The iPad must have started in China and was sitting in a warehouse in Piacenza in Italy. It is here we pick up the story. Next stop is an airport near Milan and onwards to Liege in Belgium. I suspect that it will be heading south in the morning to Barcelona.
I wanted to order a 32GB wifi only model this week and I called the local premium reseller to see what models that had in stock. I don’t really need the 3G because I am nearly always with WiFi and so is my wife who will also be using the iPad. I was not too surprised to hear that there were no iPads in stock at all in the shop. Although in the Apple Store online there are iPads and the delay time for getting sent out is only 1 day.
So there was only one thing to do and to order online. I did get a email to say it would be sent out in 24 hours and that is nearly up and no sign of it being on its way to me yet. I am so impatient!
I also ordered the camera connection kit and the VGA connector because my wife will be connecting it to the projectors in the school and I want to use the USB of the camera connector to attach a microphone. We went for the 32GB because I have a 16GB iPhone and it is getting full and we expect that there will be more media put on to be used on an iPad.
No case ordered for it yet, that could be something good to get from the local Apple Premium reseller in Girona. Not sure which case to lay out the cash for
Comments or questions are welcome.
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I have some iPad software already in iTunes. I have Flipboard and Inkling which are iPad only applications plus about 25 universal applications. I will be buying the Keynote application of course and I may well also get the Bento iPad version.
Of course I will have Evernote on the iPad, Dropbox will be loaded up straightaway, 1Password is ready to be used there too. Textexpander and SimpleNote are universal applications and in iTunes.
iBooks is ready and waiting and for games I have Beecells. I may get flight control for the iPad or Plants vs Zombies perhaps.
At this time of the year you have to ask yourself, if you don’t have an iPad already, do I wait and see if the new iPad that will surely come out some time soon – Do I wait until there is a Retina Display on the iPad in the next iPad update.
What else can we expect on the iPad, faster processor, camera so that we can do face time? There will be a new version of the operating system soon. iOS4 is already on the iPhone 4 and you have to ask why not on the iPad already, bringing iOS 4 features to the tablet.
What is you plan? For many the best thing is if you have a job to do, that needs an iPad now and you really can’t wait, then just go and buy one now. I mean today, go in the Apple store either online or or an actual store and hand over the cash and start working and playing with the new toy.
There are now many more applications that are coming out enhanced for the iPad so the device is becoming more and more useful. It is coming to the time when some people just can’t afford to wait for the next revision of the iPad.
I see that there is finally confirmation that Apple is holding a media event on September 1. There are all sorts of rumours flying around about what might be in the event. It is pretty sure that there will be a new iPod Touch and there really has to be a front facing camera. I wonder if the retina display will make the iPad really expensive if that is what Apple give to the device.
Tell me what you think about all of this with the iPad. Only six days away to getting a fix of information from Cupertino. Could the rumoured 7inch device make a showing? It could be pretty nice if it has the retina display technology, and it would be lighter also. I know many people would be happy about that. The possibility of a 1500 x 1920 display has many licking their lips in anticipation.
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What are your experiences so far with showing presentations? Do you have to dumb down the presentation so that it will work. How successful is the experience of using the device to show your students or co workers your keynote. Have you had any problems in connecting up to the projector?
I use Lynda to lear to do iPad and iPhone programming but they now have a set of videos showing some tips and tricks which is good for learning how to use the iPad. You don’t have to be a member of Lynda.com to be able to see the first few of the videos.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
I interviewed Ross for Mac20Q about a year ago and he mentioned to me that he would like to have a chat about his experiences with the iPad. So why not I thought. Ross is a good bloke and I enjoyed the previous chat too. We talked about Mac things too, some of which I have left in this podcast where relevant. If you want to hear the full interview you can get it at Answer20Q. The interviews website.
Ross gives us some recommendations for software that he has tried on the iPad and has found useful. He tells me that he has a way to be streaming from Hulu to the iPad, which sounds like a great idea. What about you do you like to stream video to you iPad, is it a good viewing experience for you? I can’t use Hulu here in Spain but Ross tells me a way to get it to work in Safari. I don’t think it is straight forward and sometimes it fails to work but could be worth a try.
