Tag Archives: ipad

Blackberry vs. iPhone vs. DROID

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This is a bit of advice I wrote regarding Blackberry vs. iPhone vs. DROID…

Thanks for letting me know about what is covered during those meetings. I’d like to share with you some of the reasons why we are using Blackberry devices and not the others, yet.

WMU Development and Alumni Relations uses Blackberry devices because at the time (2007) they were the most relevant and best-featured devices at the time. Blackberry is carrier agnostic, they’ll run on anything, and the two competing systems are CDMA (Sprint and Verizon) and GSM (AT&T and T-Mobile). Blackberry also was a superior choice for corporate users because of the seamless security not only behind the scenes, where the network is edge-to-edge encrypted with AES-256, the US Federal Government standard, but also in-front of the scene. By using BES we have the capacity to manage devices over radio, so if a Blackberry is lost, we do not have to worry about sensitive information leaking out, we simply instruct the Blackberry to commit suicide, then order a new device. This really drove a lot of the Blackberry adoption, at least in the technical circles where these properties are worth quite a lot. Blackberry continues to be a ‘best-case’ device because of all the sticky technical bits that make them quite a pleasure to support. There are tradeoffs, as the devices are all business and no pleasure, they don’t have touchscreens, a panoply of apps, and they aren’t exceptionally fast with data. The competing devices, which would be iPhone and Droid are arguably the flipside of what the Blackberry is, it’s all pleasure, but very spartan when compared to Blackberry in the context of business use.

Between iPhone and Droid there is more detail that would benefit you to know. While the Apple iPhone is a tremendously attractive device (especially for someone like me) the device is locked into an arguably stunted network, AT&T. Here in Kalamazoo AT&T has been inexplicably retarded when it comes to fleshing out their 3G network capacity. A 3G network is essentially a “Fast Radio Network” which makes any device that uses it work faster than ‘2G’ or ‘Old and Slow Radio Network’. This lack of competent service in comparison to Sprint and Verizon’s 3G networks that already exist here is the principal reason why iPhones have yet to earn the mark of distinction from my office and why I have been silent about any future move off of the Blackberry infrastructure. I can argue that switching from Blackberry to iPhone at this juncture would be a stupid move, since 90% of users would do business in Kalamazoo county, ignoring Sprint and Blackberry’s 3G network for AT&T’s EDGE (their 2G network) would be akin to replacing the engine in a Camaro with a lawnmowers’. As for Droid, I cannot recommend that mobile device operating system because it has yet to establish a stable canon. Google has been working feverishly developing and extending this platform and Droid suffers for it. If we were to buy-in to Droid now, 6 months down the pike we’d be stuck with 25 devices that may or may not have an upgrade path to wherever Google takes Droid next.

What does the future hold? Blackberry and Sprint are the ‘Devil We Know’. We’re used to the rough patches and we have a well-beaten path and a contract that works for our needs. What conditions would need to happen for me to change my official recommendations? Any switch to iPhone would require AT&T to demonstrate a willingness to flesh out their 3G network in Kalamazoo county. AT&T did consume Centennial Wireless recently, so this may be coming sooner rather than later. Alternatively, if Apple reworks the iPhone to use the CDMA network, it would be useful on the Verizon network and iPhone + Verizon would make me switch us all over in the blink of an eye. So far, the legal rumblings from Apple state that there is a lovers-knot forged between AT&T and Apple in relation to the iPad. Apple needed a data provider, AT&T offered their network for the new iPad device, but the rumor states that the ‘sweetheart deal’ would only be possible if Apple kept the AT&T-only stricture on iPhone, at least until 2011. Verizon is very hungry for the iPhone, but Apple won’t budge, and everyone agrees it’s because AT&T has their hooks in Apple quite deeply. Droid, on the other hand, needs time to mature. The platform is still very young and prone to wild upset and I can’t justify us spending valuable University funds on something so prone to ‘platform-quakes’. Droid would be a valid option by 2015.

If there are any points you’d like clarification on please do not hesitate to ask.

