iPad stabbers

Had to take the handbrake to the dentist today, due to getting wisdom(?) teeth at 35.

The endless faffing about of dentist, different joint for an x-ray, back to dentist, WHOOPS referral to a specialist, took about 4 bloody hours aside, I noted one consistent theme across all three sites.

iPad stabbers.

iPads have a touch sensitive screen designed to sense the capacitative coupling of a living body.  They work with fingers, noses, and cat paws.  They may also work with other body parts as well, but only on your iPad, matey.  They even work with knuckles, which is surprising considering there is so little skin and flesh there.  With older capacitative screens, I often couldn't get them to register fingertips, only finger pads.

Of course, they won't recognise Cruella de Vil fingernails (or these efforts) because there's no capacitance to sense - if you really have to have fingernails that make you look like Edward Scissorhands, get a Jasjam from 2006 and enjoy your Windows Mobile 6 (mmm, attractive) and 5 minutes battery life.

If you have idiotic fingernails, I can understand your need for a stylus.  These have a nice, soft little hemisphere on the end with capacitative characteristics so the screen digitiser senses the input.  If you don't, I utterly fail to see why you need one.  It's a touch screen.  Touch.  You interact with it by touching.  What would you want to complicate it with a stylus that you have to cart around, which does what your own chubby digits do?

And why, oh why, do people seem to feel the need to STAB THE FUCKING SCREEN WITH THE THINGS????  It a TOUCH screen, *not* a STAB screen!  Multiple tens of millions of dollars went into that technology, but regardless I spend the morning watching people stab the living crap out of expensive touch screen hardware, like they are trying to play some bizarre combination of pin-finger and eating peas with a knife.

My mother even does it with her fingers, until I threatened to take my iPad away from her until she promised to attacking it and USE IT.  Is it somehow related to older people who don't quite grok the concept of sensitivity below what a mallet can apply or something??

Stop it, please.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled lolcats.