Sent From My iPad

I've long rolled my almost-exclusively-PC eyes at the smugness of Apple commercials.

It stared with the early iPod commercials that featured U2 singing "Vertigo" while cool shades of blue, green, and orange flashed against silhouettes of various hip, trendy, and beautiful people dancing with their iPods. I rolled my eyes, then got Jason one for Christmas, then asked for a Nano for my birthday two months later. Now I find my "ancient" iPod a necessity for life.

Then I rolled my eyes at the Mac commercials where a PC was symbolized by a very stodgy-looking, decidedly uncool guy in a plain brown suit (played by the very-cool-in-real-life John Hodgman) and Macs were symbolized by hipster Justin Long. I already know I'm not cool, I thought. Like I'm going to switch from PC to Mac just because this commercial is telling me the PCs I've been using for years are soooo 5 minutes ago. And then Jason's Dell laptop died, and he chose a MacBook citing "more stability" and "better performance". Pshaw. He looked so smug sitting there behind the glowing Apple logo. I started playing around with it and realized that I, too, will probably go that route when my own Dell dies (or I throw it out the window, whichever come first.)

More recently it's been iPhones and iPads that Apple is telling me will make me one of the cool kids. I've got a Kindle to read on, and a perfectly fine phone that makes and receives calls and texts in a perfectly satisfactory manner, I thought. I don't need no stinking iPhone or iPad. And I rolled my eyes at the smug snobbery (smobbery?) of those commercials.

Until several of us at work were given iPads to use. And I am here to tell you I kinda think it's the coolest thing ever. There. I'm smug.

I knew my principal had gotten one when I got an email from her that said at the bottom: Sent from my iPad.

Well, I thought. Aren't WE all with-it and cutting-edge.

The next day I heard that I, too, was among a select few in our building to try being with-it and cutting-edge on for size. Funny how sometimes you can turn your nose up at something you'd have to buy, but when you're given it for free, it's suddenly the best day of your life.

The first thing I did after the thing landed on my desk? Visit the App Store. This is huge, because just hearing "There's an app for that" on the commercials used to make me convulse with smug-overload.

"Oooh, look at me!" I would say loudly to whoever was in the living room. "I'm so cool I don't even have to say the entire word applications. I can just say 'app' because that how we smugly cool Gen-Y pretty people ROLL!"

But the App Store is so full of wonder and delight that I no longer care. There's a paranormal activity detector on there, people! That lets the ghosts in your home actually talk to you! Plus Angry Birds. Let us not forget the Angry Birds.

Of course, I've been spending most of my time on it exploring ways it can make life easier for teachers and/or enhance learning for our students, since I am sure that was the whole point of giving me one. I am staying better connected with work since it lets me check work email from wherever with just the touch of a button. That may not be a good thing. But I also have it connected to my home email account, which I was terrible about checking because it required me to fire up my dinosaur Dell at home and wait, like, 5 whole minutes for everything to load.

Writing that makes me sound like a spoiled technology brat but I don't even care.

Since I got my iPad, Jason and Ainsley have also used it to find constellations and various other fun things to look at in the night sky. I used it to play some tunes on Pandora radio while I got ready to go out on Saturday night, and we all watched a few videos about the new Harry Potter movie.

So, yeah, I love my new gadget despite myself.

And yes, this was sent from my iPad.