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Using Tablets Becoming Popular Bathroom Activity
alphadogg says "With the market flush with hot-selling tablet computers, it shouldn't bowl anyone over to learn that many users are taking the plunge and bringing their devices to the bathroom. According to a new survey published by Staples Advantage, the business-to-business division of Staples Inc., 35% of tablet users copped to using their iPad or other tablets while in the bathroom, while a whopping 78% of tablet users said they used their tablets while lying in bed. And in a data point sure to further damage techies' reputation for social skills, Staples Advantage also reported that 30% of tablet users said they used their tablets while at restaurants."
"Angry Birds has changed the way the world goes to the bathroom"
So what's the % of people using laptops and smartphones in the bathroom? Didn't we have portable devices before the iPad?
Sent from my bathroom. (Really).
iPooed
Come on, we all know what your REALY up to in there.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
1) Tablets are replacing paper media, not surprised to hear that magazines and other reading materials are disappearing from bathrooms.
2) I can't name anyone who bought a tablet who did not envision using it as an eReader. Isn't reading still the most popular bedtime activity?
3) Tablets are great in restaurants. You can show things to your friends and family. It's the douchebags who use tablets instead of conversing at the table that give only themselves a bad name. No different than whipping out a smartphone.
in restaurants or on a journey its a godsend for keeping a rugbiter quiet.
Wash their hands and disinfect their iPad...afterward?..
Wow "flush" and "bowl" used in the first sentence.
Thought thinks itself.
If I'm at a restaurant alone, what should I do while waiting for my food to come? If I have a tablet, why not?
I use my iPad in all of those locations and I really don't see a problem with it. My iPad is where I read my books now, and people take those to the bathroom or restaurants as well.
Also this isn't particularly new either. I have been taking devices to the bathroom since my first Palm device. I have a very specific routine (not really by thinking about, it just developed naturally) I have developed to ensure the device never gets dropped in!
Never mind all that reasonably safe stuff - it's the airline pilots who should be of more concern.
"78% of tablet users said they used their tablets while lying in bed"
Tablets suck for use in bed. Netbooks have a nice hinge which keeps the screen at a suitable angle for viewing when it's resting on your chest, and there's a handy attached keyboard to type on.
What is this obsessive need everyone has to pick inferior devices just because they are trendy?
And in a data point sure to further damage techies' reputation for social skills
Wait, "techies" wouldn't be caught dead using a tablet. After all, they know notebooks have far more features and power and do everything so much better than silly tablets. Tablets are just for Apple cultists and hipsters following the latest fad! As soon as the novelty wears off, people will buy notebooks again... I know they will...
(cradles my HP EliteBook and cries)
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
"And in a data point sure to further damage techies' reputation for social skills, Staples Advantage also reported that 30% of tablet users said they used their tablets while at restaurants."
I'm not sure that the techies will be atypically hard hit by this one. Back in the day, when obsessive computer use required an obsessive interest in gaming and/or some techie esoterica, and it was cost-prohibitive to compute on the move(much less get internet access...), the techie social skills reputation was not exactly bolstered by the tendency to stay inside and play with their computers.
Then came the mass adoption of laptops and blackberries by practically every 'road warrior' type suit with a salary high enough that paying for the ability to bug him while he was away from the office made sense. This certainly did include some techies; but the population of management/sales types brandishing their blackberries and monopolizing flat surfaces absolutely exploded.
Now, with cellphones falling well into affordable for all but the most squalid, and Apple having WAFed the hell out of portable computing, it sure isn't techies who I see logging the most socially inappropriate screen time... Not being able to finish a single bloody meal without ignoring the present company to text frantically about nothing is now a mainstream behavior. If anything, the more 'social' people do it more because they have more people to text, and derive greater satisfaction from group-affirming social chatter...
Sure, I've taken a tablet to dinner with me. If the wife isn't around, I'd like to catch up on TV/News/etc while eating. I go out to eat because I don't want to spend the time/effort cooking, why shouldn't I be able to take my media with me?
