Tiny Pleasures

by Dennis Green

An extreme crisis in one’s life — medical or financial or romantic — can bring with it one unexpected benefit. Even the smallest pleasures loom very large, as the strained proportions of appreciation stretch both ways.

Proportion is a big part of this phenomenon, but in extremis, tells us that normality may be the distortion, and this magnification of pleasure may be the norm.

When you can’t leave the house, can barely walk down the hall, your world shrinks, but then suddenly expands again as minutiae take on a wholly new significance. When there is a tremor in the right hand, and two catheters penetrating your flesh, the body itself takes on a whole new aura of meaning.

But what causes me the greatest fascination these days is the iPad. and that is because it resembles in strange ways the workings of the human mind. It’s the touch screen. Quirky. Ephemeral. Capable of multi-tasking and of overload.

There are many functions that respond to simply touching the screen. Tapping it once does one thing, tapping it twice does another, and tapping it three times brings forth yet another charm. Pressing and dragging moves icons around. Squeezing the fingers together or apart can enlarge type font or another image, or shrink it, place it, move it and in Pages wrap text around it in different layouts and configurations. And with the iPad, apps are available that create a keyboard, like a piano, or the strings of a guitar, with corresponding sounds.

I have downloaded more apps than I can possibly use. One features a fish pond, complete with bird sounds in the background and carp swimming below. Touch the surface of the “water” and you will hear the sound of rippling water. Another features a wide variety of handguns. Touch the trigger of one and the iPad resonates with the sound and an approximation of the relative recoil of that particular weapon.

Many of the apps for the iPad are based on those designed originally for the iPhone, but re-designed for use on the new device. Because the screen is larger and more responsive, the touch factor can be expanded. And it doesn’t always work, multi-touch, or calls up a feature, such as the magnifier along the edge of a page in Pages, which allows you to jump to another part of the manuscript, when you didn’t intend to. Mental.

What I’ve always loved about Apple engineers has been the “intuitive” nature of their software designs. (And on the contrary, when Microsoft stole Windows from Apple, it turned it into a clunky, clumsy way to navigate the screen and applications — the very epitome of “nerd.”) But when it comes to being intuitive, the iPad, with its touch screen and simplicity — no mouse or keyboard — is even more so. Consequently, there is virtually no manual, except online, and really no need for one. Commands and functions come so naturally you just need intuition, and a little common sense, to figure them out.

The sheer genius of the size and simplicity of the iPad is what makes it so revolutionary. Large enough to fill your field of vision when it is propped up in your lap, yet small enough and close enough for the experience to be incredibly intimate — that’s what makes it such a pleasure, if a tiny one. Watching a movie or music video, reading a newspaper, magazine or book, or writing an email or a story in Pages is a sheer delight!

I’m sure this new toy coming into my life under any circumstances would have been exciting. But with the rest of my world so shrunken, this little baby opens new doors of perception, experience and enjoyment I didn’t even know existed!

©2010 Dennis Green