When I arrived in the USA on 8th April, buying an iPad wasn't on my mind. I came here to see old friends, do some research for the comic-book project I'm working on and get some medical advice. Although this would be my umpteenth visit to Washington DC area, the previous one was 3 years ago, so I was really looking forward to it. I'm a bit of a yank-o-file at heart.
The friends who I visit out here in Virginia with are tech-fiends. At least Ron is. Sharon is a tech-fiend's wife, which makes her a tech-minion. Their two daughters, aged 4 & 8 are thus, spawn-of-tech. For kids so young it is a marvel to behold them reprogramming the TiVo, using an iPhone or surfing the web.
So it didn't take long before the subject of the iPad came up. I was surprised to find that there wasn't already one in the house since they'd been in the stores since the weekend before. But it turns out that only the Wi-Fi versions were shipping. The 3G versions would be coming at the end of the month and it this was the model they (Ron!) were waiting for.
A couple of days into my trip, we went to a local mall which has an Apple store. I'd been jokingly warned by people that the approximate time between picking one up and wanting one was less than 5 minutes. Yeah, right.
Yeah, right!
First impressions are everything. I picked it up, saw the Marvel comics app on the screen. touched the icon and was suddenly inside an issue of the Fantastic Four. Faster than it took to type that sentence. Flipping the pages was quick & felt natural. At 100% size the art looks great but you can double tap to zoom into a panel. And then side scroll from panel to panel.
Then came Google maps. It was so fast that I found myself wondering if the maps were preloaded.
I remember looking up at the opposite row of iPads and seeing an Apple store employee cleaning fingerprints off a demo model and making a mental note to get some cleaning stuff on the way home so I could keep mine shiny.
Definitely less than 5 minutes. Probably less than 3.
Of course, they were out of stock. At all Apple stores everywhere. And they didn't know when they would get any more in. Maybe later, maybe tomorrow. If we wanted we could buy a nice case for one though, said the (somewhat flirtatious) store assistant. Er, no thanks, Mr. Genius!
So we trundled away wondering where else we could get one. Would it be worth trying another Apple store? Online orders wouldn't arrive for days. Was he telling the truth when he said there might be a delivery later? How different an experience than my previous visit to the very same apple store.
On the way back from the mall we stopped at Best Buy. They didn't have any either it seemed... or did they? We checked the Best Buy website, which said that they did have them. The store staff insisted they didn't... but they didn't look comfortable about it. 'Come back tomorrow, first thing!', they said. The younger of the two guys looked a bit sheepish. I got the distinct impression that they were holding back - probably because of some sales quota or promotion which would start the next day. I mean, Everybody knows they always have some out back, right?
That night I couldn't help but imagine my own work comic work on the iPad. The truth was that seeing the project I've so lovingly crafted with my Japanese co-conspirators on the iPad is more likely than ever seeing it in print. And I mean as a paid, published digital comic, not a free web-comic.
There's nothing wrong with free web-comics. they are great. I read them all the time. But I want to do this full time and getting published as a comics writer and earning enough to live off it is probably harder than finding work as an actor, being paid as a musician or getting a regular writing gig.
The lure of self publishing has always been big, but somewhat intangible at the same time. You still have to put down a lot of cash to get your work physically printed and also distributed. It's inherently risky as there are just so many things that can go wrong without even taking into account if you work is actually any good.
But after seeing the Marvel comics app... and also the ones from Comixology, IDW, Comic Book Mobi... suddenly, that meadow of green grass on the other side looks an awful lot closer.
Next morning, we went back to Best Buy. The store opens at 10am. By 9.50am there was a small crowd outside. Seeing that they were a pretty mixed bunch of regular looking folk, I said to my friend Ron that I doubted they were all there to get an iPad.
Wrong.
At least half of them were. Now, bear in mind that this is seven days after the initial launch. Think about that for a moment. A week later stores are still sold out and people are still lining up for them. That's pretty nuts. I don't think that any other product in recent history has had this kind of initial response. Maybe the Buzz Lightyear toy, during Christmas 1996? In fact, as of this writing Apple have announced that they are delaying the international launch by a month as they had underestimated the demand in the USA.
However, the magical Apple delivery truck had come by and they were plentiful in stock (or they had simply shifted a load from out back, I don't know which) and I walked away 15 minutes later $736 poorer, but with a warm, tingly feeling in the the nerd center of my brain that I'd not felt since I bought a PlayStation 3 the previous year in Japan.
Was today the first day of the my home computing future? Will I see the light and move into digital publishing? Or did I just buy the world's most expensive mouse mat? We shall see.
NEXT: 04 - The Out of the Box Experience.
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