Friday 26 September 2014

TRAPPED IN THE GHOST TRAIN OF PROGRESS.

AIN'T 'ALF BEEN SOME CLEVER BASTARDS.  

The i-thing's touchy screen keyboard  is a construct of Satan and of no utility to decent persons, although for those who use only their thumbs to communicate in abbreviations and cartoon symbols the Apple virtual keyboard  is probably gr8, :).

I have been trying to use the unaugmented i-thing  to write blog responses from the comfort of the sofa but the staggering number of seemingly unavoidable  and difficult to correct typos arising from use of the kiddy keyboard has been demoralising.

I bought an Apple keyboard but there was no way of physically connecting it to the pad, itself,  and it had all the character irregularities of the screen keyboard, it was a bollocks, really and times out of number I have been tempted to junk the i-pad, despite its huge expense.

The other day, though, someone visited the house with one of these under their arm and I immediatley ordered one from the tax-free Friends Of George at Amazborne.

The i-thing experience is transformed.  Maybe I am just so behind the times that I couldn't be bothered to seek this out, myself, but on the other hand new consumer stuff appears by the minute, the second, how can one keep up with it all?

This is it closed, in carrycase mode, the pad just pops in to the top cover


Opened for use, the pad  simply  slots into an angled groove

like this

the keyboard, which has a conventional configuration as well as some common Apple commands can be backlit, which is a huge boon and  bluetooth connection takes a few seconds, operation is dead easy  and the long-lasting  battery charge - athough this is not an Apple product, is achieved in an hour via a USB connection to the iPad charger plug. Brilliant, they range from fifty to ninety pounds, this is the ninety pounds one but the other models are well reviewed, too.

32 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it by any chance Logitech? I've heard the their virtual keyboards can be used with Apple products.

Johnny.

call me ishmael said...

Not as far as I can see, mr johnny, just says ZAGG on it, there are loads of reviews online. What I do know is that the very simple, leather screen cover - not case - from Apple, which does fuck all costs nearly as much as this ZAGG keyboard-come-case.

Anonymous said...

I would be inclined to nibble away the right hand end groove stop...

That way, whilst trypwriterin, I cold could surreptitiously nudge the tablet to the right until it was a third of the way along, shout "Ching", and slide the tablet back to the left.

OK, I'll fuck off now....

Anonymous said...

Fucking Ada,
I nearly missed the Ian Dury reference.

mongoose said...

Ninety quid for a bloody keyboard, Mr I? Are the streets of Orkney paved with gold? Get yourself a 90-quid people's Android tablet and a ten quid keyboard.

None of that fascist Californian chic will be allowed come the day. There will, mark it, be a law. Marketing's finest triumph is thw queue round the block for a phone only slightly different to the phone we already have but which your arse will break if you put it in your pocket like you did its predecessor. Two legs good, two legs OS+1 better. Next idea: Apple non-phone-breaking matt black threads. The mad in whirling and swirling pursuit of the unnecessary.

call me ishmael said...

Swirling and whirling, mr mongoose, swirling and whirling; I remember her whispering, yet. Yes, no, I hate Apple and that odd Jobs bloke and Steven Fag who acts as Apple ambassador and the queueing for product is fucking Hitlerian and unlike many, probably most, i have not owned a portable telephone since the last millenium but I was given the I-Pad for being a brave boy whilst my heart and lungs were sitting in a steel tray. I have simply decided, after some time and much frustration, to turn it into a practical writing instrument upon which to communicate the more easily and fluently with you.

I don't know, I'm afraid, what an Android is; is it subject to Mr Asimov's Laws of Robotics? I do hope so. And nor do I have the faintest idea of where the cloud is or what it is for; I am voluntarily left behind such a pilgrimage. But you know me, I like tools and this is a good one, this ZaggBoard.

Alas, I live beyond the reach of streets, golden or otherwise, remote enough, actually, to almost be circled by the circus sands.

mrs narcolept said...

I want a screen that folds out to display two full-size A4 pages the right way up.

call me ishmael said...

I think you need multi- or at least two screens for that, mrs n, like the money breeders have, in the darklands of the City.

call me ishmael said...

And anyway, mr mongoose, you misuse me again inasmuch as all the perils of AppleChic are within the self-mocking title of the post, mr tdg's acid benediction, strapped into the ghost train of progress.

mongoose said...

No, you're just cross with me over the ball-nailing liberalism difference of opinion, Mr I, or more likely perhaps my misplacement of DLT on the scale of depravity. In the scheme, these are shallow waters for a storm, at least this end they are. In any event, I am sorry to have upset you.

I am mightily pissed off though that my wonderfully designed and implemented music server and wireless delivery system - not easy in a 500-year-old sodden, wooden shack - has been swept away by anyone's iAnything pushing out any music from anywhere in any room of the house. Do they not know how many hours? How difficult that was seven or eight years ago? "Now it's what's yer password?" and it is done.

Woman on a Raft said...

