The Nook, the IPod and the IPad

The immortal Rick Blaine said he came to Casablanca for "the waters." Reminded that Casablanca is in a desert, he replied "He was misinformed." I was recently "misinformed into buying an IPad. Apple released a program to generate interactive IBooks that could be read on the IPad. I wrongly assumed you could also write IBooks on the IPad. Now I'm addicted to this darn little rectangle.

I had resisted adding an IPad to my collection of electronic junk. After all I had a Nook Color, the Barnes and Noble competitor to Amazon's Kindle. When B&N and Amazon launched lower end tablets (the computing category the IPad falls into), B&N upgraded the Nook Colors operating system to do some tablet like things such as playing Netflix videos. I must say that all the reviews I have read show that the Nook is a superior product to the Kindle, but the marketing of Amazon is much stronger so once again an inferior product may win out in the wonderful world of capitalism. Both run versions of the Android operating system the leading competitor to Apple's proprietary operating system.

Now my friends expect me to sell my Nook and go exclusively IPad. All the apps I love on the Nook are available on the Apple, but I don't think I'll be switching anytime soon. The Nook is perfect for bedtime use. Turns out that when I fall asleep I don't toss and turn-the Nook balances perfectly on my tummy and so far has been there when I wake up. The best part of the Nook are its newsreader apps, Pulse  and Taptu (both available on the IPad also). Pulse lets you choose 60 news sources which it arranges in pages like a newspaper. Taptu gives you up to a hundred sources-I have 10 to keep up on dinosaur news alone-that can be color coded by section. Throw in an excellent weather app and you have your own version of the late news. Watching a Netflix video in bed is also easy on the smaller screen of the Nook.

At twice the cost the IPad can do everything the Nook can do and more. So much more that it jumps into another category of uses. It has two cameras, video and still. It has a built in "tape" recorder that can record people well even outdoors. It's touch screen opens up a world of drawing and painting apps that makes creating a nature journal easy. And the IBook and ITunes University will open up a whole new world of learning. Let me explain. The Nook Color plays several Audubon Nature Guides that beat the paper versions of these books and the IPad actually plays several more, but the IBook of Life on Earth (by Edmund O. Wilson includes video clips of animals and animations of things like the DNA molecule. Right now I'm taking a free ecology course at the Open University (I think you can access this on computer) that includes its own video clips and selections from David Attenborough's Life of Mammals. The interactivity is incredible and makes it easy for even this old dog to learn new tricks. This week's lessons dealt with adaptations for life in trees; last weeks explored food webs in an English Oak Forest and a reserve in Mozamibique.

Sadly my oldest friend seems to be losing out in this wonderful new world of connectivity. My little IPod with its 10,000 songs and stories has been sitting unused lately. Need to find a way to work this back into my life!