Dragon Dictation for the iPad allows you to speak in the microphone built into the iPad and have it turned into editable text. Now that seems like a super application. I am not sure how well it will work with my accent as Ross says that there were some words it didn’t get due to his Canadian accent. If it worked it could be excellent but often these things are coached to hear an American voice
Do you think you could get the hang of talking to your iPad instead of typing in text?
With the introduction of the new iPhone 4 there has been less in the media about the iPad. In some ways it is good that the hype is going and being replaced by stories of how people are using the device in real life. The iPad has also had one update to the operating system and many users will be looking forward to when IOS4 will be available for the iPad as it is on the iPhone. I am surprised it is not available already.
I am pleased to see that 18 of the applications in my iTunes for the iPhone have been updated to be iPad applications too. I really like it when the developers just update them and don’t require extra money. Amongst those applications the are apps such as iFooty, Evernote, Stars, SimpleNote, Box.net, Dropbox and OffMaps. So as you can see there a number of very useful applications and plenty of free apps too. I used Off Maps when I went for the day to Milan in Italy and I wanted to be able to use the maps and not be stuck with huge roaming charges. I downloaded to the iPad the maps of the centre of Milan and was able to use the GPS and see more than a blue dot on a blank page.
Simple Note is a super application that syncs up with Notational Velocity on my Macs. I use it for the simple short quick notes and keep EverNote for the longer more complicated notes. Simple note is great for quickly getting that idea into the cloud and saved for posterity, ore at least as long as you need it. There are other Mac note applications that will sync with Simple note but Notational Velocity has a good way of working. Very easy to find your notes later, you just start typing a word in the top section and the list narrows down to the notes containing those words. It is a built in search feature that works a treat. Basically it looks at data not documents – There is no manual “saving” in Notational Velocity; all modifications take effect immediately.
Over 10,000 iPad HD apps for the iPad. Seems it is not just a scaling up the developers have to do there are graphics to change and use to get the best use of the bigger screen compared to the iPhone. I have 16 universal applications on my iPhone and I suspect there will be a lot more applications that go the universal route.
Apple did say that it was a fairly easy task to change an application to being iPad native and I suppose to a certain extend it is. The thing that has to happen with making it iPad ready is doing the redesign that make use of the extra space. Of course then there is the chance to put in more features because of the extra space too and suddenly you have an application that is significantly different from the application you started with. That is when the developer starts thinking ‘Hang on a minute I should get paid more money for this if it is a completely new application’
Seems reasonable to want to be paid for doing extra work and making something that is new. It would be nice though if there was an upgrade path available to existing users to be able to reward loyalty for the customers that already have the application on the iPhone.
What views do you have about universal applications? Have you bought an application for you iPad that was not changed at all and you felt that the developer had taken advantage of you?
There is an expectation that the HD applications are worth more that the iPhone applications because they have an iPad-specific look and feel. Maybe something to do with fact that more space means there will be more features and so take more work to produce. There seems to be less of a put it at the lowest price – 99 cents – drive.
Have you downloaded the Google Earth iPad application yet. Seems that you can navigate the world with the swipe of a finger. Nice that you can browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world an view geo-located Wikipedia articles. Google have made it so that you are able to use the Location feature to fly to your current location and search for cities, places, and business around the globe with Google Local Search
Getting work done on the iPad is possible, and the iPad is not just a great device for media consumption.
Reporters are trying hard to give up on the pen and paper. Instead of reading unintelligible scribbles on paper they are trying to read the same scribble on the iPad. If you get one of those Pogo Sketch thingies for writing in a note application you can save your handwriting notes.
Penultimate – A notepad app that works well at capturing handwritten scribbles. It has wrist protection built-in so you can leave your hand naturally on the screen as you write. If you take very tiny, detailed notes it might not work for you. When you are finished taking your notes you can send a PDF of them to yourself.
