Grey importing of the iPad

How to import an iPad from the USA to the UK.png

It can be done and many are importing an iPad into the UK from the US due to the delays announced by Apple of the iPad. It isn’t illegal because after all it is possible to bring back whatever when you go on holiday. I suppose you might be unlucky with having to declare some items when coming back in and pay duty on them, but you can do it.

Don McAllister brought back two iPads from New York on his last trip to the States. Well done Don. Some people are using companies set up specifically to offer this service, you can send them the money and they buy the iPad for you seeing as your credit card will probably hold you up because the billing address has to be what is on the card.

So if you are prepared to pay a it over the top and you are an impatient sort then you can get an iPad sooner rather than later. Apple are not making it easy though, despite some saying that they take a neutral stance on the matter. After all a sale is a sale.

So here is how to do it. The best way would be if you have a friend or a relative living ing the States, you send them the money, they order the iPad and get it sent to their address before they re package it and send it on. They might try marking it as a gift, or they might say that they are sending something that you left behind when you were there, so that you might sidestep the import duties. Customs people are all total bastards though and will probably not let you get away with that though. The taxes could be about £65 and I have no idea what it will cost to get the packet sent by UPS or similar.

import an iPad from the USA to the UK.png

Are you sure you want to do this? It will be so much cheaper and less hassle to be patient waiting like everyone else outside of the US. Funny I thought you would say that…. I want one and I want one now !!!! OK keep your hair on.

You will not be able to order from other places like Amazon and get them to send direct to you. Amazon will be looking for a US address too. You could buy one from EBay though that would work, but expect to pay a premium. Some enterprising people have bought iPads soley to sell on through the auction site

There is a company called BundleBox which is a good service to become acquainted with, because not only does it offer a complete US redirect service (including taking care of tax and import charges), but the company will even buy a device for you if you’re having difficulty paying for it on your credit card. That will cost you over £100 on top of the price of the iPad from Apple

So how serious are you about getting an iPad

Must have an iPad or is it a I Want an iPad

Yesterday while checking out Twitter – as you do when you are a geek, I saw that, someone I know that has declared himself to the world as being in debt to an unbelievable level and is bankrupt, has bought himself an iPad. Not only that – the person is living in the UK and to get the iPad he had to buy from the USA and pay the extra costs of getting it shipped plus the extra duty on top of that. Crazy or what? I suppose when you owe that much money a bit more on top won’t make a big difference.

It just goes to show the level of commitment (he should be committed) that Apple fan boys will go to to get their fix of the shiny Apple toys. I am sure there are a few other people out there that would be prepared to sell the granny to be able to get their hands on the newest computer from Cupertino. Even some borderline cases of need an iPad will be arranging thought inside the head to justify the purchase of the top of the range model

International iPad Sales coming soon

There was a bit of a mystery about when the iPad 3G would actually start shipping but Scooby Doo and Mystery Inc. have been able to get to the bottom of the 3G iPad apparition. Apple announced yesterday that the 3G iPad availability in the US will be Friday April 30th and they will be there for US customers to buy from the stores too. Not bad!

But what about the international Apple customers?

Despite that fact that there is no sign of any pricing for the iPad in the UK or the rest of the world, there has been no change to the projected date of May 10th for the Pre Orders for a delivery at the end of May. All of these delays are being blamed on delays of getting the displays from South Korea, LG Display and Samsung. The screens are also being made in Japan by Seiko Epson. These are really rumours because no one is actually going on record to say for definite what is going on.

According to MacWorld UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland are having to wait until an unspecified date at the end of May. Apple will however, announce international pricing details on Monday 10 May.

I think it will be interesting also to see how we will get ripped off by the Telephone companies O2, Vodafone and Orange. All three companies have different prices depending where you are in Europe. O2 and Telefonica are the same company but the Spanish people get ripped off when it comes time for setting prices for mobile broadband data, not to mention phone calls. iPad 1 sale, iPad 2 sale or iPad 2 sales are continuing at an amazing pace. The new announcements in January 2012 from Apple about textbooks and the Apple iBooks Author software will mean that iPads will become even more a part of education and society in general. McGaw Hill Pearson, Dorling Kindersley are putting interactive technology textbooks into the hands of school children through the Apple iBooks Store. It is also possible that teachers in schools or anyone that wants to create a textbook will be able to sell iBooks to a huge educational market.

iPad Docking Station

The iPad docking station is such a good idea because it allows iPad users to stand up the iPad in front of an iPad Keyboard and have it as a proper iPad computer workstation. You will have the joy of using a full keyboard and the Apple keyboard is such a joy to use also. You get the ability to set up in places where you would not have been able to do so before without the iPad station or iPad dock station..

iPad Docking station

Although it is great to be able to take one of these keyboard docking stations away with you, the real benefit comes when you are in the home or your workplace and you want to have the ability to type something longer than you would otherwise. You will get better accuracy and productivity with using the iPad docking station.

