reflows

I really hope to see some follow-up on this. I'm not used to feeling my security is vulnerable on Apple products.

This was creepy and did feel like an attack. The pop-ups were relentless, no matter how often I tried to get back to my crossword puzzle. I tried to call Apple but couldn't log in to the support page because my AppleID was locked. The worst part of it was having to give up a well crafted secure and unforgettable password!

Steve Jobs observed that when people have a vertical screen in front of them, they didn't want to be poking it with their finger all the time. But when users put themselves in laptop mode (who cares what mode the device is in), Apple maintains its' dogma about the identity of an iPad as a touch device. I guess it's a way to do something sensible to respond to the user's needs instead of the company's identity, but without acknowledging that the creed has been broken.

I say it's about time, and when I'm in a spot where I need to use a physical keyboard for actual writing, I'll do my best to think it's a mouse. I'm the one who has an identity and a use case, not the machine I'm using.

Notice I said "when *I* am in laptop mode. I would like to see the machine adapt to my use, rather than to force me to fit its dogmatic paradigm.

I've been attracted by iPad since it arrived, but I use it less and less because it falls short at the specific things I want it to do. One is the ability to use it as a tablet at a meeting, which would require handwriting recognition to be a lot better and better integrated as others have noted. That would get me (and hopefully others) out from behind a circle of screens around the conference table distracting people from what the meeting is about. Because that doesn't work well, I try with a keyboard, but when I'm in laptop mode, the iPad is not because of the dogma that insists that an iPad can't have a pointing device. Steve Jobs was the one who pointed out that laptop users do not want to be reaching up to a touch screen, and he was right - so in my office the Surface all anyone is buying for meetings. I would be happy if Apple would get just one of those just right, and any extra benefit reading on the bus would be gravy.