Apple iPad App Review – Page 1 Line 4

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After a little hiatus, back with the reviews:

  • Marvel – The Marvel App for the iPad is a wonderful taste of how good digital comics can be presented. The interface is slick, the payment structure is in place and the storage and actual use of the comic book really takes advantage of the power of the iPad as a comic book shaped device. Everything about this app screams awesome, you zoom along thinking you’ve found the perfect app and then you literally run right off the cliff. The problems? Where is DC’s content? It’s all fine that this is a Marvel app, but the structure of this app should be a standardized reader for all comics. Another problem is that Marvel is currently schizophrenic when it comes to their product path, you get a taste of comics, some are free, some are $1.99 but the principal problem behind all of this is that Marvel behaves as if this platform is just a showcase. I’ve spoken to people and I respect their opinions regarding this app and they agree with me, that Marvel is treating this as a teaser to buy actual comic books. That defeats the nature of the App itself. I don’t want physical comic books, I want virtual comic books! That’s the Achilles heel of this App, you can get started and fall in love with the app, but the love affair is short because Marvel isn’t taking it seriously. Do they print? Do they keep going with their digital flash-based comic site, or do they pursue the iPad market? Kudos for coming to the iPad market with their stellar app, jeers for starving the app and their fans of actual use of the app as a primary interface to Marvel. Currently it’s nice to show off the technology and the apps ‘promise’ but beyond that, it’s barely worth free, because there is no content once you rip past the shiny paper.
  • Reader – Google Reader for the iPad isn’t so much an App as it is a website with an icon created from it, which is a feature of the iPhone OS. It gives me access to the Google Reader interface, while it’s an acceptable method for consuming Reader news stories, I would really prefer a true iPad App, possibly one with an offline caching feature so that when my iPad is on-network it can soak up news so that I can look at items when I’m off the network. The bugbear here is that there is an App that does that, NetNewsWire, but I stopped using it because it’s syncing with Google Reader is broken. NNW is also a poor fit because it’s first and foremost an RSS reader with extensions to Google Reader. What I’m truly looking for is a Google Reader App for the iPad with caching. Maybe Google will, maybe they won’t. I would like it, and I would pay for it, but the web app icon is currently minimally sufficient.
  • Pages – This is one part of the iWork App Suite available for the iPad, the word processor. I used it while I was on a business trip to put together a document and the performance of the app is very solid. There are some very slight shruggable oddities such as not being able to bring up layout and page adjustment controls when in landscape display mode, but once you work out the kinks and actually learn how the App works, it’s well worth the price on the App Store to buy this particular app. The only glaring failure is the inability to print, but I have faith that either there will be an App that bridges the gap or there will be a printing feature in iPhone OS 4. It’s not enough to be a walk-away problem, and there is enough polish elsewhere in the app to make up for the lack of printing features. One of the big things about the iPad is the strong message it sends, that classic printing is dead. In that light I can get along with the lack of printing and appreciate the future that the iPad represents.
  • ComicZeal4 – Quite possibly the best App for my iPad, hands down. This moderately priced app swallows CBR, CBZ, and PDF files for comic books stored digitally in those formats. ComicZeal4 is my go-to-app for how I read comic books on my iPad. The presence or absence of certain titles in this app will have to be left up to your imagination however this app does represent a very dangerous thing for ‘old-school’ comic book companies like Marvel and DC. I’ve stated this before in other blog entries, but if you don’t innovate and cater to your customers they will innovate all by themselves, without you. There is an enormous collection of up-to-press comic books presented in a digital format that is exactly compatible with ComicZeal4 and the iPad that have nothing at all to do with Marvel or DC. Because these companies are asleep at worst or sluggish at best at reaching the iPad market, their customers can get what they want without Marvel or DC’s input, without gracing Marvel or DC with money for their work. It’s a natural result of being absent in a market that is voracious for your products. The longer Marvel and DC stay asleep and continue to not-be-present in this marketplace the more their products will leak out and their profit bases erode. What can Marvel and DC do to combat this? It’s completely obvious – enter the marketplace and bring everything you sell! There is a window of opportunity here for both companies, if they don’t take it they will be losing out on not only a multi-million dollar market but also the inevitable future – paper is dead, devices are next. iPad is just the start. If either Marvel or DC is going to enter the space, come with your A-game, not some lame half-hearted toe-wiggling.