Bluetooth iPad docking station

Another possibility for making use of a portable keyboard is to use the Apple Bluetooth keyboard. possibly a more tidy option, although you would have to find some way to stand up the iPad. Most people will still be using the iPad without a docking station, they will have the device sitting on the lap. Not totally comfortable but workable, a good decision would be to buy a dock station iPad or an i Dock..

The iPad is going to go from strength to strength because of its capabilities and the iPad docking station is just one of the tools in the arsenal. I have the iPhone for when I am out and about also and I always thought it would be a great addition to have a keyboard that would work with the iPhone or even the iPod Touch too.

There are the standard iPad docking stations and also the iPad docking station with keyboard, but you do have to look to see that you are getting the iPad 2 dock station if it is that model of iPad you have.

Apple iPad Keyboard Dock - Apple Store (U.S.).png

Video conversion for the iPad

The iPad will take video up to the 720P resolution, which is the same as for the Apple TV. There are a number of video conversion utilities and I have used Video Monkey HandBrake, Visual Hub, MPEG StreamClip. Here are the Tech Specs for the video of the iPad.

H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format

Video conversion for the iPad

Although there is a size consideration in terms of megabytes or gigabytes, the thing is that you will probably not be putting all your video on the iPad at one time, because of the amount of memory available in the device you will be putting the video on there when you think you will need it. A couple of movies if you are going on a trip somewhere and want some entertainment to take with you. So with that in mind I think it is likely that you will go with the plan of converting to the highest resolution it will support which is the 720P.

Many of the conversion utilities have presets and if you choose the preset that is for the Apple TV then you will be perfectly sorted out. So the question is to decide which utility to work with. I have Visual Hub still for Video conversion for the iPad and it works well despite not being supported by the developer any more. Handbrake is the little brother to Visual Hub and many people like that one too. Both I have found easy to use.

Video Monkey is the next generation and some of the code from Visual Hub was brought in to it. Video Monkey doesn’t have the same amount of control as in variety of setting at you have with Visual Hub, so you might say fewer chances to mess it up. I just tried it out using the All Apple Devices preset so that I could find out what the resulting file comes out as. When I had it set to Apple TV it stated that there was a device limitation at 1024 by 720P which seems a bit strange as that I think should be 1280 by 720. More testing of these apps for Video conversion for the iPad required, for sure.

I have used MPEG StreamClip quite a few times and have found that it does a great job. You can change many settings and for this you do need to know what you are doing. You can change the frame size so go with 1280 by 720 for that. For the sound I suggest MPEG-A AAC and bring that down to 128kbps. which is CD quality and lower that the maximum allowed in the iPad.
What is handy is that you can do some trimming from the front and the back of the video. All you have to do is select where you want you movie to start and press the letter I to place the in Point and then O for the out point. Another way to make some savings in the amount of memory your movie will take in the available storage space on the iPad.

Just also opened up a movie in QuickTime and was able to do a save as and one of the options was 720P – Hey Presto. Now that is nice and easy. Bottom line is that with a Mac it should be easy enough to convert videos to put on your iPad

This is part one – more information to come when I look at other video conversion possibilities.

The WiFi problem with the iPad

It seems that there have been a number of people complaining about the wifi connectivity on the iPad. Having good wifi is pretty important and so far Apple are not really addressing the issue. It has taken Princeton University is jumping in with a possible explanation for the problem. Now they reckon that the problem is caused by the operating system rather than it being hardware related.
The network guys at Princeton found that the connection issue comes up when the iPad fails to renew its DHCP lease – a process which would renew its IP address with the router is is connecting to and then continues to try as use the same IP. The router might block what it thinks is a lapsed IP, or it may have assigned that address to another wireless client. The sometimes the iPad does’t refresh its DHCP even when a full connection isn’t being made, leaving the user unable to get online.
Workarounds include performing a full power cycle (i.e. not just locking the iPad but fully shutting it down and rebooting it) and turning the wireless off and then on again in the iPad’s settings. Moving outside the WiFi router’s range and then back into it again has also been shown to help on some occasions. Too me it all seems to be a bit hit and miss and we will have to hope that Apple will come up with a good solution to the problem soon..

The iPad in Europe

iPad Europe Release Date

The iPad Europe situation is not good as it stands at the middle of April. There was recently an announcement from Apple to say that they were not going to supply iPads to Europe for another month. The release date for the iPad for the UK, Germany, France Spain and some other European countries will not be until the end of May, with a pre-order date of 10th of May.

