Wow, negative 6 karma? I'm surprised. Obviously, I was deliberately rough when there's no reason for being rough. Maybe I did something wrong? Let me take a look at myself.

First of all, I dislike Apple, and I dislike people bragging about having a product from Apple. I could list plenty of reasons for this, but my reasons don't matter.

When I first read this discussion thread, the word "iPad" sprang to my eye quickly (it's the fifth word in the article, after all). That made my alarm bells ring and it promoted the hypothesis "this person wants to show off that they own an iPad". When I continued reading, I found more evidence for this (already and probably wrongfully promoted) hypothesis:

for the first time in my life it's convenient for me to read long documents from the internet. I've often looked at things and thought, oh, if I ever have some capability to read that, I should.

This read like what I'd expect from someone who wants to show the world that they own an Apple product. The message that reached me was roughly this: "An iPad is sooo useful for reading pdfs! Throw away those normal computers, it's so inconvenient to read pdfs with them!"

This conflicted with my experience: I don't find it inconvenient at all to read pdfs on a computer. What problems could one have with that? Why on earth should reading pdfs improve so dramatically with such a device?

This was to me evidence that this user in fact only wanted to show off, as well as the mere existence of this post: Finding recommendable pdfs is something I wouldn't say is difficult at all, just search lw for the topic you want to know something about. This was further evidence for the already promoted hypothesis, I came to the conclusion that this user probably really wasn't quite as much interested in pdfs but rather in some sort of online-"status".

Thusly, I wrote that pretty harsh comment.

The mass of negative Karma (and your comment), however, indicates that I indeed went wrong somewhere. Probably the OP in fact doesn't want to show off at all, and I was just unreasonable. I have to apologize.

That said, I want to know this: How does an iPad make reading long pdfs that much more convenient? Does it greatly improve productivity?

What about Apple products in general? Do I falsely believe that they're just overly expensive accessoires for showing high status without being more useful than other mobile phones (iPhone), multimedia devices (iPod), netbooks (iPad) and computers (Mac)?

And to talk about apple users, I obviously do falsely believe that most of them mainly buy such products to show high-status. I better revise this belief.