bought

Editors' note: Read part one and part two of this three-part article.

"Where's iBooks?" the man was asking. "I want to see iBooks."

An older guy, one of the half dozen or so Apple sales associates on the floor, didn't know exactly what he meant at first. But then he figured out the man just wanted to see an e-book on the screen. That's why he'd come to the Apple Store: to see what an e-book looked like on an iPad.

The customer peered down through his fairly thick glasses at the James Patterson novel the sales associate had opened for him.

"Is it backlit?" he asked.

"What?"

"The screen."

"Sure," the sales associate said. "It's an LCD."

For some reason the guy seemed shocked to learn the truth.

"I will go blind reading this," he declared.

"Why?" the sales associate asked.

"It's backlit. I will go blind."

The sales associate asked him the next obvious question: Did he use a computer? … Read more