Mereja

Author: jezlyn

  • Geronimo Jack’s Beard: A Lost podcast with Jorge Garcia!

    LOST is back! Listen below to hear our first podcast, or subscribe to “Geronimo Jack’s Beard” on iTunes to hear all of our podcasts as they air each week.

    Um…this first one was um… a little bumpy since um… we were new to the whole um… podcasting thing. We recorded this on August 31, 2009. We accidentally lost a chunk of the recording, but hopefully what is there is entertaining. Enjoy!

    Listen here: GJB 601602 LA X

    And don’t forget to become a fan of GJB on Facebook by clicking here

    via geronimojacksbeard.blogspot.com

    Actually, it’s Jorge Garcia and his girlfriend Beth. I’m looking forward to hearing what Jorge Garcia has to say about his character Hurley and the other crazy goings-on during the final season of Lost. After all, Jorge is not only an actor on the show, but also a fan like the rest of us. :) I think it’ll be a unique perspective!

  • Video sample from Sony Ericsson Vivaz cameraphone

    via youtube.com

    This is supposedly a video clip shot with a Sony Ericsson Vivaz cameraphone. A *cameraphone*! That is some great stuff right there! I had some interest in this phone because it is another SE phone running Symbian S60 (IIRC), similar to the Sony Ericsson Satio. I love SE phones for their cameras, and this one doesn’t seem like it will disappoint. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more news on the Vivaz.

    (hat tip to CrunchGear)

  • Sir Patrick Stewart talking about the Net, e-mails, Twitter, and gaming

    via youtube.com

    Wonderful excerpt of an interview with Sir Patrick Stewart. Even just talking about his experiences with the Internet is like watching him act on stage (unfortunately I’ve never had the pleasure). He is so awesome. :)

  • FastFinga iPhone app –> iPhone ink blogging!

    Hey, Kids!

    Just testing out an iPhone app called FastFinga.  I think I've found my ink blogging app for the iPhone (and iPad!).  The UI is really intuitive, much more so than Note Taker.  And as you can see, my handwriting is recognizable.  This app feels most natural to me.  It's so good that I may start ink blogging more regularly from the iPhone.  Yay! :)   Now I don't feel so bad buying the Pogo Sketch.  Was starting to think that it was a wasted purchase. :-\

    =====

    Some backstory:

    The other night I started searching the App Store for other apps that I could do handwritten notes with.  A while back I had downloaded the free version of Dan Bricklin's Note Taker app to test it out with my new Pogo Sketch stylus.  I tested it, but the interface felt a little awkward to me.  I could have gotten used to writing out notes with it eventually, but I wasn't that happy with it.  So I went searching for other note-taking apps and came across this interesting-looking one called Use Your Handwriting, or UYH for short. 

    There was a free version, but I also downloaded the pay version because in its description they said you could e-mail handwritten notes to people.  This appealed because I blog mainly via e-mail to Posterous, or via the Posterous bookmarklet.  It looked kind of funky because you write on a black background and the "ink" colors look like they're glowing, similar to some restaurants' menu specials board.  

    Anyway, I tried out the app with the Pogo Sketch and for some reason, I really had to press hard in order for strokes to be registered on the screen.  This was true for both the stylus and using my finger.  I had to write really slowly in order for the words to be registered, which was a real pain.  Plus it didn't seem like I could actually write long notes.  Worst of all, the UI feels so kludgy and unintuitive that I keep having to tap random icons to get around.  I just didn't feel like learning the interface any further since it was clear I wouldn't be using this app for much ink blogging.

    I downloaded and played around briefly with an app called Tanzaku Pad Free, but it still wasn't quite what I was looking for, so I kept looking.  I came across an app called Paint for Evernote which seemed to be a notetaking app geared towards exporting notes to Evernote, presumably to take advantage of Evernote's OCR feature.  However, an app reviewer recommended using FastFinga instead, which prompted me to check out reviews for it.  The screenshots looked good, and the price was low (USD$0.99), so I bought it.  Luckily, I love it!  And funnily enough, it's by the same company that did Tanzaku Pad Free (Catalystwo).  I'm kind of surprised that FastFinga renders the text so much better (IMO) than Tanzaku Pad.  You'd think they'd use the same drawing methods.  Anyway… 

    FastFinga's UI is very clean and easy to figure out.  I love that the UI elements have a hand-drawn look to them:

    Even though it's easy to tap each icon to figure out what they do, the last of the settings pages in the app provide a key:

    Below is an example of what the interface looks like in writing mode. 

    You use the whole screen to write out words, and as you fill up the screen, you tap on the "thumb button" to add it to the page.  There is also a setting to automatically add text you've written after a certain period of idle time.  You can hit the expand icon to continue writing a word or two beyond the initial width of the screen, but be forewarned that if you continue writing, it will truncate anything past the right margin, if you're not careful.  So it's best just to write out 2 to 4 words, depending on how big your writing is, and hit the thumb button periodically to enter the text.  The app will handle spacing out your words and continuing on the next line if you've filled up the current line.  Once you're done, you can use the arrow keys to move around the written text to edit, if necessary.

