Front-row seat at the iPad media circus
This being San Francisco, of course there were protesters — even at what the naive might consider a wholly non-political event. This young anti-Apple activist listed all the things wrong with the evil corporation.
And inescapably, like characters in a nightmare that never ends, the Revolutionary Communist Party showed up to pester people with flyers, just as they do at every single event of any size or on any topic anywhere in the Bay Area.
Reporters, desperate for something interesting to film, took to interviewing random passersby.
The frustrated crowd that was stuck out on the sidewalk discovered that a nearby media truck had a live feed of Steve Jobs’ presentation, so everyone swarmed around, squinting at the screen hoping to be among the very first to witness the iPad magic.
M.C. Escher would have loved this photo: I’m taking a picture of a guy who’s taking a picture of a guy who’s taking a picture of a guy who’s filming a screen of a video feed taken by a guy who’s standing in a building directly behind me. Recursive infinity!
Another technician monitored the presentation on an old-school precursor to the iPad.
Together, we watched Jobs toy around with his magical new doohickey. Many in the crowd oohed and aahed, but Hitler was not impressed.
Immediately after the press conference was over, the select lucky reporters with Apple press badges filed out of the building to a changed world.
Less fortunate media members descended and interviewed the attendees as if they had just witnessed some kind of hitherto unknown sacred ritual.
Before long, everybody seemed to be interviewing everybody else in what felt like a punditry mating frenzy.
But after a very brief time in the limelight, our news become instantly stale, the eyes of the world moved elsewhere, and life continued as before.
And then we woke from our reverie, to realize that nothing had changed at all.
Get. A. Life.
It looks so freaking assinine. I am so glad I did not catch the tech disease.
The iPad is an astounding feat of imagination.
See:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/ipad-exclusive-photo/
I love the on the spot coverage of things I will never get to see like the March for Life in San Francisco and now the iPad unveiling. Makes me feel like I was there.
Oh and the link to the Hitler reacts to iPad was great. Comedy Gold, that.
I want one so bad it hurts. Hoping to get one in March, when they come out!
Based on the reviews of the iPad, I’m not that impressed (and I’m a solid Mac fanboy).
I still don’t know what the hell RAM is ….. or if I just used it correctly in a sentence.
LOL, what is that Hitler movie?
Yerba should put one of those big screen thingies on the outside…
The Hitler parody is from a movie called “Downfall”.
Literally hundreds of those things on Youtube. That one was pretty good.
Obviously not everyone is enamored with the iPad.
@Joe: that clip is an excerpt of “Der Untergang” (“Downfall”), a movie about the last days of the 3rd Reich. The scene in question is set in the Fuehrerbunker in Berlin.
I dislike these parodies for two reasons:
(a) on general principle, Godwin’s Law
(b) as nobody ever bothers to re-dub the original German dialog (not even in Chaplinesque cod-German), the parodies lose much of their punch if you can actually understand the audio.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
Thanks Zombie, that was thoroughly amusing. It’s an expensive i-pod with an inconvenient size.
There’s this: http://cheezburger.com/View.aspx?aid=3118817792
and
Pee Wee Herman: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f7a03edbd7/pee-wee-gets-an-ipad
Ain’t worth the plastic it’s soldered to.