Bathroom or in bed? Yeah if I'm watching a movie on my tablet it'll come with me. Why not? I'll let the wife have the TV, remember happy wife, happy life.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
makes for a boring summary, let alone article.
Generally, throne reading material is often in the form of magazines and old books. Rarely should they ever find a home outside the restroom, and at best, be thrown into the trash bin when done. Hygiene is an important behavior of living. My problem with using phones and other devices while in the restroom have to do with idea of them being used outside as well. Not many people wash their hands properly, and the idea of spreading E. Coli doesn't go over too well with the rest of us.
Life is not for the lazy.
Ah, but can you return them after they've been in the bathroom?
(Jerry and George are at Brentano's. George is trying to return the book)
GEORGE: Yes, I, uh, I need to return this book.
CASHIER: (Puts the book's code into the computer) I'm sorry, we can't take this book back.
GEORGE: Why not?
CASHIER: It's been flagged.
GEORGE: (Confused) Flagged?
CASHIER: It's been in the bathroom.
GEORGE: It says that on the computer?
CASHIER: Please take it home. We don't want it near the other books.
GEORGE: (Outraged. Leaving) Well, you just lost a lot of business! Because I love to read!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
You take airline pilots to the bathroom with you?
That problem is now solved.
...give that guy a raise!!
the ipad is a killer cook book. i have hundreds of recipes including video of how to do some things on mine
about wiping the smudges off of the screen without some bleach
The only time I'd be using a tablet in the bathroom would be to flush it down the toilet.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Isn't the best selling tablet the iPad? Just an observation.
Supposedly nineteen percent of people have dropped their phone into a toilet. I'm still trying to figure out how, exactly, since it would seem you'd be holding the phone somewhat in front of the bowl - but I'm not sure I really want to know.
Also, anecdotally speaking, in my experience it's not uncommon to hear people talking on the phone from bathroom stalls. BTW if that's you... yeah, I'm the guy who walks around flushing all the toilets during your phone call. I feel it's important the person at the other end of the call know where you are.
Going back further... my dad used to take a newspaper in with him occasionally. He always liked to refer to those visits as "trips to the library".
#DeleteChrome
Is the iPad screen Chlorine safe? OCD minds would like to know.
And in a data point sure to further damage techies' reputation for social skills, Staples Advantage also reported that 30% of tablet users said they used their tablets while at restaurants."
Why would it damage the reputation of techies? It was the techies on Slashdot that were proclaiming that the iPad was going to be a complete flop and no one was going to want to buy tablet computers over netbooks and notebooks. But, hey, nice try at spin. It's almost as laughable as the Slashdot review of the iPod just before it took off and become the most well-known mp3 player of all time.
Waste paper replacement! Now that would just be absurd.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
the ipad is a killer cook book. i have hundreds of recipes including video of how to do some things on mine
That's the one time I think I prefer a netbook (though I don't own a tablet). The netbook screen is propped up from the counter, and stays that way while I have dirty fingers.
So is using an iPad as a cookbook "content creation" or "content consumption"?
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
"Ew."
But I am surprised he hasn't yet added an iPad to his desktop Apple store.
What's become of the art of dumping?
www.itjerk.com
You mean like iNax - Sit Different ?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.php?products_id=458
Tablets are for finger flicking. Anything else is missing the point.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Easiest way to join the mile high club I guess.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
don't nobody ever ask me to touch your iPads or any other pads ever again. Crap!
You can't handle the truth.
the ipad is a killer cook book. i have hundreds of recipes including video of how to do some things on mine
You cook on the toilet?!? I guess it cuts out the middle man.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I was fine with it till the guy at the urinal next to me was texting as he was pissing.
Really man, I know some of us have more than others, but keep a hand on that thing, I don't want to catch your erant spray while you're too busy tweeting to bother keeping your junk pointed in the right direction.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
This just in: popular computing tablets from Apple, Motorola and other leading companies are being used to access the so-called "Internet." The Internet, which is comprised of a series of tubes, provides access to many goods and services, including weather reports and "rooms" in which "users" can "chat."