    As seen in the next picture, there are several ways to export your notes, even sending them to Twitter or Evernote, if you configure those services in the settings.  This is a very flexible app that doesn't try to lock you into a proprietary file format.  The notes can be exported as PNG or JPEG.  Also seen in the picture below, you can import photos from your photo library, or take a picture, which is very handy if you want to annotate pictures you've taken.

    Here is the palette of colors and pen widths:

    Hitting the blue up arrow in the upper-right corner of the note page will take you out to your list of notes, complete with thumbnails.

    So, if you're looking for a way to ink blog or jot down quick notes with your iPhone, I highly recommend FastFinga.  It works well with either the Pogo Sketch, or just your finger.  I tried writing out a note without the stylus, and the text was still fairly legible, as you can see in the top thumbnail above.

    Great app!  I'm quite happy that I found it.  I think it'll be quite useful, even beyond ink blogging.  I really do hope that Catalystwo updates this for the iPad.  With the larger screen, it'll be even more useful for taking handwritten notes in meetings or classes.  I'd love to do full-blown ink blogging on an iPad with this app.  I could even see it being used as a personal journal, or a notebook for field notes.  Very cool app!

    BTW, as I was searching the Google for any app reviews for FastFinga, I did see this one from the Cult of Mac blog.  I thought it was really cool because the whole review was written out using FastFinga, ink-blog style.  Check it out.

  • 4-way

    4-way

  • Social Networking Guilt

    Steven Levy on The Burden of Twitter

    via wired.com

    I know this article is a year old, but I came across it while going through old Wired magazines (and looked up the online version to blog it). I feel a guilt about my social network accounts and my other online presences, similar to what Steven Levy mentioned in his article. I feel guilty when I don’t post for extended periods of time, but at the same time I feel annoyed. Why should I feel guilty for not spending all day on my computer? Yes, there are times when I have marathon surfing sessions, and I don’t feel bad about doing that because it’s part of my personality. But when I drop in on FriendFeed or Jaiku or Facebook after days or weeks of absence, I feel bad. Ugh. And the feeling is compounded by sites like FriendFeed because when I do post, nobody responds, since I’ve fallen off their radar. So then I post less. It’s a lame cycle, Man. :-/

  • Amen, Brotha!

    I’m often saddened by the infantilising effect of high technology on adults. From being in control of their world, they’re thrust back to a childish, mediaeval world in which gremlins appear to torment them and disappear at will and against which magic, spells, and the local witch doctor are their only refuges.

    With the iPhone OS as incarnated in the iPad, Apple proposes to do something about this, and I mean really do something about it instead of just talking about doing something about it, and the world is going mental.

    via speirs.org

    I love this. I totally agree that a computing device doesn’t have to have every high-tech bell and whistle in order to do “real work”. Just read the rest of the article linked above; Fraser Speirs wrote a great feisty post. Go now!

  • Readability is important

    NOTE: If you are super-sensitive about spoilers about Lost, feel free to browse away from this entry now.  The screenshots I have below include the beginning of an interview article with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, and may or may not have very minor spoilers about the show.  You have been warned!

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    Okay.  Now that's out of the way, I will continue.  I was linked to the interview article with Damon and Carlton on TV Guide's website, but felt that their page was so cluttered, so I busted out the secret weapon I added to my browser arsenal: the Readability bookmarklet.  See the magic that it works:

    Before…

    20100202-x3bpm85bqgu95y5cc5fkabxrxy.jpg

    After…

    20100202-egbmfcsgd4c2ja8wkcdnp675nc.jpg

    Aaaaaah…  So much better!  When you go to Readability's site, you can actually configure different settings for style, font size, and margin width.  An example blurb of text below the settings shows you what the text will look like.  Once you've got it set the way you want, you can drag the bookmarklet to your browser bar to install it, easy peasy.

    I know there are browser extensions to block ads and stuff, but this goes beyond that to strip out the text and relevant images so you can focus on the article.  Instapaper does a similar thing, but that's meant for reading later, while the Readability bookmarklet is for reading immediately.  

    Enjoy!

  • Inked quote of the day

    Captured in Hipstamatic (Roboto Glitter lens + Ina 1969 film), then post-processed in CameraBag with colorcross filter.

  • Tabbed browsing on the iPad?

    As I watched the video of the iPad announcement, I wondered how tabbed
    browsing would be handled on it. After all, several of the stock apps
    had been redesigned to take advantage of the additional screen real
    estate, so surely we would get desktop-like tabbed browsing now? It
    doesn’t seem that way, unfortunately.

    For a while I couldn’t find anyone describe how the tabbed browsing
    would work on an iPad in the many “hands-on” articles that cropped up
    after the announcement. Finally, the write-up on MacWorld mentioned
    that there was a button at the top of the browser that when tapped,
    would show a 3×3 square of tiles representing 9 open windows. I don’t
    recall exactly if this would be an overlay on the browser window like
    how the bookmarks are handled, or if this button would open a new
    browser screen to display the grid. Either way, it’s not my first
    choice for handling tabbed browsing. My suggestions follow:

    1. The most obvious option is to have a row of tabs at the top of the
    browser window like we’re used to on a desktop browser. Why not? The
    Numbers iWork app uses multiple tabs for spreadsheets. However, I
    guess this takes up too much screen real estate for TPTB. Perhaps a
    3rd-party iPad browser will do something like this.