Here you go Mr Rightwinggit.

http://www.qwerkywriter.com/

It is probably OK in Ishmalia because it involves engineering, manufacturing and crowd-finance for a man with a vision.

I generally accept the limitations on my handbag-sized laptop but on the home tower the keyboard has to be good. That means the Cherry keyboard which has the engineering feel of an IBM Selectrix.

Alphons said...

I'm waiting until they have got it all together properly and we can have the keyboard metamorphose into a small eco-car when needed, and the screen into either a service station for fuel etc. (including foodstuffs and family planning requisites) or a jet propelled six day shut up bed. Of course the service station would have a cafeteria and a Chinese takeaway... and be licensed for scrabble.

call me ishmael said...

I sometimes think it is all the fault of Volvo, the illusion of product interactivity, the idea that the inanimate cares about and for you. With only a three-year break I have a quarter-century of Volvo ownership and the latest, a V40 Cross Country, continues to give the company impression of being consciously one-step-ahead safety-wise, of being in benevolent dialogue with the driver, like that fucking paper clip thing on Windows; it is that intrusive, enslaving indispensibility, mr alphons, which you lampoon, and wich is creating a gooby and incompetent species, rejoicing in the remote control of its central heating, by telephone, unable to change a fuse.

call me ishmael said...

gobby

SG said...

So true Mr I. Even bicycles are becoming so sealed and complex that you have to have them bloody serviced... Weren't that way when I was a lad and all that!

SG said...

Meanwhile, defections, 'sex, lies and video tape'. Who's next - for UKIP that is... How about Frank Field (a 'Paddy Power' wild card maybe)? Times have got interesting Mr I. In the meantime, I do feel that you may have become a little overwrought about that nice Mr Ed & his top team. Very bad for the blood pressure. I have a soothing balm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsAeT7nh5vE


call me ishmael said...

Underwrought, mr sg, a disappointed ennui, whose only remedy is the sharing of rancour and bile. And the garden. And young Harris. But generally GlobaCorp's combine harvester shears us from the organic, from survival skills once hard-wired, separates us even from our own imaginations; a science fictionista, you will know Philip K Dick's We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, now it is worse, now they will force feed us a diet of worthless trash and call it a lifestyle choice. Twenneefawseven.

Alphons said...

I have just got a mobile 'phone.
I was persuaded to do so by "management". She thought that being an octogenarian I should have one as an emergency tool when I was out in the car solo.
You would not believe the searching it took to find one that did not also take pictures, play music or videos, act as a satnav,make toast, and brew tea whilst take stones out of horses hooves.
I am sure the idea is to pack as many activities into the product as possible, so that there are more things to go belly up, and thus increase the purchase of replacements.

SG said...

Well at least its fresh rancour and bile Mr I. Re: PKD, I haven't read him in years, maybe not since he died back in '82 - though I did buy one of his books not so long ago (well maybe a few years ago) but never got round to reading it (this keeps happening). I must rummage around for it...I'm glad you reminded me of him though - he and some of his contemporaries really could think outside of the box so to speak. Meanwhile I see that Mr Farage says he is most likely to be replaced by a woman. I think I've found her:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83NsHR5-0-Y

She worries me, Mr I, as unlike our 'leaders' she seems to have a brain - very dangerous if she gets her hands on power as seems possible. That said I loved the way she bitch slapped that chippy little trollop Kuenssburg across the room - way, way out of her depth.

call me ishmael said...

We pay little Laura a quarter of a million pounds a year for her chippy trollopiness, mr sg, so have some respect, eh, be a good little licensepayer. I had seen that interlude, a bit Ruth Boy Davidsonesque, c'mon the lesbians, that's what I say.

SG said...

Aye Mr I - bring 'em on. £250k? FFS I'd expect more out of a cub reporter on a local newspaper. Whatever one thinks of Mme. Le Pen's political centre of gravity, it was an opportunity to interview one of Europe's most powerful political leaders - and second only to Frau Merkel in female leaders. What an opportunity and what a waste. It's risible it truly is. Jesus must have run out of fucking tears by now.

Anonymous said...

Hi there Mr Ishmael, don't know how to contact you directly but here's something on one of your favourite subjects, keep up the good work my friend, read you every day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YovQ1TY64Sk

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr SG - PKD has been well-served by biographers lately. "I am alive and you are dead" & "Divine Invasions" were both interesting efforts. All that speed meant he wrote a lot of crap but the good stuff is well worth going back to: Man in the High Castle, Transmigration of Timothy Archer, A Scanner Darkly. He was batshit half the time, but we didn't have to live with him so the holy fool was pretty cool on balance from the reader's point of view. I'll always cherish the scene in MHC where the potter turns the tables on the Japanese corporate high-up. Etiquette jiu-jitsu!

verge.//

SG said...

Thanks Mr Verge. I haven't rummaged but I now know that the one I bought was A Scanner Darkly. However you have tempted me towards MHC! I've worn out the 'Bladerunner' DVD, BTW, One of those where the film is better than the book maybe... Also it is damn quiet around here just now. However, I sense a disturbance in the 'Force' - Mr I at work maybe?

