Yesterday was the most recent Apple event, and I’ll admit that the thing that I told everyone about was the new Live Photo feature. If you’ve seen the Harry Potter movies, you know exactly what this feature is. The seemingly living photos in the Daily Prophet and in the frames throughout Hogwarts showed active images, rather than the static images of Muggle photos. Now one of the many teams at Apple has brought this capability to the photos that we take in our world. Without realizing it, I’ve been longing for this feature since Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out in theaters. Now we’ve almost got it…just need to get that new iPhone in my hands. If you want to learn more and think about what is and isn’t a photograph, this article from The Verge is excellent!
But while I was geeking out about what Live Photos will mean to me, I also got to thinking about other parts of the event, especially the introduction of the iPad Pro. Way back near the turn of the century, the Hectic Clan visited EPCOT and were introduced to the revolutionary Digital Paper that had been developed by Xerox. This was a rollable sheet of active electronics that allowed you to write on it, display text and images, and generally replace paper. We spent a couple hours talking to the demonstrator and playing with the futuristic product. He seemed to enjoy the fact that we came up with close to a hundred ways to use digital paper. Compared to the barely luggable notebook computers of the time, this was revolutionary.
We came back home to Kansas and continued to talk about all the ways that digital paper could improve our lives. Portability, space savings, communications. The list went on and on. As time progressed we watch laptop computers get smaller. We watched the internet explode. Yet we still discussed digital paper, and every once in a while someone would ask “why isn’t that Xerox Digital Paper here yet”. It joined the likes of Dick Tracy’s Watch, the Jetson’s Flying Car, Star Trek’s Replicator and Transporter, along with a host of other science fiction products in our wonderment and wishful closet. Products that may never see the light of day, but things we can envision and describe in great detail.
The introduction of the original iPad gave me hope that we might be moving closer to digital paper. As an early adopter, I had a first generation iPad fairly early on. Honestly, I got it as soon as I could save up the money, skipping purchased lunches for months on end to scrape together the money. While I love that iPad (still put into daily use by Hectic Grandson) and have come to love my second iPad (an iPad Air), they haven’t proven to be the digital paper that I’ve dreamt about since the early 2000’s. The iPad is a great device for the consumption of information. I love the ability to watch movies, search the web, and read on it. Where I’ve stumbled is in trying to create on the iPad. In my life, creation is almost always word-smithing. I have almost zero artistic ability unless a camera is involved. I can’t draw worth a hoot. My self-portraits are universally stick people with a bad hair day. It’s a fact that I’ve come to accept…I’m not an artist and never will be.
Unfortunately, the onboard keyboard on my iPad Air doesn’t let me type as I want to. I find myself watching the keyboard because of the lack of feedback. To that end, I’ve resorted to pairing a bluetooth keyboard to my iPad when I need to produce a lot of content. I’ve tried several and currently favor the bluetooth keyboard from Apple. It’s great for typing, but it’s big and adds bulk to my otherwise lithe device. For the most part, if I know I’m going to be typing a lot, I just pack up my 15″ MacBook Pro and haul it along rather than taking the two-piece iPad + Keyboard.
Yet that desire for digital paper is still there.
Over the past year, I’ve become reacquainted with using paper to a larger degree. Lots of people that I follow on social media and listen to via podcasts keep talking about the tactile response that you get from paper. They keep saying “there’s just something about actually writing things down that makes it different and memorable”. At the start of the year I decided that I needed to capture more of what was in my head and put it somewhere safe and permanent. To that end I purchased a handful of gel-ink pens and notebooks. I didn’t go all moleskin or fancy, just standard 8.5×11 college-ruled notebooks. Then I labeled the notebooks for the categories I wanted to record, twelve in all. Things like:
- Action Lists & Quick Capture
- Finances
- Habits
- Technology
- Holiday
- Planning – Business
- Planning – Household
- Learning Notes
- Writing
- Selfcare
- Daily Action Plans
- Journaling
Then I meticulously created Evernote notebooks with the same names, and just to be complete I created physical 3-ring binders to store the papers that were in the notebooks when they were to be retired from the notebooks or a new notebook was needed because I’d run out of sheets. I’ve been pretty good about using the paper notebooks, and I’ve noticed that my thinking is a bit different when I’m physically writing. I think a lot of that has to do with where I tend to write. Instead of typing at my standing desk, I usually write at our kitchen table. It’s a different venue, and as such leads my brain off in different directions.
While I’ve liked the process of writing, the overhead of then scanning and posting into Evernote and putting into the 3-ring binders has become somewhat onerous. I know that I could dispense with the 3-ring binders, since everything is scanned and stored in Evernote…but I haven’t been able to convince myself of that yet. All the while, in the back of my mind is the idea that I’m handling these papers twice…creating them in hard-copy then storing them electronically. I’ve kept wishing for digital paper.
So yesterday the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil were introduced and I had an aha! Moment. I might be able to write on my iPad and then store it electronically without the interim step of paper. The combo is pressure sensitive, so I could simulate the heavy strokes I sometimes use. Color is available, so I can have different colors in the same notebook. The ideas kept coming and my mind kept swirling. the 12.9″ diagonal size is almost the same as my beloved 8.5×11″ paper.
I’ll freely admit that I love technology and I always want the latest and greatest. I also recognize that I have three kids in college and am paying off three prior college tuitions while simultaneously trying to save for two more in the future. I guess if I hadn’t had eight kids I might own more tech gear. For now I’ll live with the tradeoff of my amazingly accomplished kids and wait a bit more for tech. But I don’t do the waiting very patiently. Starting today I’m trying to work our budget a bit to see if I can get an iPad Pro by the spring. In the meantime, I’m going to take a look at the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil as soon as they are available in stores. With the nearest Apple Store 180 miles from Hectic Manor, it may be a while after they arrive that I will get to go play with one, but I’m going to do it.
In the meantime, I’m going to keep thinking about how the iPad Pro may be my solution to my desire for digital paper not just for the consumption of material, but also for the creation. If I can get the tactile feedback of paper in a digital format I think I may be awfully close to Nirvana!