    2. If we can’t have the regular browser tabs, give us a multitouch
    gesture to swipe through open tabs. Either tap and hold on the current
    browser window to go into “slide” mode (similar to how Phil Schiller
    moved slides around in Keynote) and swipe through the open tabs as you
    would photos in the photo library. Or, just swipe with 2 or 3 fingers
    to swipe left or right to another tab without needing to enter a
    special mode.

    3. If the “open windows” button of the iPad’s browser does open a new
    window just to display the open tabs, why not replace it with a drop-
    down menu or an overlay that pops into the center of the screen with
    either a list or grid of the tabs? Opening a new window is inefficient.

    While I think that mobile Safari is the best mobile browser I’ve used,
    the way it handles tabs on the iPhone/iPod touch is not cool.
    Inelegant. I hope it’s better on the iPad.

  • Great view of the iPad from a developer’s POV

    "Most of the iPad reactions I've read have been negative, but I have been completely satisfied with what Apple announced. iPad is exactly the product I've been wishing for ever since I wrapped my mind around the iPhone and its constraints. While the rumor mill was churning with all kinds of crazy possibilities for the Apple tablet, I mostly rolled my eyes, because I felt strongly that all Apple needed to do to revolutionize computing was simply to make an iPhone with a large screen. Anyone who feels underwhelmed by that doesn't understand how much of the iPhone OS's potential is still untapped."

    via <a href=”http://joehewitt.com/post/ipad/” >joehewitt.com</a>

    Reading this post made me even more excited about the iPad's potential, because I'm sure Joe Hewitt is not the only developer chomping at the bit to stretch the capabilities of the iPad and the iPhone OS. 

    (BTW, shouldn't they rename iPhone OS now that it's used on three different mobile devices now?)

  • Top Gear on iTunes

    20100131-qgb7fp5aei7hn7hfd8cg89xpip.jpg

    I absolutely *love* that Top Gear is a featured TV show on iTunes, even though it is the edited version being shown on BBC America.  Stig FTW! :D

  • Awesome quote to live by

    When you buy something cheap, you lower the value of your own life.

    via nytimes.com

    The above quote is in a New York Times article about deflation in Japan, which in itself is an interesting (yet depressing) read. However, I want to focus further on the quote.

    A lot of people who are frugal will disagree with the quote above, but it doesn’t just mean buying things on sale, or seeking out good bargains. To me, this is a rather profound quote on seeking out quality products, services, and cultural experiences. Some off-the-top-of-my-head (mostly obvious) examples:

    1. Cooking your own food vs. buying fast food
    2. Buying well-made goods that you’ll keep for years vs. cheap, throwaway-quality items you regularly replace
    3. Well-written, scripted TV shows vs. trashy “reality” shows
    4. A day at the zoo, museum, or fair with your family vs. a jaunt to the mall

    Granted, in this economy, you can’t always go for the quality option that costs more. And I’m not saying that you can’t get high-quality goods, services, or cultural experiences without spending a lot. On the contrary, there are lots of cases where a museum will have free exhibits or other events. Or just going to the park to spend time with loved ones is definite quality time “for free”.

    I guess in some cases, the price of something doesn’t just involve strict dollar value, but also making the effort to choose, which is a cost in itself. It’s convenient to buy fast food for a quick meal, but if you choose to make your own food, you’ll feel better about the meal. Or it’s convenient to go to the mall and zone out while window shopping, but choosing a trip to a free zoo, park, library, or even a cup of coffee at a cafe over conversation would be a more engaging thing to do.

  • From iPod to Mac

    expod is a small utility for getting songs off your iPod. iTunes does a fantastic job of copying music onto an iPod, but lacks the ability to go the other way. With expod you can copy any or all of your songs (or videos) off your iPod, using whatever file naming convention you like.

    expod copies your files back to your hard-drive untouched, and does not remove DRM from songs you bought on iTunes.

    expod uses the disk mode functionality in older iPods. Starting with version 0.5, iPhones, iPod Touches and newer iPods are also supported.

    via expod.joynt.net

    Been going through older gadgets, putting them away in their original packaging (if I still have it), then boxing them up for the move. I found some older iPods and wanted to clear them off before packing them away, so I started searching for utilities that would copy the music from the iPod to the Mac (well, an external drive connected to my MacBook). Expod looks to be a great free utility to do this. In addition, the developer included the source code in the .dmg, so you can peek at the code yourself. Cool beans.

