Just Let People Use Their Damn Gadgets

Here’s Federico Veticci on iPads as cameras:

And yes, I think I’d look silly shooting photos with an iPad in public. But, to put it bluntly, whatever. At the end of the day, any device that facilitates memories is a welcome addition to our computing lives.

I’d always been put off by the hostility from tech elites about people taking pictures with their iPads’ and tablets’ cameras. (Excepting of course at events like concerts where they rudely obstruct others’ views.) People own tablets, they want to take pictures, and they take a picture with the tablet they have on them. So what? The civil peace is not being disturbed, social order is not being upended. It’s just a big, flat camera. Get over it. And good on Viticci, who is perhaps the iPaddiest person alive, for having a little humanity about it.

It’s the same kind of tech snobbery that provokes a huff of moral indignation about people shooting video with their phones in a portrait (up-and-down) orientation. What neanderthals! What boors! How dare they pollute the Internet with their vertically-oriented pseudo-cinema! Forcing us to look at all that wasted black space on either side of the footage of their toddler dancing to “Gangnam Style” in their diaper! Built in to Android’s stock camera app is now an animated prompt to strongly suggest a user change to landscape should they be about to record video in portrait. No doubt put there some by Google engineers who feel grossly offended by the practice, harming their delicate aesthetic sensibilities.

It reminds me a little bit of the way so many in the tech sphere thought that using a large phone or phablet looked ridiculous, particularly when up against someone’s face being used as a telephone (and note how, as with the tablets-as-cameras, it’s more about how it “looks silly” than anything substantive or practical). Of course, now Apple’s released a phone much bigger than those early “big phones,” so now it’s okay. It’s what people wanted all along, it turns out, of course.

I don’t know. Just let people use their gadgets the way they want to. If they want to use big tablets as cameras, or hold giant phones to their ears, or if they really want physical BlackBerry style keyboards, you know, just let them be. No one shooting portrait-oriented video is going to come and take your $500 messenger bag or your AeroPress. You’ll be fine.