The Invisible Shield for iPad is the reason there was no review yesterday.
Generally, I pick what to review based on what’s occupying my noggin each day. Yesterday, this stupid piece of plastic sucked up, like twelve hours of my time yesterday. Over the weekend, I bought the wrong RAM for the desktop, tried to install it, returned it for the right RAM, installed it and put in a new software heavy back-up USB 1 terabyte hard drive that ended taking up over an hour. But none was more frustrating than putting a piece of plastic on my iPad. I know, it’s the very definition of a first world problem.
Shells an I have put screen protectors on iPods a bunch of times with no problems. The result is usually undetectable from the glass screen, so a bigger piece of plastic on an iPad shouldn’t have been a problem. My first clue should have came when I bought it. The Apple guy at Best Buy (not exactly the Genius job) said that Best Buy could ‘install’ it for fifteen bucks, this is on top if the thirty—thirty!?—dollars for the piece of plastic. No thanks, I said.
So, we carefully read the instructions, prepared a clean work area, and started. There is no way to get the sheet on the iPad without creating many air bubbles. We spent a hour just trying to get the initial placement of the piece of plastic as bubble-free as possible. Shells did a pretty good job, even though we went through the whole bottle of ‘lubricating liquid’ in aligning the plastic. I thought I could do better. Big mistake. Eventually, I got the sheet back to close to where Shells had it. The plastic too easily stretches out of place. The instructions said the micro-bubbles would work themselves out after use. Just how big is a micro-bubble? I consider anything I can see as macro.
After putting on the sheet of plastic, the instructions said to wait a day, shorter if you used a fan. The instructions also said not to have the iPad on for twelve hours before you put the sheet on. This is why there was no review yesterday. That’s almost a day without my girlfriend. I used a fan and honestly, the plastic seemed as dry ten minutes after we installed the shield as it did twelve hours later with no use. We never had to wait with the ipod shields.
So the result? The feel of the iPad is a bit gummy in texture now. The micro-bubbles have not worked themselves out after a day. Overall, it’s like skimming your fingers across one of those 60’s-style thick plastic drinking glasses that you get with a happy meal as a kid. It’s not glassy smooth, so swiping your finger across the surface (which is something you do a lot with an iPad) doesn’t feel natural and more important, isn’t as accurate as before. I am pushing a tiny bit harder than I was before. It’s easier to make mistakes because of the changed tactile nature of the surface. Also, the micro-bubbles show up as spots on the screen, so my iPad always feels dirty.
In short, I’m giving it two more days, then I’m probably ripping the plastic off. I hate wasting thirty bucks, but this is much worse. So far, after three months of heavy use, my iPad hasn’t gotten any scratches. That’s different than my iPod which had scratches it seems minutes after unpacking it from the box. I do clean the ipad’s surface about once a day and refer to it as my giant piece of glass because that’s the ipad’s overriding quality. Smooth is sexy.
Look, I love my electronic girlfriend. Yes, that makes me a sad nerd. But after much thought, I’m only going to make love to her without the Invisible Shield condom. Dangerous, yes, but more as God intended.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
The Fiesta 13 