  • Donde. Esta. La biblioteca.

    via nbc.com

    I love rewatching this clip from Community on NBC, Kids… Had to share it. :D

  • I’m getting an iPad, and here’s why

    I love my iPhone.  I’ve said many, many times that I often use my iPhone way more than I use my laptop.  There have been many days when I didn’t touch my laptop all day, using my iPhone instead.  I almost always have it with me, and thanks to its mobile broadband connection, I’ve got the internets at my fingertips almost all the time.  The iPhone’s “instant-on” capability and simple, single-task apps make it easier to accomplish certain things a lot faster than I would on my MacBook.  There are certain computing tasks that I now prefer doing on the iPhone rather than on my laptop, whether it’s because it’s easier to carry around the iPhone during said task (i.e. using Bento to inventory my graphic novels, and using the iPhone’s camera to add a picture of the cover to each database entry), or because the single-task app on the iPhone is faster to access and use than pulling up a browser on my MacBook (i.e. opening the IMDB app to look up an actor from a movie).

    My collection of iPhone apps is pretty large (maybe not as large as other more iPhone-crazy kids), so yes, I am “locked” into the App Store, but totally by choice.  There are so many wonderfully creative photography-related apps for the iPhone, and they are the ones to which I am most loyal.  After the photography apps, my collection of social networking apps gets the most play — Tweetie 2, Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, BuddyFeed, etc.  Then a couple RSS aggregators, Bento, Amazon.com, Kindle, IMDB, and PhoneFlicks round out the bunch.  Yes, I have games, but I don’t play them as much as I use the other aforementioned apps.  Words With Friends is currently my most-played game.  









    My current set of installed apps.  Most of the games I’ve left there for my nephew to play with when I visit him. :)

    As I said, I chose to “lock” myself into the iTunes ecosystem because I like and get much use out of several of the apps being offered there.  Yes, I think that the App Store approval process has a lot of kinks to get worked out, but the quality of apps coming from the iPhone developers is so good that I chose to invest in this platform over any other.  When I used other smartphones that ran Windows Mobile, S60, or UIQ, I didn’t feel any such enthusiasm for apps offered for those platforms, so I never really invested any money in shareware, instead opting for free apps.  I also was flipping back and forth between platforms, never knowing which one would catch my eye next, so it didn’t make financial sense to buy apps that I might use for a month or three or four and then “lose” after moving to a completely different device.  For a while, I had a smartphone and a 1st-gen iPod touch.  I loved using the apps on the iPod touch, but increasingly there were apps that would work with the iPhone only because they needed speakers or mic input or GPS input, and I grew tired of not always having a Wi-Fi connection.  I finally bought the iPhone 3G after I found out it would have GPS and 3G support (such as AT&T’s 3G network is… :P ).  It totally fits my smartphone needs.  This isn’t to say that the iPhone is a perfect device, though.  Multiple experiments with jailbreaking has shown me what features and functionality Apple has chosen to omit (at this time?).  But even playing around with “jailbroken” apps has shown me a creativity, level of innovation, and enthusiasm for a platform that I haven’t seen for other mobile device platforms.  [Editor’s Note: I have not yet been able to properly play around with an Android phone or a webOS phone, and these two platforms seem most similar in creativity and innovation to the iPhone platform to me, so my opinion may change.]  In the meantime, I changed my way of using a smartphone slightly to adjust to how an iPhone works.  The iPhone’s limitations weren’t a dealbreaker to me at all.  I have no problem typing up huge e-mails or long blog posts on my phone.  I am quite productive with my iPhone.  

    However, there have been times when I wished that I had just a little more screen real estate when working on my iPhone.  Or I wished that my MacBook were just a little smaller, lighter, and easier to carry around.  I took the MacBook with me on our trip out to CA a few months ago because I thought there might be some things I couldn’t do on the iPhone, like edit travel photos, or do some serious multi-tabbed browsing, looking up information on several neighborhoods in the area.  However, I ended up worriedly leaving the MacBook in the hotel room because it was too damn heavy to be lugging around all day.  And because we were out and about so much, my iPhone was my workhorse, though poor network coverage in the Bay Area *really* hampered things.  For the longest time I lusted after a MacBook Air — full OS X, thinner and lighter than a regular MacBook.  However, since I was an avid Tablet PC user before I switched to a Mac, I also dreamed about how Apple could take the Tablet PC concept and “Apple-ify” it.  This was helped along by the news of the Axiotron Modbook.  Around that time, it seemed that more speculation about an actual tablet device from Apple sort of bubbled up.  The iPhone OS and App Store were doing really well, and Apple started incorporating more multitouch input devices into the MacBook line.  I even thought to myself that the engineers at Axiotron were probably sweating about whether or not Apple would make a tablet device that would render theirs obsolete.  

    Enter the iPad (after many months more of wild speculation).  It is not the device I was expecting (well, before I saw the rumor that the device would be running a version of the iPhone OS).  I was hoping for a slate device with a special touch version of OS X that would allow me to run apps like a photo editor, have a full Safari/Chrome/Firefox browser, and basically most laptop functionality in a smaller, lighter package.  I didn’t get what I wished for, but I’m pleasantly surprised by what the iPad is, and am happy enough with its functionality that I plan on buying one (or two…I think the hubby wants one as well).  No, it’s not a tablet computer, in the Microsoft-Tablet-PC sense, but as I rambled above, I have been able to get a lot done with my iPhone, and prefer many of its single-task apps to their “desktop” counterparts.  

