the president did it will probably give the GOP another excuse to label him as elitist and out of touch, unlike Sarah Palin, who, when presented with an iPad to sign, shot it from a helicopter.

I’m not saying using an iPad to be popular is a good thing — we all know that what people should really be doing with their iPads is reading newspapers, so that the industry doesn’t implode. It’s ironic that just like with an iPad, reading a newspaper in public also draws the attention of strangers, although they mostly just stare and prod, like they just spotted a long-extinct reptile.

So Apple, if you send me my free iPad, I promise to give you unlimited promotion in this publication and on my blog, which have a combined audience equal to the ratings of “Holmes and Yo-Yo,” as reported by Neilsen, who is, obviously, drunk. You can send it to me care of this newspaper, but make sure to put my name prominently on the package, because frankly I don’t trust all those sports editors who hang around near the mail cubbies.

Or if it’s easier, you can just beam it to me.

Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

COLUMN: Buy an iPad, feed a journalist!

As my regular readers know, I have a long history of trying to get the Apple corporation to send me free electronic equipment in exchange for a mention in this column. I have been wholly unsuccessful at this from the very beginning, when I tried to get them to ship me an Apple II to review for my elementary school newspaper. I suspect Steve Jobs may have something against the mimeograph.

More recently, I’ve tried to get them to send me test models of the various iPods (40 GB, Touch, Shuffle, Nano with Pocketknife, etc.), but they continue to insist on sending them places like PC World and CNET — places that cover, you know, technology, rather than the things I write about, such as when we’re most likely to be overrun by killer zombies. This is of course ironic, since technology reporters will be among the first to go when the zombies finally do attack.

But now Apple has introduced the iPad (motto: Enough With The Feminine Hygiene References Already), its new tablet computer — which, beyond being the latest cool-looking electronic device that I can’t afford, has another, much more important designation: It might just save newspapers. Also, I’m pretty sure that in a pinch you could slice meat on it.

As you may have heard, we in the newspaper business have been looking for ways to turn around our struggling industry. So far we’ve come up with the following ideas:

1) After readers have viewed a certain number of stories on the Internet, charge them … one meeeelllion dollars!

2) Print only pictures of good-looking people. Oh, we’re already doing that? OK, good-looking naked people.

3) Tell people they really should subscribe if they ever want to see Fluffy alive again.

Our main problem, of course, is that people won’t pay to read news on their computer, seeing as how online news is self-generated for free from the dust that gathers in the joint fittings on the Internet tubes. But the iPad isn’t a computer — it’s a slick, slate-like device that does computing, yes, but whose underlying purpose is much more all-encompassing: namely, to make people feel more like Captain Picard. (You know who you are.)

With the iPad, you can take your local newspaper — along with the Web, videos, photos, the latest Lady Gaga single, etc. — into your Starship’s ready room, or anywhere else you want to go. (Well, except the bathtub … boy, did Steve Wozniak find that out the hard way.) And it’s better than a laptop, because you don’t have to unfold it — if we could harness the energy spent every day on folding and unfolding laptops, we could power … well, not an iPad, but probably one of those Itty Bitty Book Lights.

But why, if people won’t pay 75 cents for their newspaper, will they pay $829 plus $30 per month for a loaded iPad? Because it’s got an “i” in front of its name, that’s why! Sure, it sounds silly, but when the thing goes on sale, throngs of people will line up to get it, and CNN will air footage of the skinny, latte-addled hipster who claws his way to the front of the line to buy the first one. (His name is Hugo.)

And then, the part that will warm the hearts of newspaper people the world over: Thousands of consumers will fire it up and immediately use their credit cards to order exclusive iPad subscriptions to the New York Times. And when I say “New York Times” I of course mean, “one of the 50-plus available fart-noise apps.” Sure, that they’ll pay for.

Still, baby steps — we didn’t obliterate the publishing industry overnight, and we don’t expect the iPad to save it for at least three or four more weeks. In the meantime, Apple, I’ll be waiting. You can send me my free iPad in care of this newspaper.

Er, for the time being.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”