How many have used them while [...]
[...] using another tablet?
Best quote so far.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
there are these things called cases for ipads and they prop it up just fine
How about while in the bathroom -- that being the room with the bath in, according to Proper English. Some people read in the bath...
(I didn't realise the article was talking about using the tablet while on the toilet at first. Silly language!)
I'm just waiting for a massive Cholera epidemic to break-out, spread by the fecal coliform carried on iPads and iPhones. Please wash your hands and iDevice before leaving the lavatory.
Where would we be if Wheel had hid her round rock in a cave instead of showing everyone how it rolls?
Fast food restaurants and coffeeshops offer free wifi as a reason.
I'm honestly surprised that the intersection of 'starbucks goers' and 'tablet users' isn't larger.
As soon as I get interested in a doctor's waiting room magazine, the nurse calls my name. I think I'm going to actually be seen , so I leave the magazine in the waiting room. That's when I find out that it was only to cruel trick to get me to suffer waiting in a second room without anything to read.
The iPad has solved this problem once and for all. (Not that I go to the doctor's office all that often, but at least now I carry my entertainment with me.) And I'm solving all of the Expert level sudoku puzzles. So there's that.
Right, because as everyone knows, the place where the toilet stays is called a restroom.
(tongue-in-cheek grin)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
And in which languages does the word for that particular location translate into "place to take a shit?"
NB:
"Toilet" is a fixture within that room
"Lavatory" is a place for washing
"Bathroom," as you pointed out, is a room with/for a bath
Spanish "bano[0]," French "salle de bain," and Italian "(stanza da) bagno" all also refer to bathing, not pooping.
This conversation actually came up in one of my foreign language classes one year. To date, I've still not gotten anyone who knows one.
I do, however, like the non-word "excretorium" to fill this rather large gap in our collective vocabulary.
[0](not gonna mess with getting the tilde-n since I doubt slashdot would handle it gracefully anyway)
I will not, will not point and click ...
I will not, will not use my
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
When I was a parents basement dweller, I had a serial green screen terminal in near the toilet in my personal bathroom. I was using lynx, mutt and bitchX, on the toilet. If I was using a net connected terminal in the bathroom in 1994, the 2011 tablet usage pattern is totally unsurprising, however, back then lynx was surprisingly usable on the web .... now it is a nightmare almost everywhere except maybe http://www.gutenberg.org/ .
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Honestly I'd feel much safer with the pilots using a backlit, indexed, hyperlinked document over a huge pile of paper. ... so long as a paper copy was still around just in case!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You forgot "privy"
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Let me help you. It's called water closet, or WC for short. The short name is universal across most languages.
I wonder what share of the 30% of people who use their pads in a restaurant are a part of the 35% of people using their pads on the John... And I wonder how many of them bother to disinfect.
Happy dining!
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
Creating content to consume?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I do, however, like the non-word "excretorium"
*golf clap*
I drank what? -- Socrates
Tablet and cell phones are becoming the new post-coital cigarette. How many of you have reach for your phone right after getting laid? Oh, wait... this is Slashdot... Of the twenty of you who actually get laid regularly how many of you have reached for your phone/tablet right afterwards?
This, my friends, is why we don't buy used iPhones.
If you are watching ESPN and having sex at the same time you are having LOUSY sex..so lousy in fact, why bother?
Wrong channel, dude.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...while driving?
"Daily Roads Voyager" and "Google Navigator". Next...
While cooking?
Yes, I have looked up recipes using the web browser while cooking. Keep going...
While watching TV?
You've got me there. I don't watch TV much, so when I do, it's something I'm actually, you know, interested in watching, so no, no tablet use while watching TV.
Or while using another tablet?
Well...I only own one tablet, so technically, no. However, I have used the tablet while using my smartphone and/or (yes, "AND/or") my netbook/laptop(s). Android doesn't multitask very well, so sometimes that's the easiest way to cross-reference data across many applications (pinging a host on one device while watching a web-based monitoring tool in a browser on another and making config changes through SSH to a remote device, for example).