SG said...

Sorry Mr I, I don't normally plug PBC output but I caught the tail-end of this which sounds promising:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dwckb

Linky should put you through to 'Germany: Memories of a Nation'. Produced, I suspect, at a small fraction of the 'Newsnacht' salaries but many times the insight...

Anonymous said...

Not sure about the book v film, there, Mr SG. Harrison Ford always looks like he's auditioning for the "Before" sequence in a Fybogel advert to me, and that silly nonsense with the slow-motion doves as Rutger Hauer dies has not aged well. On the other hand, the dystopian noir schtick was beautifully designed, and the androids' existential angst was as it should be. (If you ever have a lot of time on your hands, and haven't seen it already, try Battlestar Galactica - 5 or 6 box-sets' worth - Horselover Fats would have loved it.)

One of the saddest & funniest revelations in the biographies is the fact that Dick's paranoia about federal surveillance was so intense that he ended up attracting just the kind of government interest he was afraid of...

verge.//

Doug Shoulders said...

“If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes” – Roy Batty

I have a phone of indeterminate brand from the supermarket shelf. It is isn’t a touch screen type, but if I press the screen hard enough the numbers flutter. Costs more to top up than it cost new. In fact I reckon the bright shiny packaging cost more.
Saw the film in its various forms and read the book. The film is better, but I like Ridley Scott. Does films the way they should be done. Spend a bit of money on the sets, screenplay and film score after finding a decent story to celluloid. Add empathy.. et voila. Couldn’t connect with Ford but the rest of the film hit the mark.
Hollywood is populated by propaganda merchants, Scott seems to be different.

callmeishmael said...

Yes, constipated, a good description of Harrison Wood's acting style, mr verge; he must be somewhere near the top of the Ringo Starr Luckiest If Unworthiest Men Alive List, somewhere close to Mr George Clooney, recently wed to someone half his age, bless, and by all accounts, of a surprising gender; Oh, the games people play, now, every night and every day, day now, never meaning what they say, nedver sayin' what they mean; probably not as near the top, Harry Wood, as Mr Billy Connolly, comedian, actor, musician, writer and poisonously pathetic social climber; just think, audienc, he chortles, I mighta wound up a fuckin' welder!! No such luck, Billy; never mind, son, you and your mrs, you can write books about each other's childhoods and read them aloud, in Vanity's empty auditorium.

Before descending to play-acting, Mr Wood had an equally impressive trade to his name, didn't he; but where once it was Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenter, now it is Lights-Action-Roll 'em!

There is no translation and thus no comparison between page and pixcel, mr sg, none whatever, they are different media, chalk and cheese, there may be a commonality of idea but then there are shared organic building blocks between dairy products and the white cliffs of Dover. I could go on about this bogus homogenisation for years, for ever but suffice to say that print, any print, even these meagre commentaries' digitised characters, requires the engagement of the Image-ination, we must bring our own minds' toolboxes to the task of reading, with moving images we may only react to the artifice of others. You cannot make a film of a book and only showbusiness would tell you otherwise; there, sufficient unto the day, is the evil thereof.

Up all night, leaning on the widowsill, I saw the Germany show, always a caution; I, too, searching for something worth the effort, am a now inveterate tail-end Charlie.

SG said...

Are 'uman rights lawyers classified as a gender now Mr I? Wouldn't fucking surprise me. I avoided tuning into the 'Royal' wedding in Venice - it would have ruined it forever for me. I confess to rather liking the place even if it is an over-priced tourist theme park overshadowed by cruise liners the size of the Death Star in sodding Star Wars (shit wasn't Mr Wood in that too? Small world...).

call me ishmael said...

No, I meant that previous Clooney arm-candy has been described as, well, Ffffionish, beards. Maybe he married a bint because cloning technology is not yet at the stage where he could clone and marry himself. Coffee, anyone? Such artistry.

call me ishmael said...

Thanks for the link, mr anonymous; I tried to watch it but the Gerry and Cilla story does bad things to my blood pressure; others, less familiar with them, would no doubt find this useful.

Agatha said...

Back in the day,when Harrison Wood and I were young and beautiful, I considered Blade Runner to be beautiful, pensive and heart-wrenching. I was so taken by it that I watched it many times over the following decades, but as I grew up, or, at least older, I found it increasingly misogynistic, violent and uncomfortable. Reading PKD's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" I understood that all the stuff I had considered beautiful etc and later found to be violent, exploitative and titillatory was nothing to do with PKD and everything to do with the Director's decisions - so far apart are the two works that it is cruelly unfair to judge PKD's work by the Blade Runner film. Similarly, Total Recall (especially the version starring the Governor of California)was an unpleasant piece that had practically nothing to do with PKD's "We Can Remember it for you Wholesale" apart from PKD's original clever, witty idea.