Apple iPad App Review – Page 1 Line 3

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Continued from my previous post, these are the apps on my iPad home screen, line by line:

  • WordPress – The best way to write this review is to actually use the app, which I am doing now. The landscape orientation keyboard does take a little bit to get used to but it is easy to type on. The only variance I can see between the web-based WordPress interface and the WordPress app is the apparent lack of formatting controls, in the app it’s down to raw HTML markup if you wish to prettify your text. There is also a lack of proofreading tools for the app, but I expect the app will grow up to include them. The iPad does a very good job at keeping my spelling in check as it uses the system spellchecker to do the heavy lifting. I have my iPad playing classical music in the iPod app while I type this, all I lack is a latte. 🙂 One thing that I have sensed with the WordPress app that may be a bug is that spellchecker doesn’t properly replace text if you select the proper spelling. Just a slight oddity is all.
  • USA Today – The USA Today app is a early morning must read for me. There is something very satisfying about waking up my iPad, tapping on the USA Today and being able to swipe through the days news and proceed through the sections of the newspaper as if I had it in my lap. This app only failed epically once, I had the display rotation locked, then turned it unlocked the rotation, exited, and then tried to reenter. The app would not properly start, I had yo remove the app and download it again, which was an annoyance. It hasn’t failed again since, so maybe it was a fluke. This app, when it gets the crossword and sudoku games will grow up into it’s own, and I can definitely see it taking flu advantage of the iAd system that Apple released in the iPhone 4.0 software update release.
  • iPod – The iPod functions just like you would expect it to, except that it doesn’t appear to have cover flow capability, which is odd. The function is solid and is the one app that can take full advantage of the background audio capabilities that already exist in the classic iPod Touch feature set.
  • Epicurious – This app is a kitchen blessing. You can search their vast recipe collection and construct a shopping list and email it or keep it in your iPad. I don’t see many people wandering the supermarkets with their iPads open, but that may change as the iPad saturates more of the market.

Stay tuned for my next post, Page 1 Line 4!

Apple iPad App Review – Page 1 Line 2

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Part 3 of my Apple iPad App Review, what I have on Page 1 Line 2 continued:

  • Netflix – The Netflix app is free and provides access to the streaming content of the Watch Instantly system present in a basic Netflix account. The application works well, it has yet to crash, but I did run into a usability headache early on while trying it out. With all video on the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad the native presentation of the video appears with slight letterboxing, depending on how you orient the device while you watch it. There is, in almost every video application a button control to remove the letterboxing and expand the video to use the maximum amount of screen real estate. While using the Netflix app, early on, I mistook the exit button for the letterbox-resize button so every time I would start a movie and try to maximize it, I was actually asking Netflix to go back to the previous video selection screen. I became quite irate at the Netflix app for what I perceived as a epic failure until I realized that I was pressing the wrong control. Now that I know where to expect the control to remove letterboxing, the app behaves as it was designed to, and I’m quite happy with it. The movie quality is at best 720P but that is perfectly acceptable to be able to hold it in your hands or against your legs while you watch. I predict that this, and any front-facing camera adjustment to the iPhone/iPad will melt down any 3G network in a red-hot minute.
  • TweetDeck – A true Love-It/Hate-It app if there ever was one, the TweetDeck app on the iPad is acceptable, it’s worth the cost, which is to say free. In the portrait orientation it wastes a fantastic amount of screen real estate meaninglessly, but at least it doesn’t crash with wild abandon as it does on the iPhone. The biggest gripe I have about TweetDeck, both the iPod Touch version, the iPad version, and the Adobe AIR version is the impossible-to-reconfigure font and font size in twitter text on the display. This app is ripe for relocation and/or removal.
  • Videos – The factory included Videos app is a delight to use, much like the other factory included apps. The folding metaphor when you select videos is very visually appealing and the video itself is crisp and beautiful and all the controls work as you would expect them to. The first video I played on my iPad was Airplane!, it’s how I inaugurate all my Apple devices. Funniest movie of all time, meet best device of all time. 🙂
  • YouTube – I’ve just touched on the YouTube app only sparingly. I suppose other people get a kick out of watching inane people doing inane things. I haven’t posted a video on YouTube and I guess I’m too old to ‘get it’. This app will likely be relocated, as factory apps can’t be deleted from the device. YouTube works for Google, it works for a lot of people, but I don’t really care that much for it. Technically however, it does work well, much like the other video apps on the iPad, and it hasn’t crashed on me so I don’t have anything negative to share.