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Next they will be calling people who own digital TVs "techies". McCoy had all those fancy salt shakers, yet he was far from being a techie. The more Trekkie, the less techie.
How many characters who carried The Guide around would qualify as techies? Zaphod? Once or twice? Or were some of those characters carrying around the print edition, and Douglas never bothered to mention this inconvenient detail?
Some day I'd like to ask, "Zaphod, what's your median opinion on the great book?" And he would answer, "A fine coaster to protect my beach towel from PGGB sumpage, but I always stow a Wet One at third pocket, just in case."
This makes me wonder, is there a Touch Pad beer coaster applet, where the touch screen extrapolates libation intercept? I always thought the touch interface was a bit dorky, but maybe I didn't give it a chance. Plotting libations is about as close as a Touch Pad will ever get to astronomical pursuits.
While plumbing is involved, thus the "water", it's still not particularly indicative of what the room is for, outside of familiarity of the use (which would then also disqualify the argument against 'bathroom').
Tablets make lousy toilet paper.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The percentage of people who ask to try out or otherwise use other peoples' iPads and other tablets has decreased sharply.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I don't need to sit on the bowl forever, pooping takes me little time; squat, drop it, wipe, done. Unless something decides that it doesn't want to fully come out, and it involves waiting for gravity to do it's thing.
The other thing I don't get is; besides a bigger screen, what can a tablet do that my iphone can't, besides not fit into my pocket, and be awkward to travel with, without a bag of some sort?
http://xkcd.com/646/ fwiw, xkcd author Randall Munroe uses a tablet.
Have you read my blog lately?
How about "outhouse"?
there are these things called cases for ipads and they prop it up just fine.
Why is it that every Apple device requires that you spend at least an extra 20% beyond the purchase price of the device to get the accessories that are required to make the device functional in the real world?
And in which languages does the word for that particular location translate into "place to take a shit?"
OK, you list a bunch of languages. BUT, you left out "American". In the language "American", a "bathroom" is someplace to possibly bathe, but certainly piss/dump and optionally wash your hands afterward depending on the damage.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
How many of those words evolved when "the facilities" involved an outhouse, or a bucket to be emptied into the street?
Soo, guess I really did grow up amongst rednecks, none of y'all ever heard someone say "I gotta go to the shitter"?
You argument could apply to hundreds of common use terms that have the exact problem you describe.
Of course, in reality no one cares. The commonly accepted terms are functional and widely accepted, even if their origins do not match modern end result to a tee.
They weren't designed for use in the bathroom? Why else was the term "craptop" coined?
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
Sometimes your "real world" is different to someone else's "real world". Rather than trying to please all of the people all of the time, Apple has cultivated an ecosystem of accessory makers. It seems to work OK. In addition, they can screw retailers down on margins and convince them to make money upselling an iPad sale with accessories.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
If price is your issue, you can use a picture frame holder. You probably already have an "iPad Stand" at home as it is. It was called a "cookbook stand", or "picture stand" when you bought it years ago and stuffed it in your closet. I have an Android tablet. I use velcro on the back to store the tablet the face of a cupboard myself. I'm pretty sure that the same "stand" would work for the iPad.
Confirming.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
I use a tablet as a cookbook, and would never even consider using a netbook for the same purpose. Food will destroy a netbook. A tablet is a flat piece of glass that is easily wiped clean. Tablets are VASTLY superior for kitchen use.
How about the crapper.
While watching TV?
I'll look up things about the TV program or movie while watching. It's silly, unnecessary but I still do it.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
And in which languages does the word for that particular location translate into "place to take a shit?"
NB:
"Toilet" is a fixture within that room
In British English, a "toilet" is also the room containing the WC ("who left the light on in the toilet?")
But, with help from a thesaurus: garderobe, latrine, privy.
