Dept. of You *Are* Kidding, Right?

[kaffyr]

 Pop Quiz

Say you're a professional journalist, one who makes her living by writing stories and taking notes. That's what you do, using your fingers to type all day, using your computer to do research, popping back and forth between screens full of interview notes, web research and the story that you have underway.

Say your company gives you an iPad that you didn't ask for. Say the iPad doesn't easily allow you to switch screens, not unless you can find and use a clunky app. Say it doesn't easily connect to the editorial copy system that your company uses. Say that the keyboard options you have for the iPad are a small rubberized one that your company issued to you, or the electronic one that appears on the screen, shrinking the available screen size even more.

Then say your company issues an edict that you have to return the Macbook laptop it issued you several years ago, which has a keyboard large enough to do regular typing, and a screen and operating system that provides for multiple screens, ease of connectivity to the editorial copy system, etc. etc., yada-yada.

Say company honchos tell you that from now on you have to do all your writing on the iPad. That's not "in an emergency while on the road." That's not "an occasional story." That's forever. No actual computer, like the big kids have. 

Poll #13334 A Measured Response to Journalistic iPad Mandates

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

View Respondents

After a minute's thought

View Answers

No.
3 (18.8%)

No, really. No
6 (37.5%)

Are you kidding?
6 (37.5%)

Hell, no!
7 (43.8%)

Here's your iPad back.
11 (68.8%)

After further deliberations

View Answers

No.
5 (33.3%)

Still no.
8 (53.3%)

It's not happening.
7 (46.7%)

I've filed a grievance.
9 (60.0%)

You, sir, are an idiot.
11 (73.3%)

Comments

[aililinnea.livejournal.com]

Oh, ouch. My daughter has an iPad and that's like her first language at this point, but whenever I try to use it, it makes me insane. You have to switch keyboard screens to type an APOSTROPHE, for crying out loud.

Let's see if this Dilbert cartoon about arbitrary management decisions will actually post here:

(nope)

Apparently my html is rusty, but in the cartoon, they tell all the employees that they have to keep their keyboards on the floor, just because.

[kaffyr]

Oh, ouch. My daughter has an iPad and that's like her first language at this point,

I'd be interested in knowing what she uses it for, and whether she has a need to store a lot of material (because the iPad forces you to store everything in some cloud or other, or on losable USB memory sticks, since it has no storage capacity of its own.) If she's doing daily writing of any length on that thing, she has my slightly croggled awe and respect.

it makes me insane. You have to switch keyboard screens to type an APOSTROPHE, for crying out loud.

I rest my case. And even without seeing the Dilbert cartoon, I am agreeing with it. Our owners are like that. Gah.

[aililinnea.livejournal.com]

She seems to spend most of her time on the iPad surfing Tumblr and watching tv shows (what do you want? she's 17), but she also does a lot of her school assignments on it. I asked her about the apostrophe thing, and she said that if you hold down the "," key, an apostrophe key will appear above it. Apparently there are other options on many keys if you hold them down. Who knew? But it sounds like you have to learn a whole different process of typing. I think she has a special word processing app that's designed for the iPad.

She uses Googledocs and pretty much keeps everything in the cloud. Actually I do too, because although I have my own cubicle with my own computer at work, I spend a lot of my time there in various production studios, and it's handy to be able to access scripts and schedules and stuff no matter where I am. The PTB decided it was easier to make sure every room has a computer in it than to get us all laptops. Googledocs is pretty userfriendly once you get used to it.

My daughter got her iPad through her old school (which is, sadly, closed now - long story). They had a grant to do a study about using technology in the classroom. Half the kids got iPads and half got laptops. Before they had gotten very far into the school year, everybody was saying that laptops were better, but now she has this thing and it was free, so that's what she uses.

Long rant about technology: I'm so old, I was really annoyed when computers started having mice. I'm a very fast typist, and I felt like every time I had to take my fingers off the keyboard to click and drag something, it slowed me down. I spent a lot of hours in the 1980's getting really good at WordPerfect, and then I had to give it up in the 90's because every time I had WordPerfect and an internet browser open at the same time, it made my computer crash.

You kids get off my lawn.

[kaffyr]

What you say about your daughter's iPad usage, and her ability to adjust to a different typing format, doesn't surprise me. The story of how she got the thing is more than a little sad; it sounds like a neat school. (It also doesn't surprise me that folks were liking laptops better. Like your daughter, everyone can - if they absolutely must - adjust to work on or with an inferior tool. It doesn't mean they have to like it.)

I love Googledocs and I do all my personal writing there, because it means I am not limited to writing the same thing on one computer only. However, after I've written something, I generally copy it to my home laptop's hard drive. That gives me a permanent record and allows me to continue with something even if (as admittedly is a vanishingly small possibility) the Google cloud is unavailable. And that has happened at least once within the past year.

I spent a lot of hours in the 1980's getting really good at WordPerfect,

Oh, man, another WordPerfect lover! We were completely a WordPerfect household around here, and used to grumble at the perceived inadequacies of Word. Our problem seemed to be that we were in a tiny minority, and WP simply didn't mesh with Word when we wanted to share documents with the rest of the world. Stupid Word. Now I tend to use Office Libre, which feels a bit more like WP to me, and it has the added benefit of having slightly less chilly relations with Word.

Aw man, you're IT department sucked.

[marence.livejournal.com]

Didn't anyone ever show you guys the menu item that changed the Word screen to WordPerfect blue? You could even use most of the keyboard shortcuts from WP 5.1.

Re: Aw man, you're IT department sucked.

[kaffyr]

Now someone tells me. Groan.

[marence.livejournal.com]

I'm so old, I was really annoyed when computers started having mice. I'm a very fast typist, and I felt like every time I had to take my fingers off the keyboard to click and drag something, it slowed me down.

Back in the aerly 90s, I was doing computer tech/help desk contract work. One of my jobs was rolling out Windows 3.1 machines to a law firm. The secretaries had just finally gotten used to WordPerfect on DOS, and 10% of our help desk calls were complaints about having to use the mouse. One woman called and said she needed a different mouse, because the buttons were too small. I went down to her office, wondering about the size of fingers that would find mouse buttons too small, and found the mouse on the floor under her desk. She had taken off her shoe to feel the buttons better, because she was using it like a sewing machine foot pedal.

[aililinnea.livejournal.com]

That is hilarious!

[kaffyr]

*snrk*

My icon says it all.