Next, Page 1 Line 3…

iPad App Reviews…

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Everyone is a critic, and thanks to encouragement from TUAW, and the surprising hit-count on my Apple iPad Review I’m going to review my Apple iPod Apps that I find, use, and enjoy. I’m going to spread these reviews out not by theme, but by where they live on my iPad screen. Two birds, one stone. 🙂

Being the inaugural post, I will cover the iPad Dock first, these are the lifeblood apps:

  1. Safari – The only web browser available for the iPad. This version of Safari is more stable and thanks to the A4 processor more snappy than the Safari in my 1st Generation iPod Touch. It works wonderfully well and frankly I haven’t missed flash one bit. Until Apple approves Opera for the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad this will likely be cemented in place.
  2. Mail – Much like the ubiquitous Mail.app on my myriad Macintosh computers the Mail app has grown up out of the little niche that is my iPod Touch. The application is acceptable as a Mail application, it has some tweaks, but it won’t be stellar until they have a unified mailbox. Thankfully Steve Jobs has indicated that this is coming, so we will reserve our pitchforks and hot tar for later.
  3. Photos – The Apple iPad shines when it comes to displaying photos. With the proper bracket to hold it properly this device could double as an awesome photo frame. This application, the Wifi built-in, and the long battery gives me hope that someone will create an app that can stream photos from local computers just as StreamToMe can stream video content. Then I’ll have reached that Nirvana – being able to queue up my giant amateur photography library and have it display without having to futz around with a 64GB memory stick.
  4. iBooks – What a wonderful application. The iBooks app contains all the ‘epub’ format books that you have either purchased or created for yourself with Calibre. This isn’t the first time I’ve worked with ebook readers but it is the first one I’ve actually taken seriously enough to use from day-to-day. This application continues to surprise me, as I discover that there are more features to it than what you see just on the iTunes Store page. It remembers how far you’ve read in each book in your iBooks Library, it uses a yellow-highlighter mark for its bookmark system, it has access to the system dictionary, and as we discovered last night, if you point at a word you can use that gesture to find that word in other places in the text. As Scott mentioned to me when he discovered that feature, it would be a landslide blessing to research, to have that functionality. Thanks to Calibre you can convert any open format into the ‘epub’ format, and iTunes is adept at managing the files. There are so many killer apps for the iPad, but this is the showcase app.
  5. Toodledo – This app pairs with the Toodledo website and I find it indispensable in my line of work to not have competent todo management. This app synchronizes with the Toodledo site and any one of my devices save for my iPod Classic can access and sync data back and forth so I’m never without my todo list. For anyone who is event-driven in their lives or their work, this application and site are built expressly for you.
  6. Twitterific – I love this Twitter client application. It presents, in portrait mode a very pleasing view of my Twitter stream, with pleasantly large text and color-coded rectangles indicating the source of each particular tweet, part of the stream, a reply, or a direct message. The application is somewhat stable, I’ve only run into one glaring problem and I believe it was some sort of snafu in synchronizing the Twitter Stream with what is cached in my iPad. The fix was to remove Twitterific and re-install it. I’ve only had the failure once and it has not reappeared. My iPad has the ability to play sounds, so this is the first time I’ve heard any sound effects from my apps. The chime and bird sounds are a delightful touch.

Next up is the first line at the top of page 1 on my Apple iPad…

Comics and The Bleeding Edge

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After unboxing my Apple iPad and playing around with it pretty constantly I am reminded of an old argument I made a while back regarding the collision of technology and comic books. Specifically the two comic book companies (there are many more, but these two are the leaders) Marvel and DC are either totally asleep or schizophrenic when it comes to technology and “The Bleeding Edge”. It used to be in time long ago that content providers had a seamless lock on their entire business model, they hired creative staff, they created master-proofs, they printed them and distributed them to their customers. The delineation was delightfully cut and dried, producers would release on their schedule and consumers would loyally go and consume when the producer gave the wink and the nod. There was only one format, the locked-in format and there was no choice in the format. In comic books, everyone went to the comic book store, they had a pull list, they showed up loyally every wednesday and paid for their books and the world made sense.

