Alaska Airlines Jettisons Paper Manuals For iPads 220
fullymodo writes "Alaska Airlines has become the first major US airline to hop on board the paperless bandwagon. While it's not quite ready to ditch paper navigation charts just yet (though that is under consideration), the airline has announced that it will be replacing its traditional flight manuals with iPads, which will be loaded up with the GoodReader app and PDFs of 41 different manuals and other materials.' So explain why I have to shut off my non-wi-fi-capable ebook reader during take-off and landing?"
Why PDF? (Score:1, Interesting)
OK, I know why. PDF is easy to create, and they probably already had the documents in PDF formats anyway.
But if they want to do it right, they'll need to at least create PDFs in an iPad-specific format (page size and font size optimized for easy reading, without having to scroll on the page).
Better yet, don't use PDF at all but a format more suited for digital documentation. Even HTML would be a step up.
Re:Alternative Headline (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see the ads now : "Meet local girls in Pacific Ocean, right now." (shamelessly ripped off from the ever relevant xkcd [xkcd.com])
Anyway your argument is false for a couple of reasons:
- this is Apple, not Google. Apple isn't an advertising company and doesn't send home your browsing behavior AFAIK.
- they need not give the iPads access to the internet.
- they can block anything they don't want to leave the internal network using a firewall, which they should already be doing.
Re:the iPad is stowed dring takeoff and landing (Score:2, Interesting)