My iPad broke yesterday.  It was in a case (of course), in a bag (of course), and it was dropped less than four feet on to my driveway.  The housing was dented, and the screen was cracked in a series of radiating fractures, precipitating small slivers of gorilla glass.  It was unpleasant and displeasing.

If you haven’t had the experience of bringing an iPad in to a genius bar for repair (today was my first time), Apple will not repair an iPad.  They will offer you a “full-swap”, which will cost you $250, and take a week.  You might say yes.  You might say no.

Or, if you’re me, you’ll decide to pay twice that much for a brand-new iPad.  

I can’t tell you if this is an analytical triumph or a facet of a mental illness (I’d wager more the latter).  But it happened.  And if it is an illness, it’s apparently communicable, as my lovely wife agreed that this was the obvious course of action.

In the past two years, I have had two iPads (grant-funded), and acquired a third one for my lovely wife (also grant-funded).  They are great machines.  When you haven’t paid a cent for them, they are beyond incredible.  But, if you want to keep the bubble of cost-indemnification from bursting, you’ll need to do a better job protecting the things than I did.  

For the record, I did purchase a more formidable case for the new one.