Then technology came. Specifically in this case, the Apple iPad. This is the first device that has a display that is compatible with displaying comic-books (and manga for that matter) and is user-friendly enough and convenient enough for people to sit in their favorite chair or on their favorite couch and voraciously consume comic books. This new device enables the customer to see the content they want in the form they want it in. No more heavy longboxes, no more paper, no more dead-trees-and-ink. Now every comic book they own can either be in their device or on a USB Memory Stick dangling from their car keys. Whats more, it takes the printing and distribution middlemen out of the equation altogether, so now it’s just Comic Book Producer and Consumer, face to face.

Or at least that would be if people were concentrating on the bleeding edge, but they aren’t. DC has yet to even come up with an App, but Marvel has. This isn’t to crow at Marvel beating DC since Marvel is stuck in the corner being schizophrenic and quietly muttering to itself. “Do I print, I gotta print. I also gotta do flash, oh yes, the flash is pretty, but then the iPad, so nice…” and the customers are titillated but growing restive with the cliff-face of “Perfect… perfect… Uh, WTF?” The Marvel App is a glittering wonder, that leaves you like Wiley E. Coyote after he runs off the cliff, but before he notices the violation of the law of gravity.

The mantra for 21st Century business is “Adapt or Die” and in this sense, both Marvel and DC aren’t really showing signs that adaptation is foremost on their minds, from observable behavior. I’ve said this before and I will say it again, now that the customer is free *and* enabled with high technology they can and will actively compensate for the failures of their beloved comic book producers to provide a way for us to get what we want, when we want it. We don’t want it on paper, we want it in digital format. We want micropayments and we want subscriptions, and we want our comics pushed to us when they are published.

There are two worlds running concurrently:

In the first world you have everyone being upright and legal, this is a fantasyworld because so far the instrumentation doesn’t exist for us, the consumers to engage with this world yet. What do I imagine in this world? I see two apps on the Apple iPad. Marvel and DC. The trade images they put in their movies, it’s most recognizable. So lets tap once on the DC App (easier to imagine since it doesn’t exist yet). I see a system that closely resembles the Marvel storefront, a place to browse Comics, a Library of purchased content, and a Settings page. On the Settings Page is my preferred method of payment, my debit or credit card is on file, through the “Payment” button. Near that is “My Subscriptions” which is essentially my pull-list for DC. I want all GL, BG, WW, BM, and SM, also want Flash and I want to follow Brightest Day, for example. On Wednesday, around 2pm (throw a bone to the printed-comics people) I open the DC app and there is a list of all the issues on my pull list. I tap “Buy Issue” button and it downloads. I sync with my iTunes and it all gets backed up. DC could then turn around and sell me a backup application for $10 that allows me to back all my comics up on a storage medium of my choosing in some popular format, like PDF, CBR, or CBZ. Everyone is happy, I have my comics with me wherever I go, DC is happy because they are selling comics like hotcakes, it’s win-win all around.

In the second world, the world some of us inhabit, it’s a darker and less legal world. Our beloved companies have yet to publish any digital content in any reliable way and we’re patently impatient for progress so we strike out on our own to make things the way we want them. People go online and find, using BitTorrent each of their titles, scanned in beautiful color format, conveniently stored in CBR or CBZ files. People download this content without paying anyone anything, we click and drag these files to sync software and we place them on our devices. We get what we want, but it’s piracy, it’s unfair, and ultimately it’s harmful to the producers. On the other hand, even if it’s slightly annoying, the customers are happy. At least there is that.