    Image credit: Apple
    This is the version I want, a 32GB or 64GB version with Wi-Fi and 3G.


    The iPad leverages the iPhone OS and apps very well, from what I’ve seen in the announcement.  Ironically, this may free me up to get a different smartphone — I’m very curious about both Android and webOS — since I’ll still able to use iPhone apps on the iPad.  I have said in the past that I wouldn’t want to completely drop my iPhone if I tried a different phone because of the apps that I like, the photography-related ones, especially.  But with the potential to use the iPhone photo apps on the iPad with pictures taken with different cameras or cameraphones, I wouldn’t feel like I’m giving those apps up.  I’m not an uber-smartphone-user like some people are, carrying and using several phones at a time, on different carriers.  So the iPad would be quite helpful to keep the iPhone apps in use without needing to carry a redundant iPhone along with my other phone.  Sorry, Apple! :)

    The iPad also makes another Apple product “unnecessary” for me.  For the longest time I wanted a MacBook Air because it is thinner and lighter than my aluminum unibody MacBook.  Surprisingly I don’t have a netbook, and I no longer use a desktop computer, so my MacBook is my primary computer.  For trips or photo outings, I sometimes need a device to offload pictures to clear out memory cards, so my MacBook would be my go-to device for that.  The problem is, it’s so friggin’ heavy that it’s a pain to lug around in addition to camera gear.  I thought having a MacBook Air would help the issue, but now that the iPad is here, I think it would work even better as my photo bin, and maybe as a photo uploader, depending on how much “real” photo editing I could do.  So, sorry Apple.  Instead of the MBA, I will be buying the iPad (and accessories).

    I actually have more general ideas about what the iPad is and what it isn’t in separate blog posts, so if you aren’t already tired of my rambling and haven’t read them yet, you can check those articles out to get an even better picture of why I think the iPad is a great new mobile device with lots of potential.

  • The iPad is…

    The iPad is…

    …Apple’s version of a netbook.  Steve Jobs poked fun of netbooks, saying that they’re not better than laptops at anything, that they’re just cheap laptops.  And in a sense, this is true.  The basic, lower-end netbooks are just cheap laptops with smaller screens, keyboards, very little storage space, and slower processors.  There are higher-end netbooks that are actually quite capable machines with faster processors and higher-res screens that some users have replaced their laptops with.  But the main draw of the netbook category was that for most people who only do basic e-mail and web surfing (I would say a pretty big majority of the personal-computer-user population), a lower-specced machine was all they needed.  Many of the Linux-based netbooks have an iPhone-esque kiosk UI where the user is presented with large app icons on the desktop to make operation as easy as possible.

    image credit: Wikipedia

    They also started out with rather small-capacity SSDs for limited file storage.  Later on, netbook-specific OSes showed up to optimize performance on the lower-specced machines.  Jolicloud and Intel’s Moblin OSes are the first two that come to mind.  Both offer simplified UIs as well:


    These OSes also offered the user some kind of centralized app repository that made it easy for the user to download more apps for their netbooks.  These apps were often special versions of Linux apps redone for netbooks.  Does any of this sound familiar? :)  The iPad extends the iPhone mode of operation to a device with a larger screen and a little bit more processing power to sort of bridge the gap between the iPhone and the MacBook.  And the iPad’s base price of $499 for a 16GB, Wi-Fi only device is actually pretty comparable to lower- to mid-range netbooks.  I think people considering a netbook will think twice now that you can get the iPad backed by the App Store, iTunes, and the iBookstore.  

    Now some people will cry foul and say that netbooks are more capable than the iPad, and yes, I agree.  The ones running Windows, or ones hacked to use a full version of Linux or even hackintosh netbooks will over some users way more functionality and flexibility than the iPad.  But I would tell you that you’re missing the point.  Think about regular netbook users, not uber-geeks.  Think about computer users who aren’t entirely comfortable using computers.  Or think about some more advanced computer users who just want a simple device to get certain tasks done without worrying about cracking open a laptop.  This is the main demographic Apple is reaching out to.

    …is a great mobile media consumption device.  No, you’re not going to replace your pocketable iPod/iPhone or big-screen HDTV with the iPad, but when you’re on a plane, at a cafe, on a trip, or just couch surfing (again, all place where one could carry a netbook), the iPad has a certain advantage over the iPhone or a laptop when watching videos, browsing photos, reading e-books, or even listening to music.  The large screen is a boon for video and photo browsing.  It would feel more comfortable showing off photos to other people in a room on the iPad than huddling around a laptop.    

    …is a great mobile media creation device.  Many people, myself included, are able to comfortably and capably blog from their iPhones.  The iPad’s larger screen and keyboard dock (or any other Bluetooth keyboard) would make blogging while out and about even easier.  I could totally see some people using iPads at next year’s tech trade shows like CES.  Maybe not the hardcore bloggers for Engadget and the like, but still.  

    If you saw the demonstration of the Brushes app during the iPad announcement, you can imagine how much more useful the iPad would be to those already creating lovely works of art on the iPhone.  And there are tons of music instrument and recording, video recording and editing, and photo-editing apps in the App Store that I can foresee evolving into newer, more capable apps on the iPad hardware.  