The pogo stylus itself is made from aluminium and is easy to grip. It is small enough in diameter that it doesn’t obscure the screen, but large enough so it is comfortable to hold. It’s an essential tool for any digital artist wanting to paint on the iPad or iPhone.
The problem with this approach is that you still don’t have the editable text. True you can send yourself a PDF of your handwritten notes but you still have to make the text editable. So what you might think of doing alternatively is to use an application like SoundPaper.
With SoundPaper you can type in some information and also record the audio. Not only good for students but also for reporters that might have missed something while out in the field. With SoundPaper you can type in a word and have it start to playback the audio from the point where the word was entered notes part of the application
You will need some way of moving your documents around once you have made them, you can email them to yourself or use something like DropBox, GoodReader or Documents To Go – A powerful documents editor that allows the creation and management of Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets on the iPad with access to useful cloud-based storage services.
I still have Visual hub available to use but it is not being supported anymore. Still works, but we don’t know for how much longer. It seems to me that the iPad with its 1024-by-768-pixel resolution which is just perfect for watching video will have a lot of video converters thrown at it.
Many say that if you choose the option to convert as if for the Apple TV you get a good video watching experience. I think that it might be better to do a scaling down of whatever video to 1024 wide and let the software you are using work out what the height should be. You will have the letterbox effect of course due to the shape of the iPad being more suitable for the 4:3 configuration. That can’t be helped the iPad has other jobs to do that don’t work too well if it were a wide screen shape.
iSkysoft iPad Video Converter for Mac is a specially designed tool for Mac OS users to convert any popular video formats such as M2TS/MTS, MOD, TOD, AVI, YouTube(flash video), MOV, WMV(windows media), MKV, and more to iPad friendly formats easily and rapidly.
The presets for iPad gives you hassle free experience in converting any format video to iPad video and audio, making the most of iPad’s big screen and HD feature. This Mac iPad Video Converter provides a series of useful settings such as crop, trim, merge, and video effect like brightness, contrast and saturation.
On the other hand you could go for a solution that is purporting to offer a custom solution. This iSkysoft iPad Video Converter software will convert video such as M2TS/MTS, MOD, TOD, AVI, MKV, WMV and it also claims to be able to improve the quality of the video if it is below par.
Crop black borders of the movie and watch it in full screen on your iPad.Trim video or audio clips, say, your favourite lines or episodes you need for playback on your iPad. Merge several video files so that you can enjoy a long video without interruption.
You just have to click the “Convert” button, just wait a minute and you can get the video with proper format. What’s more, iPad Video Converter for Mac support auto shut down, and your computer will shut down when the task is finished.
By the way the cost to buy this software is $25. You might want to have a look at MPEG StreamClip and Video Monkey also.
How can the iPad be good for the photographer? It doesn’t have a camera, but then the photographer already has a camera so there not being one included is a mute point. The obvious answer on how it can be used by a photographer is the built in Photo Gallery. If you want to show photos to a client the iPad with its wonderful screen, will be a very snazzy way to show what you have in your portfolio.
To get the photos into the iPad you would have to sync them in from iPhoto via iTunes or you can buy the adapter which Apple sells separately. It is only a couple of steps then you having your iPad as a digital photo frame showing all and sundry a slide show of your work. Another possibility is the VGA adapter which will send images to a projector, although not all applications will work with that.
You can use the pinch gestures to open up an album, there is the application PhotoGene which allows some editing of the pictures you have. There are loads of apps that were made for the iPhone and iPod Touch that will be bound to be upgraded to be perfect for the iPad. The App ‘Camera for iPad will stream the pictures from an iPhone to the iPad and I am wondering if it is possible, or could be, for the Eyefi SD cards to be able to send photos wirelessly to the iPad from you camera.
OK there are some photographer specific uses for the iPad and don’t forget that there are many other applications that will be useful in other ways. You might have had to lug around a heavy laptop previously but now you have the light and thin iPad.