"Lavatory" is a place for washing
In current British (and probably elsewhere) usage, a lavatory only means a room containing a WC.
I'll invent "scatory".
Test n~: ñ
I use my iPad every night before I got to bed for some of the time-sink games I play. And, in fairness, on business travel while I'm having dinner alone, I have definitely used it in a restaurant. And in the hotel bar.
Best place was on the bar in an airport at midnight as I replied to an email from my wife while having a drink and waiting for a connecting flight to get me home after a business trip.
Never used it in the bathroom, though. At least, not yet. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I use a tablet as a cookbook, and would never even consider using a netbook for the same purpose. Food will destroy a netbook. A tablet is a flat piece of glass that is easily wiped clean. Tablets are VASTLY superior for kitchen use.
Then don't feed it.
BM3
Except that most bathrooms (rooms with a bathtub / shower) also have a toilet in them - thus making bathroom perfectly acceptable. Or you could just be like the French and pee in the stairwell! =p
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
That is why I wouldn't use one for a cookbook, since trying to punch keys with hands covered in food will lead the to the netbook consuming food.
If I am a thousand miles from home, how many friends am I going to find to go have dinner with me? In that case, what exactly is the problem with using a tablet or a smartphone to occupy the time while waiting for my food to arrive?
Well there are people for which this represents a wonderful occasion to meet new and interesting people.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You see, the iPad does not play Flash Video ;-).
I've seen someone doing that. Two hands on the device (the electronic one.. ok, I'll clarify that again - I mean the phone)
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
I'll wait until there is E-paper that I can roll up.
My wife and I went to a restaurant. While waiting for our food, we did a little National Geographic-esque look at the other patrons. At the table next to us sat a young couple, about 18 of age. They were sitting opposite each other, but both holding iPhones in front of their faces. Both were talking and texting, but it appears not to each other. Sometimes, one of them will suddenly laugh with no response from the other. They kept at this even while eating their food. After the guy paid the bill, they both left, still engrossed with their iPhones.
there are these things called cases for ipads and they prop it up just fine.
Why is it that every Apple device requires that you spend at least an extra 20% beyond the purchase price of the device to get the accessories that are required to make the device functional in the real world?
I ended up making my own stand out of one of two metal bookends I somehow ended up with a few of, and some of those little rubber sticky feet they always include with low end rack-mount computer gear that could also be used sitting on a table.
Stick two on the outside edge of the bottom to keep it from sliding off, and I also put two on the very top of the back so the fairly sharp (to plastic anyway) metal doesn't cut groves into the back of my tablet.
http://oi53.tinypic.com/2aanadl.jpg
Works great on the side of my desk at work in landscape mode to have a movie playing in the background, and in portrait mode you just sit the tablet upside down so you can still plug the cable in the 'bottom'. The screen reorients itself so it's always right side up anyway.
Like I said, I had the bits-n-pieces laying around already, but if I had to go on a quest to purchase those parts, I can't see it costing more than $2.
Most "dollar stores" should carry both, and you could probably beat one dollar on the bookends if you hunt around at salvation army type places.
With enough super glue, almost anything can become a sticky rubber foot pad.
How many of those words evolved when "the facilities" involved an outhouse, or a bucket to be emptied into the street?
Gardyloo.
A term I saw Cyanogen use around the time he got a tablet. So uncomfortably accurate.
I'd recommend the Wallee case/wall mount for the kitchen: http://www.thewallee.com/ We've got one on a kitchen cupboard and it makes the ipad the perfect kitchen PC, once you disable the auto-off. We use it all the time.
Yeah, the subthread started from someone pretending he cared (so I guess IHBT) but it's just one of those weird things about people that I've always found interesting.
Wipe dry, which beats wiping clean.
Anyway, as I have my own bathroom, I have my own towel to dry ;) TMI?
Another funny detail - water in "water closet" actually appears to refer to "letting out water", as in peeing. Original name applies to outhouses where you went to pee. No running water there.
Ah, I hadn't considered that usage (don't hear it much over here). Good point.