    One of the accessories for the iPad is a set of dongles that connect to the universal dock so that you can offload photos from your camera, either directly or via an SD card reader.  Would it be too much of a stretch to see photo apps that might allow some basic RAW conversion/editing?  Perhaps so, given the current hardware specs, but who knows?  And BTW, yes, I mentioned video recording, even though this first-gen iPad doesn’t have a camera.  Come on, you don’t think that isn’t one of the next upgrades?  

    …is potentially a great next-generation e-print reading device.  The iPad’s LCD is about the same size as the Kindle DX’s screen.  So already, the larger real estate can make reading books more enjoyable.  But the color LCD and processing power of the iPad can also allow publishers to make enhanced e-books that have multimedia supplements.  Imagine a book on how to play golf that includes short video clips or animations showing the correct golf swing form, or books on sporting events that actually have highlight clips built-in, or scientific books that have complex color diagrams and videos illustrating the scientific concepts.  

    I’m also excited about what e-magazines published for the iPad would look like.  The large screen will allow magazine publishers to keep essentially the same layout as the print version, with all of the color elements — photos, fonts, etc. — intact.  And as I described above, e-magazines could also incorporate more interactive features like video clips, polls that would actually report results back to the magazine’s website, perhaps even a live snippet of related tweets or other social network posts on the subject at hand.  I am sort of a magazine junkie who’s had to let all of my subscriptions expire because I’m tired of all of the paper piling up.  E-magazines would be a great alternative for me.  

    Again, naysayers would claim that e-magazines already exist as magazine’s websites.  Sure, I agree to a point.  But sitting down with a print magazine is not the same experience as reading the same articles online.  Wired Magazine posts all of their magazine articles online, but their online layout is stripped-down compared to the print version and looks like a website.  E-magazines on an iPad (and any other e-book reader with a large color screen, no matter what the display technology) could recreate a print magazine feel, just like the iBooks app recreates the feel of reading a paper book.  To some people, that doesn’t matter, but to others like me, it does.

    Other naysayers are out there claiming that the iPad is no Kindle killer because the e-ink display is better both for readability and battery life.  Again, I agree to a point.  First of all, I hate the term, “x killer”.  There’s no reason why multiple devices in a certain consumer electronic category can’t co-exist.  Secondly, there’s no doubt that many people will prefer the Kindle/Nook/other e-ink readers over the iPad because an e-ink display is easier on the eyes and can last so much longer on a charge than the iPad.  However, for many people like me who have been reading e-books long before the Sony Reader or the Amazon Kindle ever came on the scene, reading on a backlit screen isn’t a bother.  I personally prefer it because I often read at night, in bed, in either very dim lighting or no light.  And I am not a big fan of having to rely on a reading light, because sometimes I just won’t have access to one.  And when you compare the price of the base model iPad to the Kindle DX — USD$ 499.99 vs. $489.99, respectively — the iPad looks to have more bang for the buck because of all of the other features it has over the Kindle DX.

    I am a little concerned about how much Apple is going to back their iBookstore, just because we’ve all heard Steve Jobs claim that “no one reads anymore”.  However, I think that the iPad is also going to become very important in the field of education, with a lot of school kids potentially using the iPad as a laptop replacement (maybe even textbook replacement??).  So in that case, I think Apple may just be in the e-book business for the long haul, now that they’ve produced a device that they think is a worthy e-book reader.  

    …is still at version 1.0.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be, but I continue to be amazed by how many people come out of the woodwork around Apple announcement time and demonstrate how ignorant they are of Apple’s modus operandi.  Seriously, people, get over it.  When has Apple ever released a first-generation product that had every possible feature or hardware component crammed into it?  The iPad is following the iPhone’s path.  Remember, the first-gen iPhone didn’t even have apps!  No 3G, even though tons of people bellyached about that, and no GPS.  The reasoning behind it, whether you believe it was marketing hoo-hah, or just how they planned it all along, was to make the iPhone more stable of a platform than the other smartphone platforms.  Opening up the iPhone to apps would affect stability, and using 3G when coverage and hardware optimization wasn’t quite up to par would’ve drained the iPhone’s battery quite handily.  A lot of people, including me, held off buying the first iPhone because it didn’t fit their needs, but that sure didn’t make the iPhone flop.  I seriously doubt that the first-gen iPad will be a flop, either.  It may not sell quite as well as the iPhone, but your guess is as good as mine.  

    The pricing for the iPad is rather astonishing, given Apple’s usual penchant for overpricing their products because they can.  And I fully believe that this is meant to be a shot across the bow for similar products like netbooks, the new smartbook category, and the other slate computer devices that cropped up at CES.  A base price of $499 is very attractive to many buyers (I said many, not all).  I think it was job one for the iPad to have this surprising pricing scheme, so of course things like a front-facing or rear-facing camera needed to stay out in order to keep the costs down and the profits up.  Once Apple has gotten a fair amount of ROI on the first-gen iPad, and they’ve secured ridiculously good deals on mobile camera units, then they’ll release the next version with a camera or two and maybe a built-in SD slot and maybe a USB slot or two if we’re really good.  