What does it come down to? If you don’t make the effort to constantly expand and adapt your business model to suit technology your customers may innovate without you. The fact that we don’t have this kind of infrastructure in place yet is very stunning to me. For $1.99 an issue Marvel and DC would be able to skip PRINTING, be able to skip DISTRIBUTION, skip entire super-expensive channels altogether and engage in direct marketing with their consumers. No overhead means all that more profit to Marvel and DC. You would think that sheer greed would have driven both of these companies to have an Apple iPad app on the market the day the iPad was released. No. All we have is Marvel dipping their toes into the water, titillating us and leaving us stymied. DC isn’t even in sight, it’s mind-boggling.

Apple iPad

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Scott and I got in line early Saturday morning at Best Buy in Kalamazoo to be the first to get the new Apple iPad. I bought the 16GB model, Scott bought the 32GB model. We waited from 3:30am to 10:30am, for the line to queue up, and for the shop to open. There were about 30 of us when the doors finally opened and nobody was sure how many iPads Best Buy got in their shipment. The common consensus was a box of 16, 1 for display, 15 for sale. At 10am the manager at Best Buy came out with a pile of differently colored papers and asked everyone in line which model they would like. The pile of paper was more than 15, it looked like a significant pile of paper. Apple shipped our Best Buy a box of 50! Both Scott and I bought our iPads and we also bought the case-enclosure for the devices to protect them.

We rushed home, I unboxed my iPad and was surprised at how simple and uncomplicated the container was. The iPad was sitting atop a charging cable and it’s little mini power ‘bricklet’ and that was it. The documentation was just a pamphlet with advisories for not exposing it to water, so on and so forth. I pressed the button and my iPad displayed a simple graphic, iTunes icon with an arrow coming from the 30-pin connector – simple message: Connect me to iTunes. I went upstairs, plugged it in and in maybe 2 minutes had the device registered, all I needed was my Apple Store ID and Password. The device came fully charged, no need to let it sleep and charge to 100%, that was a very nice touch.

I couldn’t resist playing with it. Of course I blunder forward without reading any manuals or ‘looking stuff up online’, I have a general idea of how the device was supposed to work, the general logical progression that one would expect. I was bolstered by my experiences with my First Generation iPod Touch and Scott’s iPhone 3G. Getting started with the iPad was an absolute pleasure. I had two major things that I needed to try, the first was to see if I could display comic book pages on the device because for me that is the iPad’s Killer App. The second was to check out iBooks and see if Apple honored their rumored commitment to Project Gutenberg. I quickly downloaded the Marvel App, the iBooks app, and ComicPad, which was a free app for reading comic book files.

The device itself is a masterwork in design. Everything is where it is and makes sense. The system interface and responsiveness is exactly what I imagined it to be. The ‘Pro’ column is rich and varied and this device is definitely worth the $499.00 pricetag. The ‘Cons’ were few and far between and were mostly due to me not reading the manuals and blundering along. I will state it clearly and upfront that this device is EXACTLY what I imagined and it has performed PERFECTLY. When I complain, it has nothing at all to do with the hardware of my iPad or the iPhone OS 3.2 Operating System, they are excellent.

Here are my issues:

  • iBooks, finding Project Gutenberg files was annoying. I had to SEARCH for ‘project gutenberg’ in order to find the library. PG needs to be featured more prominently in the iBooks store, Apple.
  • ComicPad, This is a version 1.0 App so I give it a pass about this gripe, but adding files was a pain (totally impossible for John Doe Averageuser) and of the files I added, some were CBR, but really CBZ. Even renaming the file extensions only partially worked and adding comic book files was an adventure in hunt-and-peck and did-it-take.
  • Photos, once I tore open the CBZ files and took out their jpg guts, adding them to the Photos app in my iPad was only partially successful, sorting the images was a headache. Dragging all my photos from my Macs HD into iPhoto and establishing the sort there fixed my gripe.
  • The Marvel App, Random selection and Tasters-Choice approach is ANNOYING. I love Fantastic Four, and I’d buy a series pass for it if I could, but all you have is stuff from 1997? GET ON WITH IT!
  • iPhone/iPod Touch Apps are easy to install and use in the iPad, but their lack of understanding when it comes to the bigger screen real-estate is worth a gripe, there is a button you can use to zoom the app to fill the screen, but the resolution in the App doesn’t get re-rendered, so it looks blocky and tacky. It’s a new device, Apps are trying to catch up, and at least there is a way to access the classic apps, which makes this gripe rather an aesthetic one than a real honest one.

