Help, get me an iPad

The Cathay Pacific flight I was on last night convinced me I have to get the iPad.

First the seat I was assigned, 14G - there was something wrong with the sound system. The sound kept fading in and out - you know, that irritating loose connection where the volume cuts in and out, leaving you feeling like you've got an angry, temperamental bee in your head.

I moved to another empty seat. For some reason I couldn't explain, I was determined to watch a movie - you know that feeling that overwhelms you when you want something because you can't get it?

I switched on CX Studio and this time, the sound worked but the images didn't. They were jumping all over the place, making you feel as though the bee you've had in your head was now having trouble flying in a straight line.

I alerted the cabin supervisor to my plight. She took the remote control from me and checked that I wasn't making things up. "Let me reboot the system," she said. "This will take a while."

She was right. It took a long while.

"This system is so old," I said, while we both waited for something to appear on the screen. I had forgotten how archaic the Cathay inflight entertainment system was in the old A330, compared with the newer systems in airlines such as Singapore Airlines and Emirates. "So 90s," I said.

She replied, "Actually 80s. Did you see the VHS tapes I have to install in the system?" VHS, now I know what she means.

You can tell they get a lot of complaints from passengers about their IFE. In the world of HD television, Netbooks, smart phones, smarter computers, this IFE system should have been put out of its misery sometime ago. But as with anything airlines do, it takes a long time for change to happen.

To cut a long story short, the system never came back on. They found another seat for me where the sound and image finally worked in sync but the footrest didn't. And I felt sorry for the Italian man next to me because he'd obviously thought he would have an empty seat next to him and now found himself with a crazy woman determined to watch a movie, any movie.

Truth is, there wasn't a lot of choice. I had seen most of them but now of course I had to watch something because of the fuss I had made.

And then I read an article by Tim Clark in the Daily Mail that the iPad, the latest "magical" device from Apple, could revolutionise inflight entertainment - what will it not revolutionise, I ask you. "The use of personal devices at 30,000ft has grown in recent years as portable items such as netbooks and iPods have enabled travellers to watch their favourite films and listen to their favourite music and the iPad looks set to make this even more popular."

I think that now that we road warriors are all armed with our personal weapons of mass communication, we hate being held hostage to some supplier's antiquated hardware. We want it personal, we want it instant, and we want it always on.

In-room entertainment will also face competition. Who wants a dumb television that doesn't even do what it's told?

And hey, maybe we won't even need paper guidebooks and human tourist guides anymore with the iPad. Steve Jobs, revealing the iPad this week, said that with its enhanced Google Maps and built in compass the iPad will make navigating a new city much easier while the wi-fi technology will allow tourists to download restaurant reviews while on the move.

Daily Mail quoted Anna Leach, editor of online technology magazine www.shinyshiny.com: "I would certainly use the iPad on journeys. It's going to be light, easy to carry, very much hand-bag sized, letting you email, write word documents or watch movies on the move."

"The device has Google Maps, and if they (tourists) got a local micro SIM card, they could access mobile internet in the country they are in at local rates. You could download a guidebook to Rome, say, which could then sync to Google Maps showing where you are in relation to a restaurant or monumentshi that you want to go to."

With this we-will-change-the-world device, there will be no excuse for anyone not knowing where Penang is. In Hong Kong, I met this guy who works for a really, really big international travel company and when I told him I was from Penang, he asked, "Which part of China is that?"

I know that at the rate the Chinese economy is growing, we will all probably end up living in some province of China sooner or later but I think I may get him an iPad too.