    Another huge thing that people are in a tizzy about is the lack of multitasking.  That’s a common complaint for the iPhone, so much so that marketing for other smartphones like the Palm Pre and Droid like to needle the iPhone for it.  I agree that given a lot of the apps that are out there now, it would be nice to leave them running in the background, and having push notifications, while useful, is not the best solution, especially for things like streaming audio apps.  But I think people have conveniently forgotten that iPhone 4.0 is coming.  And there have been strong rumors that a major feature of 4.0 is “a kind of” multitasking.  I wouldn’t be surprised if iPhone 4.0 is announced before the iPad is released, and that the main reason why it wasn’t announced at the iPad event was to keep the focus on the iPad.  I can also imagine that work on the iPad went down to the wire and there was no time to fully integrate and test iPhone 4.0 before the iPad announcement deadline.  Similarly, Apple could just be planning to release the iPad as-is and put in iPhone 4.0 as an update, post-release.  Furthermore, I think that while there are a lot of “no multitasking” complaints online, a lot of regular iPhone users really don’t care about multitasking because this is their first smartphone and they don’t know any better.  And other iPhone users like myself have gotten used to the lack of multitasking, and don’t consider it a dealbreaker.   However, I fully expect multitasking to come sooner rather than later thanks to the Android and Palm smartphones out there now.  Apple is very good at holding back the goods so that they come from a position of strength.  They knew that releasing the iPad without some key features wouldn’t hamper initial sales, and would give them something for version 2.0.  Sneaky buggers.

  • What the iPad isn’t

    The iPad…

    …isn’t named very well

    .  I actually really dislike the name iPad.  I liked the rumor that the device would be called Canvas.  It sounded like a very elegant name, but I realize that while canvas does encompass the artsy, creative aspects of using the iPad, it wouldn't address the e-book reader, gaming, and work aspects of the device.  I also hoped that the rumors that they'd drop the "i" prefix from the name were true, but I guess that Apple is retaining the "i" prefixes for non-laptop mobile devices, and the Mac-prefixed names will be used for the laptop and desktop computers.  Don't you agree that a name like Apple Tablet, Apple Slate, or MacTablet would've been a nicer name?  I guess iPod is kind of a strange name for a device, yet now it has become commonplace.  I'm sure we'll all get used to iPad, but for right now, seeing all the jokes about it are getting really tiresome. :-/

    …isn’t a "tablet" computer, per se.  AFAIK, Apple never actually referred to their device as a tablet.  I guess through a controlled leak it could've come out that Apple was working on a slate device, and then the term "tablet" got bandied around.  Unfortunately, since the Microsoft Tablet PCs are the tablet computing devices that most people are familiar with, the features of said Tablet PCs came to the forefront.  However, the iPad has neither of the major features of a Tablet PC — stylus input and handwriting recognition/OCR.  Actually, OS X does have a handwriting recognition engine called Inkwell, but the iPhone OS doesn't.  I guess the rumors were somewhat natural because Axiotron had started work on the ModBook, and at that time, I seem to remember rumors of an actual Apple tablet device supposedly coming soon.  Axiotron must've been sweating, worried that Apple would make their ModBook products obsolete.  They have nothing to be worried about for now.   

    Image credit: Axiotron
    Axiotron ModBook.  This is not the Apple iPad.

    [Editor's Note: browsing Axiotron's website today reminded me how interested I was in the ModBook.  I'm seriously considering having them convert my MacBook into a tablet Mac! :) ]

    Actually, with the iPad's larger screen, it may be possible to combine Dan Bricklin's Note Taker app and a Pogo Sketch stylus to do some rudimentary digital inking.  I bought a Pogo Sketch a little while ago and tested it on my iPhone (haven't yet written that up for my blog… *sheepish grin*).  While it was kind of hard to do at first, I was able to sort of get the hang of it and ink out a short ink blog post.  However, the Pogo Sketch tip is not that accurate, and it feels like writing with a Q-tip (as Leo Laporte described on MacBreak Weekly; the Pogo styli are used in Apple retail stores on the iPod-touch-based point-of-sale devices).  It's definitely not comparable to using a stylus on an active digitizer like on a Tablet PC.  Also, the Note Taker app didn't do any handwriting recognition, just straight "ink" capture.  That's exactly what I prefer, but most people who handwrite notes on a Tablet PC prefer them to be converted into typed text.  

    Pogo Sketch stylus: works on capacitive screens (iPhone/iPod touch) and the MacBook multitouch trackpads.

    I don't think Apple has any plans to make a device resembling a Tablet PC.  That just isn't the direction these touch-enabled devices seem to be going.  But I still hold out hope that perhaps they will make a touch version of the full OS X and create a slate version of the MacBook line like the ModBook.  That would be awesome. :)

    …is not a replacement for either smartphones or laptops.  