Surprises:

  • The weight of my iPad and it’s shape make it very easy to carry around. It’s between a trade paperback and a hardcover book. Since I have no problems carrying books, carrying my iPad, as an issue, isn’t even on the map.
  • The iBooks system, once you learn it, is wonderful. It keeps your last position in each book – that’s a feature that even real physical books suck at, but the iBooks brings it off with aplomb.
  • The Marvel App, The display makes their comic books pop, the saturated colors, the beauty the detail, it was absolute candy for the eyes. Reading Comics with Marvel App is a pleasure.
  • Battery Life is surprisingly good. Last night, after a whole day of hard use I was down to 32% battery! This is delightful. Many people are complaining that iPad’s won’t charge unless they are plugged into a very-high-voltage USB port. I don’t find this a problem, it came with it’s preferred charging equipment.
  • Wow Factor: When people see me using my iPad, they stop and ask for a demonstration. This is both gratifying and a little annoying. Once this device becomes widely available then people will likely get one of their own.
  • StreamToMe App – After playing with my iPad for a while it struck me that I could only browse videos that I had either stored on the device or found using Netflix or YouTube. I have a pseudo-media-server running off my little Mac Mini at home, essentially a giant ‘Pig’ drive loaded with videos. How can I access those using my Wifi, quickly without having to futz around with copying files and possibly running out of space on my iPad? A brief browse of the App Store and I found StreamToMe, which was on sale for $2.99, it came with a free server-side bit of software that I run on my Mac Mini. I tell the server what folders I want to share over Wifi, and it sits quietly in my menubar minding it’s own business. I start the app on my iPad and I can browse Runner with wild abandon, browsing file folders and opening any video – no matter the video type. I can’t express how much of an EPIC WIN this is, the ability to store my library of videos and movies on cheap storage and not have to occupy my iPad’s limited 16GB storage space. All for $2.99.
  • Dragon Dictate for iPad – I haven’t found much use for it yet, but so far it’s neat to play with. I can start Dragon Dictate (free, wow, really? Yes!) I can sit back, hit the record button and talk at my iPad. When I’m done I touch the screen again and it captures my words and makes them into text with 95% or better accuracy! Totally bowled over!

Overall, my experience with my Apple iPad has been just as advertised, it’s magical. It performs wonderfully and I have absolutely no buyers remorse. I strongly recommend that anyone who is looking for an entry-level computer device give this iPad a serious look, it’s that good.

Apple iPad

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Apple has unveiled their latest technological offering, the Apple iPad. It fills a niche between their iPhone and their Macintosh line of computers (MacBooks cause everyones hot for mobility). I was on pins and needles for the entire event, which I enjoyed in fits and starts from the Engadget Liveblog page. Watching Apple demonstrate the device, chat up some of it’s features, and then at the end pull the pin and lob a hand-grenade of aggressive pricing at everyone, I was stunned!

What gets me is a bit of geek lore, at least at first. iPad, I’m sure Apple’s inspiration was a ‘notepad’ since the device is arguably most like a conveniently-beefy sized notepad. The word iPad though does have deep connections for many Sci-Fi Geeks who also happen to be gadgetophiles. In Star Trek TNG a common device that was handed from crewmember to crewmember was a PADD. A roughly 10 inch rectangular piece of metal and plastic that was touch sensitive and displayed information. Oh eat your heart out! iPad – PADD. For geeks like me, this is a blossoming of authentic science-fiction that has been turned into a real thing and offered to us. The act of handing our iPad to someone else to look at something makes that whole experience valuable – we saw that in Star Trek, we’re doing it in real life. It’s one thing out of a multitude, but it’s very much like heroin for geeks. If not for every geek, at least this one.

