We went to the Apple store on Saturday, and as my husband handled his exchange in the back, the 3-year-old and I wandered around looking at the cool toys, including the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and the iPad.
I have a theory that I shouldn’t push the life of my laptop much further than two years, not because it can’t handle it, but because it’s good to have a functional spare in case of emergencies. If something happened to my current MacBook, I’d be in big trouble; my 7-year-0ld backup can’t even run Acrobat and Word simultaneously without maxing out its processor power.
I asked the boy which computer I should consider next: the Pro or the Air? He shook his head. “You should get the big one with the apps,” he said, immediately enthralled by the fact that he could see the MLB app in giant form.
I pointed at the iPad. “That one?” I asked. “That won’t work. It doesn’t have a keyboard.”
“So?” he asked. “You can type on the letters on the screen, like on your phone.”
“Ok, yeah, but it’s not the same thing,” I explained.
“Yes it is,” he replied. “Letters are letters.”
And that was when it occurred to me that his generation doesn’t know anything different. He doesn’t expect a big screen and a proper keyboard. He might very well be content to learn everything he needs to know about typing by using a virtual touchscreen keypad.
This is the big Apple revolution. It’s not about whether we can find a use for the iPad or not. It’s about our kids, the preschoolers who don’t know any other kind of phone or computing device. While adults ask why we would want a computer without a keyboard, they fail to understand why not. Their expectations of computing and connectivity are completely different from kids who are even three or four years older, kids who remember a world before the iPhone, kids who expect phones to have more than one button. These are the kids who are the future of computing.