    As Andy Ihnatko has said several times on MacBreak Weekly, Apple is very careful not to have devices with redundant features.  The Mac mini and the Mac Pro are desktop machines for different situations.  The MacBook and the MacBook Pro have enough distinction for there to be separate demographic targets (in theory).  The iPhone is the smartphone.  Even the different iPods have distinct features and hardware for a given demographic.  Apple was very specific about positioning the iPad between the iPhone and MacBooks, making a hybrid device that has an enhanced version of the iPhone OS that takes advantage of the new hardware.  

    There have been a lot of complaints, saying that the iPad is a useless device because you can't do such-and-such feature like you can with a laptop, or it's not pocketable like the iPhone.  The point of a new hybrid device like the iPad is not necessarily what you can do with it, but rather how you interact with it.  The slate form factor and touchscreen does make interaction with it more intimate, as Steve Jobs said.  It's just you and the screen.  No intermediary keyboard (when not using the keyboard dock) or mousing device.  You're holding the device directly in your hands and navigating with your fingers.  You want to show off some pictures?  It's like flipping through a physical photo album, not manuvering and huddling around a laptop screen.  Reading an e-book on a slate actually feels like holding the dead-tree version in your hands.  This form factor promotes a more casual mode of computing, and they tried to emphasize this during the announcement by sitting in a chair, propping up the iPad in your lap.  You can still get some serious, productive work done with the iPad, especially having more screen real estate than a smartphone, but in general, the iPad is a casual computing device.  At least that's the impression that I get.  I've used a Tablet PC in slate mode for browsing and reading e-books and it definitely feels natural and more comfortable than doing the same on a laptop.  But it is something that you have to experience yourself; it's kind of hard to explain, not to get all hippy-dippy on you, Dear Reader. :)  

    Having apps like the iWork suite available on the iPad means that you can really get down and do some "real work" on the iPad.  However, it's not going to address the needs of someone who really uses a laptop as some kind of workhorse, using full-blown Photoshop or editing video on Final Cut.  It isn't meant to, though.  This isn't some cop-out device that's missing real horsepower to get things done, despite people's protests to the contrary.  Besides, why would Apple make a device that would cannibalize sales of either their iPhones or their MacBooks?  Both categories of devices are netting a ton of profit for Apple.  The iPad is a step above a smartphone and a step below a laptop or desktop machine.  If you tell me that you never ever do any casual web surfing, e-mail, gaming or whatever, then there really is no point for you to get this device.  But if you have a laptop or a netbook and all you do is e-mail and surfing, you could totally get by with an iPad, and even be surprised at how much productivity it provides when you're done relaxing.  I can totally see using the iPad as a mobile blogging machine at a trade show, perhaps not for super-hardcore bloggers from Engadget, but you never know.  I could also imagine getting a bit more robust photo editing apps, especially since one of the accessories for the iPad is a set of dongles to allow offloading pictures from your camera.  I doubt a pro wedding photographer would ever be able to use an iPad to edit hundreds of RAW files out in the field, but an advanced amateur photographer could offload a few JPEG snaps to run through CameraBag, CameraKit, Lo-Mob, Autostitch, or one of the other awesome photo editing apps already available in the App Store and produce some very nice artistic photos for printing or uploading to Flickr.  I know I'm going to try that scenario, for sure.

    …is not going to be a static device.  The iPad will get firmware and hardware updates just like the iPhone did, and these new features will likely address major concerns people have about multitasking, having a camera for video conferencing, having USB ports, and so on.  Even if you think that the iPhone still is a crippled, locked-down device, you can't deny that the difference between the first-gen iPhone and the iPhone 3Gs is quite significant.  The original iPhone didn't ship with the ability to install 3rd-party apps, but now there is a thriving ecosystem in the App Store.  There was no GPS in the first-gen iPhone, but now the 3Gs has GPS and a compass enabling some pretty awesome augmented reality apps.  The same will happen for the iPad.  The changes may be too slow for some people's likings, but it will come, and the potential is exciting to me.  People have done some pretty suprising stuff with "lowly" PDAs and smartphones, making them into mobile workhorses that would rival full-blown laptops and desktops.  I see the same promise for the iPad.

    The iPad is a new and interesting hybrid device that may not be useful for more power users, but I think it is worth looking beyond the regular computing conventions to at least try to understand the niche the iPad fits in.  Some people might be pleasantly surprised at how much functionality the iPad can offer.  Besides, can't you imagine what you might be able to do with it once it's jailbroken? :)

  • Obligatory iPad posts coming

    I watched live coverage of the Apple iPad announcement (thanks, TWiT Live and MacBreak Weekly!), read a few hands-on articles, watched the short video about the iPad, as well as watched the video of the iPad announcement when it was finally available for download.  I think I’ve seen enough about the iPad to do some armchair quarterback write-ups of my own.  I’ll do this in three parts to save the reader from needing to wade through an uber-uber-long post: part one will be what the iPad isn’t.  Part two is what the iPad is.  And part three is my long-winded way of saying, “hell yeah, I’m buying an iPad!”  So stay tuned. :)

  • Egg Watchers: the egg timer that entertains you

    via eggwatchers.com

    What a cute site! You choose what size egg you’re going to boil and how you want it cooked, then it plays a YouTube video for you while you wait. :D