Personally I think it has been poorly handled by Apple. They should at the very least had plans to be able to ramp up production faster if needed and as the problem stands now they should have made sure that European iPad developers could get an iPad because they need the physical device to get the apps ready and working right.

Of course it is not just in Europe the iPad is not getting out the rest of the world either. Apple are bound to look after the most vocal customer base first and there local customers as in U.S. citizens. So much for there being a World Wide market now, when Apple looks after one section of its customers before the rest.

ipad UK Pricing or Ship Apple iPad from US

Apple iPad prices.

There are rumours of iPad UK Pricing but nothing yet from Apple. Will Apple do what they usually do with the Apple iPad UK price the and over the pond pricing and hike it up a bit. With the iPad being scarce and hard to get right now it would seem that Apple could just charge what they like anyway and get away with it. That on top of the ignominy of making the UK and the rest of the world wait longer to get the device is going to annoy more than a few people.

There is a vocal group of German Apple fans that have already voiced their displeasure at Apple, at being treated like second class citizens. Long term it will not make much difference with the iPad being the runaway success though whatever the Apple iPad pricing. I did also see a bit of a backlash in the ordinary news media that like to have the man bites dog angle on a story that gets too big for itself, with complaints over how well the wifi works.

All very interesting to see how the marketing mega machine that is Apple works, some say that this scarcity that is there now with the iPad availability, is better than what they could have hoped for and possibly manufactured more successfully that the device itself.
There are some non U.S. fans that are prepared to ship Apple iPad from U.S. and pay extra to get their hands on one. iPad worldwide sales will probably go like stink once Apple can make enough of the device in the factories in China.

Update – The Apple UK iPad Price – Apple iPad 2 prices

The iPad from Apple UK prices were not as bad as expected and the iPad 1 price and the iPad 2 UK price were good enough that Apple have sold a boat load of iPads in the UK. Maybe the world wide economy is having an effect on the iPad pricing. Next I will looking out to see what the iPad 3 will be looking like and also wondering about the Apple iPad 3 and the price of the amazing iPad. Now the iPad has been out a while and the iPad is taking over the world and winning against the netbook phenomenon and we are getting iPads for business uses.

iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter

Using the iPad to do business presentations seems like it could be the perfect device. Easy to put on a stand in front of you and utilising the iPad Dock Connector to iPad VGA Adapter from Apple ($29 US), which is a fairly unassuming device with the classic Apple 30 pin connector on one end of a short cable and a small white box housing a female VGA connector on the other.

Use the iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter to connect an iPad to your television, projector, or VGA display. Then see your videos and slideshows on the big screen.
The iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter connects to your iPad or iPad Dock via the dock connector and to your projector or display using the iPad to vga adapter.

The vga adapter iPad accessory, does exactly as you would expect, to do, more or less, allowing you to show pictures, slideshows, videos, movies and Keynote presentations to an external display. Most likely in this arena would be one of those screens that you use in business meeting to project on to.
You have to keep in mind that this Apple adapter only outputs images and video……not sound. If you want to watch that video with it’s accompanying soundtrack you will need to either listen to the sound from the iPad speaker, pull the audio out via the headphone jack or use a different cable.
It seems that Keynote on the iPad is not the full ticket as per the application on the Mac and it may be better to keep the presentations simple. The best thing of course in any case is to have a bit of a dry run at home before you go and make a fool of yourself in the business meeting.
What would be nice, would be to have a HDMI out from the iPad, maybe we will get that one of the days in a future incarnation of the iPad.

Any limitations?
Well it seems that not all applications will work using the connector including some movies, although that problem could be due to the DRM limitations that don’t allow those purchased movies to go through some VGA connections. YouTube videos play though it. DRM protected videos do NOT, but videos that I added myself (i.e. ripped via HandBrake and added to iTunes) play beautifully.

It also seems that it doesn’t enable mirroring and some buyers of this accessory have asked for their money back. Not being able to project the desktop, email, spreadsheet, websites, etc is a real limitation in order to use in meeting. Doesn’t Apple realise that in real meetings people project data in other ways rather than just a PowerPoint presentations. There are people looking for a vga to vga adapter, maybe it is necessary to change from male to female connections?

Belkin pleated Sleeve for the iPad

We have to start with looking after the iPad and Belkin always make good products and they have iPad sleeves and iPad 2 sleeves. Here is their Pleated sleeve type case which is available in black. The iPad slides into the case really easy and keeps your iPad safe Belkin F8N277tt Pleated Sleeve for iPad – Black

As we know the iPad has the glass on the front of it so needs to have some protection. The good thing about this case is that the pleated design expands to fit you iPad and your accessories too. So it will still be fairly compact once you have put some extras in there.

The iPad 2 sleeve is made of the wet suit material neoprene and can be kept clean with mild soap and water. It has a soft lining and a secure closure.