Comments on: The Best Remote Control $700 Can Buy: First Impressions of the Apple iPad http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/04/05/the-best-remote-control-700-can-buy-first-impressions-of-the-apple-ipad/ Responses to Media and Culture Fri, 12 Feb 2016 19:35:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 By: Convergence, Confluence, Concurrence: the iPad’s implications for transmedia | canarytrap.net http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/04/05/the-best-remote-control-700-can-buy-first-impressions-of-the-apple-ipad/comment-page-1/#comment-3254 Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:27:53 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=2833#comment-3254 […] Matt Dawson’s provocatively suggestion that the iPad could be a really robust remote control that would let you manage, annotate, and expand upon your TV viewing in real time. This first bring up the interesting idea of transmedia components that are meant to be experienced simultaneously. Transmedia is premised on the distribution of narrative threads through and across multiple platforms, but the implicit assumption is that the experiences would take place at different times, that the different pieces, while deeply integrated and reciprocal, are nevertheless meant to be experienced individually. What the ipad signals is perhaps a shift from the popular perception of transmedia as expansion (leading to the central-property/peripheral extension dichotomy that transmedia producers and thinkers often push against) towards one of layering. I’ve previously discussed transmedia stories as intertexts — not just a story told across text but somehow created in the gaps between, the elasticity of multiplicity. This shift speaks to that same concept, as a metaphor of layers moves us to think not only of a world created through multiple stories, but also of stories told through multiple lenses that build upon one another, adding depth and nuance to the view. […]

]]> By: Jeffrey Jones http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/04/05/the-best-remote-control-700-can-buy-first-impressions-of-the-apple-ipad/comment-page-1/#comment-2911 Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:21:05 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=2833#comment-2911 One of the more helpful “reviews” I’ve read. Thanks, Max.

]]> By: Jonathan Gray http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/04/05/the-best-remote-control-700-can-buy-first-impressions-of-the-apple-ipad/comment-page-1/#comment-2857 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:40:29 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=2833#comment-2857 I’m intrigued by the idea of a giant remote control, Max, though presumably that’s just a TiVo thing, not open to all DVRs? 🙁

]]> By: Kyra Glass http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/04/05/the-best-remote-control-700-can-buy-first-impressions-of-the-apple-ipad/comment-page-1/#comment-2837 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 06:09:00 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=2833#comment-2837 As a fellow beta tester (so to speak) of the iPad I wanted to throw in my two cents. For me using it has been a surprisingly different experience from using my laptop. My laptop has always felt insufficiently mobile to me, with a 2-3 hour battery (tops) when playing video I never really could move around that much with my laptop (access to the nearest plug was always first in my mind). If I wanted to watch This Week in the kitchen while cooking dinner I had to decide if I wanted to let my laptop finish charging so I could grade student papers on it later, or if I’d rather plug in my laptop or blender on the kitchen. I was constantly deciding whether I wanted to bother turning it off or on, and if I wanted that clam shell screen between me and the person I was talking to. The iPad, for me, is beautifully unobtrusive. It is always on, it can always be with me (it has a permanent spot in my purse) and I can whip it out to show someone a comic panel or make a note without putting this physical wall between us.

More important for a conversation between media scholars is that I find it changing, significantly how I interact with a variety of media. Print is the first one, I prefer electronic pdfs to paper ones but I have always felt limited in how I interact with them. Now I have returned the sensory interaction with my pdfs I can write on them draw on them, star points, cross out points, etc. Some of how I used to interact with paper has now merged with how I interact with digital media (downloading, tagging, searching etc.) and I really enjoy that. Interacting with another favorite print media of mine, the comic, has changed too. The ability to do extreme close ups of comic book panels (which Marvels app allows) has given me a very different perspective on comic book art.

My experience with the way I flow from one activity (or media consumption) to another has really changed with the iPad too. Don’t get me wrong, in many ways no multi-tasking is a real disability (particularly for those who want a laptop replacement) but it also creates a really interesting sense of focus and flow that I don’t generally experience with a laptop. The one task at a time nature of the device has encouraged me to flow through media differently. I see information about a television blog post on twitter which leads me to that blog, that blog has a clip that I select and watch full screen. On my laptop, I would have likely kept reading twitter while watching the clip and be halfway into the next blog post. Here the clip really becomes an individual media text for me, something to focus on for a moment before moving on to whats next. The new edition of Paris Match for the iPad takes full advantage of this, it combines text with photographs that are intended to take up one entire screen at a time, so a single image becomes the focus (at least for a moment). The Paris Match edition also includes slide shows with accompanying music and a transition sequence and timing the user cannot control. This lack of control, this space for guided experience provides something very different from the Paris Match website, something I was surprised that I enjoyed.

The iPad certainly has some flaws as both a productivity and media device (it can download pdfs from e-mails but not from websites for example) but it also has a lot of potential. It has already made me change the way I do some things and has me wondering: what would Barthes think about this most recent edition of Paris Match?

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