My Letter to Steve Jobs

My wife said, after witnessing my glum expression while walking out of the mall, "Why don't you write to Steve Jobs?".

Ok.  Sure, why not.  Here's the email that I sent this afternoon to Steve himself.

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I want to first congratulate you on, by all indications, a very successful launch of the iPad.  At my local Apple Store (Farmington, CT), the staff were all very enthusiastic, organized, and helpful.

I do, however, want to comment on the 'deal breaker' for me when it came to purchasing an iPad.  I had every intention of walking out of the store today with one and it broke my heart to walk away empty handed.  But, after talking with the Geniuses about the video-out capabilities through the VGA-adapter, I just could not justify purchasing the iPad at this time since I intended it to be used in my classroom as a replacement for a laptop.

Limiting the video-out to just Keynote and Video files severely cripples the functionality of the iPad in the education arena.  As a Latin teacher in a public high school, I use my laptop to project .pdfs of text onto the whiteboard for markup and diagramming, to project websites and other types of media, and to edit collaborative works together.  With Keynote as the only way to project anything other than video, the iPad (much to my great dismay) just has no place in my classroom.

I hope that at some point more things can be opened up to video-out, including Safari, Pages, and iBooks (or at least the preview app for pdfs).  Until this happens, a rather significant use of the iPad is going to go untapped.

Best wishes,

Will I get a response? Probably not, but a fanboy can dream, right? :)