For many people, Apple’s iPad has gone from a valuable to invaluable device during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Brian X. Chen for The New York Times:
With a bigger screen than an iPhone, the iPad excels at videoconferencing with apps like FaceTime and Zoom, and it’s great for watching movies and programs on Netflix and YouTube. When you attach it to a good keyboard, it becomes an excellent budget computer with a zippy internet connection for browsing the web, writing emails and composing documents.
“It’s really in that sweet spot of being relatively affordable and having everything I think most people will need,” said Nick Guy, a writer for Wirecutter, a New York Times publication that tests products.
It’s tough to recommend buying any tech in the coronavirus outbreak, actually. But if your gadgets are failing to fulfill your needs in any of the aforementioned areas and you have the money to spend, an iPad is one of the few products I can endorse for its practicality.
I picked up an iPad for a $100 discount last Black Friday. Over the past few weeks, it has been my go-to device. Here’s why I’m naming it the gadget of the pandemic…
MacDailyNews Take: Chen goes on and on about how the iPad was “forgettable” before, but that’s just his issue. Hundreds of millions of iPad users never “forgot” about iPad, they just used their iPads everyday to get things done. Now, more than ever, iPads are doing yeoman work as people work from home during the COVID19 pandemic.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
Ahh, the pandemic. Well pretty soon Apple will take the plunge (nobody will buy their products because they will be out of work) as the democats plunge our country into depression over a variant of the flu. Everyday the lockdowns continue, every minute a business closes for good. Is this our future to be decided by politicians(who BTW are rich and this does not affect them) I say we will have a revolution soon. Very soon. We just need to go the route of Sweden and let natural selection run its course. Because to keep this up, we will still have deaths and depression and suicides, etc. Lockdowns are not the answer. This experiment has failed. Time to get back.
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If people stay home it is bad for the economy. But if they DIE, that’s fine. Affluenza speaks.
Change Now:
Your post is mostly opinion mixed with flat untruths (“variant of the flu”, “this experiment has failed”), but it might be worth addressing the half-truth about Sweden.
First, the Swedes are not “letting natural selection run its course.” They have encouraged social distancing and have voluntary compliance that is clearly better than the compliance with mandatory distancing in many US localities. Their culture promotes social responsibility, not rugged individualism.
People can afford to comply because they have generous leave policies that discourage coming to work sick. They have generous pensions and other benefits that allow people to stay home if they are susceptible. Universal medical care leaves fewer patients with untreated underlying conditions, and encourages early medical intervention by a primary care physician rather than an emergency department. Demographically, Swedes are more likely to live alone than Americans and far less likely to have crowded living conditions.
Secondly, and despite all those advantages, Sweden still has more cases and deaths than the adjacent countries with mandatory distancing.
What “some variant of a human being” is advocating will let “natural selection run it’s course”.
We need greater testing so we can isolate the truly infected and end this nonsense. Isolation in the meantime is necessary. If you don’t want to do that and risk it, just remember that when they tell you that you need a tube to breath and they will put you to sleep to initiate that process, that may be the last thing you remember.
Go back to school. see a neurologist. This is a partisan issue to you? A flu? Why not volunteer in a hospital for a while? You will wake up the hard way- perhaps in a box.
“Well pretty soon Apple will take the plunge (nobody will buy their products because they will be out of work)”
You’re not that bright are you? People who buy Apple products tend to be wealthier and tend to be professionals with careers. Most of those people are not having significant income problems right now. You even admit that fact in your own post:
“who BTW are rich and this does not affect them”
Yes, not all but many Apple customers aren’t all that affected by this. Especially those that live outside the US where people have social programs and universal healthcare. Incomes are far less impacted than in the US.
Oh and if you think there will be no food riots, that is coming too as the nations meat suppliers are in dire straits and going downhill fast because the govt isn’t doing anything about it except trying to score political points here. You better stock up now, or starve soon.
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In a healthy economy corporations make money by selling useful products to people. Getting your customers killed will not improve your stock portfolio. Wealthy people are going to have to face the fact that the humans they despise so much ARE the economy, and without them, all your dollar bills and political connections are worthless. Want to save the meat industry? Don’t just hand more money to millionaires. Make sure ordinary people can buy their products.
Yeah, Brian Chen, the ex-Wired writer who would never admit he got the Japan iPhone story totally wrong.