The iPad is not only chock full of sci-fi technoromanticism (portmanteau bitches!) but it has the capacity to change the world. The iPad, like the iPhone and the iPod is a device that does something and from the track record of Apple, it will do the tasks very well. Whether you get it chock full of storage or not, wireless up the wazoo or not, the device itself means something. A full color illuminated display for books with authentic graphical representations of the behavior of real books will enhance literacy and impact the printed page. It won’t demolish the print industry, but it will liberate books from the tyranny of limited printings. If you want a book and it’s in a digital format, the idea that “We’re all out, we are waiting for a second printing” simply goes away. This will ensure that books can be spread, retained, and even published without the usual prohibitive costs related to acquiring an editor, a publishing house, signing book deals. The iPad (et al) will do for books what the iPod did for music – ie release creativity. People who couldn’t necessarily get their music out into the world via a record contract could suddenly record and put their music on MySpace or thru a Podcast and then the record companies didn’t matter so much, the consumers could approach the artists directly. Same goes for books. Before if you wanted to write the great American novel you’d have to pound it out, submit it to publishers and they controlled whether it spread or not. The iPad (et al) can release literature from control, bypass the gatekeepers. Everyone can publish.

When I say (et al) what do I mean? iPad isn’t the only device out there that can render literature, so can the Nook and the Kindle. The iPad presents an overwhelming challenge to it’s competitor devices, not so much for the principal context of literature, but because the iPad can do much much more than the Kindle or Nook could possibly muster. Playing Music, Movies, Extensibility through the App Store, these are things that the Nook and Kindle just can’t accomplish (save music, which I know the Nook can…) and it’s this extensibility, full color, and full touch sensitivity across the entire device. The iPad is a killer device for many forms of literature, but the form I’m personally most driven by is that of comic books. These books  are bright, graphical, textual, and often times have callouts where hypertextual links would offer incredible convenience. One thing people have to understand, and this is true of the iPad as well as the Nook, is that you do not have to wait for some DRM’ed eBook to be published to read literature, whether it be a classic like The Iliad or Green Lantern Volume 2. You can do the legwork yourself, these two devices have open extensibility, in the Nook it’s the ability to dispaly PDF files and open eBook formats – while for the iPad it’s the foundation of the iPhone OS and the sure extensibility of the App Store.

Waiting for eBook publishing to catch up is not as compelling a reason to hesitate as may be feared. Routes to getting what you want will always exist as long as there is an analog hole. For print matter, the analog hole is the print itself. You buy a book, disassemble it, feed it to a sheetfed color scanner and in an afternoon you’ve converted a physical book to it’s digital counterpart. You can then spread that digital representation to whomever you wish, it is definitely not legal, but it is something you can do, thanks to the analog hole. This is most paramount to content providers, publishers and the like. Your lesson is this: Change your business model when the technology changes and you will succeed – Fail and you will be buried. If XYZ Publisher refuses to heed this warning and refuses to publish their product in a digital format then the customers will be forced to cope and create the knockoff digital content on their own, they know what they want and if it’s possible for them to obtain it, they will. XYZ Publisher will find their sales drying up because nobody wants dead trees anymore, they want digitial content, and if that has leaked into the network, all those potential sales are gone and XYZ might as well board up and close shop. It is better for XYZ, and their customers if they immediately produce digital content, leave DRM by the wayside, treat their customers with respect and they’ll make profits like gangbusters. A perfect example of this is Marvel and DC Comics. For years people have been disassembling these comic books and scanning them and making the entire archive available on the network free of charge. By not leaping on the bandwagon immediately, they’ve missed a golden opportunity to extend their product into a entirely new economic ecosystem. The drop-dead-date has not passed yet, but it is coming, around March when the iPad starts to sell. For example, if DC wanted to jump on top of this immediately they’d need to get a DC Comic Book App set up in the App Store, set up a channel for paying for content (which you can now do through an App) and then deliver digital editions of their entire line available through their iPad App. Charge the cover price, skip out on the cost of printing, happy customers. Win win and win.

What then for the Kindle and Nook? They will always have a place at the table. I don’t see iPad annihilating them, however I do see Nook leading Kindle to the MC Escher Staircase and pushing it. Kindle’s living nightmare, an Apple competitor, is now here. Nook will push Kindle and iPad will shoot it once it lands at the bottom of the MC Escher Staircase. It won’t be pretty.

And just so everyone is aware, I am saving money so I can buy myself an iPad. I couldn’t imagine not having a PADD. 🙂