Tablet vs TreeMag - Babies prefer tablet

[FatDog]

There is some creative editing of the video but shows the interactivity of a tablet compared to a magazine.

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/...-ipad-2583883/

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by FatDog

There is some creative editing of the video but shows the interactivity of a tablet compared to a magazine.

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/...-ipad-2583883/

Yeah, the article is really exaggerated. Firstly, this is no "whiz kid." I mean, she's 1. She gets that tapping and pinching does stuff on an iPad, but clearly has no idea what. It's not like she was playing Angry Birds.

She is also used to those actions. Chances are, her dad gives her an iPad instead of physical printed material most of the time. Of course she tries to perform the same actions on it. She's a baby. She's not going to sit there and evaluate whether paper is physically capable of responding to touch.

But she gets how to flip the pages. She sees how to work a magazine.

Still, it'll be really interesting to see how this gen grows up. Most of the older folks consider my gen "digital natives," and I guess we are - I could type on a keyboard before I could handwrite legibly, and I remember my dad patching Doom for me to make all the monsters Barnie when I was a toddler. I've been on computers since I was a wee child.

But not like this. You couldn't carry around computers when I was a toddler. I still grew up with physical books (although my digital nativeness shines through - I never liked physical books as much as I like my ereader, and I'm sure the ereader's conformity to my otherwise digital life is the reason why). The internet was still mostly the domain of uber-geeks, not normal people.

I'm a digital native, but her generation are internet natives. That's a whole 'nother ball game, and strange to even imagine.

[afa]

I'm not sure what the point of that article was.

Was it to show that this kid is really tech-savvy? Because she's not. She's just a kid who knows that touching stuff on this bright object does stuff. Was it to show that magazines are dying out? That might be true, but the video doesn't do a great job of illustrating it. Again, she's a baby. A kid who was a few years older and somewhat capable of cognitive reasoning would work better. Like if Dad gives 5-year-old Timmy a print book for the first time and he goes, "What's the point of this? Where's my iPad?"

And the author of that article doesn't even bother to provide any personal opinions and insights into the video, either. He just posts a video on the page, and that's it. Like he's sharing something with friends on Facebook. Lazy ass.

I used to be a regular visitor to Yahoo! and even had it as my homepage, so I could see the latest headlines and things. I stopped a long time ago when I kept getting increasingly irritated with the shoddy "journalism" on display there. It's not really even journalism; Yahoo! just pays people to pen poorly written blogs, and for some reason they feature them as if this was somehow providing valuable contribution to consumers. I can't believe some of these people actually get paid, at all. I've seen tweets that were better written than the various Yahoo! blogs.

Anyway, that's the end of this rant.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by afa

And the author of that article doesn't even bother to provide any personal opinions and insights into the video, either.

Why, that's not true at all! She provides maybe as many of 10 sentences of mostly incoherent gushing, including using "adorable" several times in a row. </sarcasm>

Personal opinions on cute factor do not a child prodigy make. People seem very prone to falling for that particular fallacy when there's a baby involved for some reason.

[howyoudoin]

This is like teaching kids about the operation of a car before teaching them about the concept of the wheel.

[FatDog]

I'm not sure what the point of that article was.

We practice Agile development at work and my group tries to do a stand-up every morning. Two of my co-workers come from far away and with traffic - there arrival is always +/- about twenty minutes. My uber-boss was going on a rant about how wonderful his iPad and Apple in general was. To distract him from my late co-workers I tossed back at him that people who carry around tablets are like television watchers. Any idiot can use one and they consume content by others rather than creating anything useful. He was still frothing at the mouth and did not comment when the late arrivals joined the group.

Then - "Baby can use an iPad but not a magazine" video showed up later that day.

You have to understand - I love my two macbooks and my android tablet so I am not a Luddite. The video just supported me teasing my boss. He is actually a pretty good guy but very ... passionate.

[replica145]

Please refer to Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age on how this will play out.

[emellaich]

The point to the video isn't how precocious or cute the toddler is. It is about how technology is reprogramming our expectations for what media should do. As another commentary on this, please see the following comedy sketch on a monk who is trying to switch from scrolls to books.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cd7B...e_gdata_player

[RainingLemur]

My baby prefers to hear me sing Lonely Island tunes. Can't get him interested in much else.

[mldavis2]

... or perhaps we should ask what that suggests about those users for whom bling subverts content ...

[taming]

Cats also seem to like iPads. My cat Beanie has never turned the page in a magazine. http://www.gizmag.com/ipad-cat-apps/19656/

[Mel]

Earlier this year I spent half an hour on a bus behind a woman and a baby this same age. She had given the baby her iphone to play with. It was kind of fascinating to observe. The girl obviously had the skill to tap and pinch and the mental development to realize that those motions made things happen but wasn't yet at the point to understand which apps made which things happen. The half hour was spent opening and closing apps over and over and getting frustrated that it wasn't doing whatever she wanted. I wonder what age children learn to identify certain colors and shapes have meanings?

[FatDog]

I wonder what age children learn to identify certain colors and shapes have meanings?

Years ago when the mouse first appeared they tried to let kids use them. Children under about .... 6 years old did not get the concept that when they moved the mouse - something happened on the screen. But a tablet with a touch-screen is intuitive. "I touch it - it does something. I put it in my mouth and Mom does something."

[J. Strnad]

I would like to see a comparison, using that kid, between an iPad and a mess of finger paints. I wonder which would fascinate her more....

[wodin]

Besides that, iPads are better than treemags for teething. Paper get all mushy and nasty when you drool all over it.