The Relief of Dropping An iPad
Cracked screens and scuffed edges. The mental toll of using devices not designed for the real world
A few weeks ago, I dropped my iPad. There was a moment, a gut-wrenching moment, seemingly in slow motion, as I watched my iPad Pro, 12.9", with its Apple A12X chip, Bionic 64-bit architecture, and Apple M12 motion coprocessor fall. Millions of dollars of research and development, decades of Moore’s Law, and the ultimate manifestation of Jony Ive’s vision meet: the floor.
At the Apple Special Event™ that launched the iPad Pro, the screens behind Apple’s polo-neck-enveloped executives filled with abstract videos of iPads spinning, tumbling, and turning through the air, weightless and indestructible. In the split second my iPad fell, those images popped into my mind as a sort of cruel mocking parody of the fate about to, quite literally, befall my iPad. The difference between Apple’s marketing videos and my world seemed infinite. In Apple’s videos, a falling device is elegant. Like a ballerina. In my world a falling device is clumsy. Like a brick.
Apple’s imagined devices never come into contact with the sharp corners of reality and concrete. No devices in promotional videos have cracked screens. The fronts are immune from fingerprints. Most aren’t in cases. To hear Apple’s…
