“Apple’s new iPad device is so sleek and seemingly simple to use that one could easily imagine using it for hours on end, but doing so might not be so great for your body, experts say,” Michelle Bryner reports for TechNewsDaily.
The problem is “the ‘co-location’ of the keyboard and monitor, said Anthony Andre, founder of Interface Analysis Associates (IAA) and a professor of Human Factors at San Jose State University,” Bryner reports. “‘You are taking two things that belong in different locations and merging them together,’ Andre said.”
“The iPad includes a bigger version of the virtual keyboard used in Apple’s iPhone, but typing on the iPad’s glass display might not prove as comfortable as on the iPhone,” Bryner reports. “‘With the phone, you can bring it up to your face, but [with the iPad] you have to put it on your lap if you’re going to do some serious two-handed typing,’ Andre said. ‘But once you do that, you have this little flat disk on your lap and you’re talking about the opposite of where computer work stations have come with their articulating keyboard trays that try to put you in a good posture,’ he said.”
Bryner reports, “David Rempel, a doctor at the University of California, San Francisco who sees plenty of laptop-related pain in his consulting work, also worries about the iPad’s ergonomics. While the iPad ‘creates a wonderful opportunity in terms of mobility and ease of interaction, … [it] poses a similar type of musculoskeletal problems as the laptop,’ Rempel said in a telephone interview.”
Full article, with some suggestions for minimizing the impact of mobile-device use on your body, here.
An invitation to Innovation in ergonomical design solutions
Yes and we all know how wonderful desktop computer set ups are for our well being don’t we. He is delusional if he thinks working on those set ups is in anyway good for your physical health.
doesn’t a piece of paper co-locate the monitor and the keypad too? what you are looking at is what you are drawing to or writing on.
i would be more worried about the glass breaking in an earthquake.
You have got to be sh•tting me…
How many people get injuried ready books? Is this a joke?
And the Earth is flat. So, what else is new about computers?
I would think a multi-touch interface would lessen incidents of carpel tunnel, etc., since you’re not having to press keys or hold your wrists at an awkward angle, plus you use many different kinds of gestures than just pressing down on a key or clicking a mouse.
Much ado about nothing. Yet again, another article to bash the iPad before someone even has a chance to use it.
The FUD begins.
This can NOT be happening! What kind of MORON could have written this piece of garbage? As “brandon” just opined, what is the difference between the iPad and a book? Must we be afraid of BOTH now?
As Shakespeare penned in Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” The second thing we do is shoot all the analysts and experts!
I guess that’s why there are multiple keyboard options for those who need to enter volumes of data. I doubt that typing an occasional url will be very significant.
I see a major Class Action Law suit coming…against the entire publishing industry,it will be bigger then the tobacco suits…calling all Ambulance chasers!
The only way typing on the iPad could work for me is if I can comfortably hold it in portrait mode and type with my thumbs. I’ve got pretty big hands so I should be able to pull it off.
Having to lay it down everytime I want to type would be a pain.
OMG!! Is this serious? How many people have gone bonkers as a result of having to use MS POS? Now that concerns me! I swear, there are many, many more crazies running around than there were 25 years ago! And the only direct correlation I can make is there has been an increased use of MS POS in that period of time. I think that needs investigation! Now!
@ B
Thank you, Sir (or Madam)! That provided a much needed laugh for me this day. I salute your simplistic yet eloquent brilliance!
This sounds like it came off the John Tesh radio show… good grief!
This article isn’t surprising in its suggesting of the scope for such injuries. After all, thousands of people are injured by all manner of weird things every year, so if the iPad is popular then who knows what will happen?
Please give a frickin’ break. Do people have nothing better to do that sit around justifying their assinine jobs. Life is a terminal illness. Get over it.
I’m thoroughly sick-and-tired of everything being about safety and comfort. More fodder for the criminally pussified.
This idiot is probably funding his “research” with a handout from the government, I mean, OUR MONEY! Stop the madness!
The “problem”, Anthony, has been around for years. “You are taking two things that belong in different locations and merging them together.” Like Microsoft and toilet. Go “co-locate” your hand with your d*ck, I doubt that’s posturally sound either!
The 21st century “Opti-Grab”
In these times, musculoskeletal issues are in no way on my top 10 “to do list” or my top 100 “to do list” or even on my top 1000 “to do list” — in fact, this issue wasn’t and still isn’t even on my mind!
@R2 You could always type on portrait while holding it like LaForge does in TNG…
How about pen and paper – same freaking thing…. Leaning over and writing where the device and input method are in the same location..
And masturbation makes you go blind! – At least that is what they said 50 years ago. I have to admit I am wearing glasses but otherwise I see pretty well.
Wow. What do you have to do to be an expert?
Why not wait until the device is out and actually test it before speculating?
What bunch of crap! The same could be said about looking at a real book, Amazons book reader, Barnes & Nobles book reader, a paper, magazine, you name it. This is just a negative FUD segment on the iPad for what reason I don’t know.
What I do know is nothing was posted about the other readers which like I said would also apply if this was true. I find this to be FUD.
A point has been missed by The researcher, Anthony Andre, as well as everyone who has left comments. The first problem was Andre suggesting that colocation of the screen and input device (virtual keyboard) was a problem. It most certainly would be on a traditional computer setup where you have to view the screen head on. Get much angle, and it becomes dim, distorted or hard to read clearly.
That is anything BUT the case with the iPad, which offers clear viewing even from a very flat angle. Problem solved.
Just what we need, another f–king expert.
The problem is the resaerchers are thinking of this as a standard computer, subject to constant input. They neglect the other things done with the iPad such as reading Web pages and books, watching movies, playing games, etc., which people will be doing in airplane and bus seats or on a comfortable chair or sofa. And it might not be long before a 3rd-party developer comes out with an ergonomic Bluetooth portable keyboard with stand, for the real road warriors. In the meantime, standard caution applies just like with all computing: take breaks, stretch arms/fingers, etc.
OK kids, don’t take notes in class because if you read where you write you’re going to have issues.
Just think, Shakespeare (actually Edward DeVere and his secretaries) managed all those plays writing on the same flat surfaces they looked at.
An expert expresses concern about the health effects of an Apple product.
Cue fanboys on MacDailyNews having a collective shit fit.
Sigh.
Ok, now about the kids hauling around 15 pounds of books every day with the back pack on the side, back, or toting with one hand. What about the college students with the same problem? Let us add this with a bike, skate board, and other modes of travel that they seem to find!
How about listing these problems! Give them an iPad and lessen the problems that they will surely be striction with for the rest of thier lives.
Recap- weight is bad and degrades posture. Listed nope.
@Original Shiva
“Wow. What do you have to do to be an expert?”
You have to have no imagination, no common sense, and bow to the schmucks at Redmond. Or you have to have been, in some part of your life, a “pert”. When you retire, you call yourself an ex-pert.
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Hey, what about those touch screens that Windows has. The one where you extend your arms like some sky scrapper crane. You project out and left up for hours a day.
Did not see a negative article on that! Everybody goes WOW!
Later the WoW went to OWE- that hurts!
Maybe he should list those systems as well.
WTF? Humans evolved (or were created – take your pick) to look at things they hold and manipulate in their hands.
Flint handaxes were dangerous to early humans because they couldn’t watch for dangerous predators whilst chipping away.
Babylonian scribes lived lives of suffering and humiliation after experiencing repetitive strain injuries and near sightedness from scratching on their clay tablets.
And let’s not mention the monks of the middle ages, or Abe Lincoln reading by candle light, or anyone who’s used Windows.
Which of these is any less dangerous than the iPad?
This just in: Experts agree that sitting in a chair and reading books, magazines and newspapers could encourage bad posture, introduce musculoskeletal issues.
Experts: iPads could encourage bad posture, introduce musculoskeletal issues.”
Whiners! Buy a Bluetooth keyboard.
And then get a real job!
http://xkcd.com/699/
“Do you know that you can just buy lab coats?”
That means that pencil and notebook they started me out with in grade one, screwed up my posture in the early 50s.
Sonofabitch. I’d sue the school board but everybody on it then is dead now.
I think the iPad case and/or the IPS screen tech make this a non issue as you can make typing comfort a priority in your position and still view clearly from whatever angle that may be, thanks to IPS
Bogus!. Reading a book can give you a back ache, as can sitting in a movie. You – You are in charge of how you hold and position things. Including your favorite squeeze.
I heard it will make you go blind….no, wait..that was something else….I have trouble reading nowadaze….must be the light.
I watched my sister trying to use her stinkin little netbook the other week and laughed at her hunching over that little toy PC piece of crap. Yeah, that’s so much better….
Ha? If experts believe iPad’s will do that, then you can throw cell phones, computers, and television in the same category. Any more excuses not to like the iPad?! Come on people.
As my dear departed father used to say with great alacrity, “What a fuckin’ crock of shit.”
If you read the original article, as I did, you will note there is no place in which to respond to the article. Now, why do you think that is? Because if you wait a day or so, you’ll start to see this POS show up in Google News and then get picked up by the wire services. This is a made-to-order FUD bomb tossed by Microsoft PR. Their trick is that they plant a story like this with a Web site that they know will take anything they spoon feed them and run it verbatim. The people behind the “study” probably don’t exist.
Then, once the wire services pick this up, it will get fed around and soon, the story will be referred to by clueless idiot like Ed Baig of USA Today. Once the story gets passed around like so much holiday fruitcake, Microsoft’s PR minions will keep shoveling more coal on the fire, repeating the story and continuing to feed it to frigtards like PC World’s David Coursey or some dickheads at CNET. It’s likely that the whole thing is a bald-faced lie, because you could do the very same things with a writing pad.
It’s classic Microsoft FUD. We call it “clubbing baby seals,” the scam in which Microsoft uses third parties to plant lies and FUD about a soon-to-be introduced product (thus giving them plausible deniability) in order to undermine it. Basically, Ballmer has his PR whores try to plant little land mines like this and they then wait to see which ones blow up. If they hit on one that gets picked up by the frigtard media, they keep throwing white gas on it. If the FUD doesn’t take, they move on to some new scam.
This is what Microsoft calls leadership. Fuckheads.
The subject is Ergonomics.
Is the iPad ergonomically compatible with the human body?
No.
But it does help that it has an excellent viewing angle. You can lay the thing flat and still see what’s on it.
Me: I have my MacBook with the nifty old fashioned tilting screen. So much for the iPad killing the laptop. Not gonna happen. But for many purposes, the iPad is fine. It’s just not a device for long term work.