First thoughts coming in from various websites – of course basically it’s just a regular iPad but with the ability to get data when it’s away from WiFi. Gizmodo offers some comparison measurements – on 3G the iPad is of course slower than on WiFi, and about the same speed as an iPhone 3GS. Gizmodo [...]
My new favourite “quick reference” weather App is Weather Station Pro from Toopia; it’s so attractive and easy to use, it’s perfect! No, it doesn’t have animated maps showing radar heading for you, or any maps at all – but it does have a pristine display of all the weather data you need to know, [...]
WordPress is the weblog system I use to create iPadThoughts, and I love it – so do many other people! When I started ‘blogging, I used Blogger, but after a while I wanted my own hosting – the ability to handle photos better than Blogger could, for example (back in early 2003 when things didn’t [...]
Head to CNET for an interesting App comparison of 20 popular non-game Apps that have both iPhone and iPad versions, including comparison screen shots:
While the iPad stop-motion disassembly is perhaps the best way to see inside your iPad, this X-ray image is pretty cool (from miya sei via TUAW) Other “inside the iPad” articles worth checking out include: Chipworks teardown iFixit teardown Electronic Design summary
Yes, it’s another iPad game – and once again it’s a game that looks gorgeous and doesn’t require too much thinking! My type of game, and I find such games to be a perfect alignment on the iPad, where I want to pick up and play for a while – but not too long (for [...]
Last night, I needed to capture part of a screenshot – but the iPad has no built-in photo editing, even anything as simple as cropping. As I learned when I tried PhotoPad, it’s crop works strangely! I’m sure I’ll be purchasing Photogene some time, but I decided to try the iPhone program Crop for Free; [...]
From the Seattle Times: IDC estimates about 2.5 million e-readers were sold in 2009, and that number is expected to double to 5.1 million this year. Barnes & Noble said it plans to roll out a software update for the Nook that will let users surf the Web and play games. While the iPad is [...]
One thing I definitely have to do when away from the office, is access my office computer; on my Macbook Pro portable, I use Chicken of the VNC to log in to Windows XP running RealVNC; both free and very useable solutions. On the iPhone I had tried Mocha VNC Lite, but it’s almost useless [...]
Having mentioned a few Mahjong Apps for the iPad, I’ll now mention my current favorite, Mahjong Artifacts: Chapter 2 HD from G5 Entertainment; the game starts nicely with well designed tiles and a different layout for each level: But this game offers a little more than traditional Mahjong, playing the “quest” version gives a little [...]
There’s a heap of different Mahjong games for the iPad already! A game I enjoy, as it doesn’t take too much time to play a level, and can be quite satisfying and entertaining. My first Mahjong App was iMahjong HD, now called iMahjong 2 free – it’s free, but it’s hardly worth it! I don’t [...]
I’m a strong believer that the iPad will bring the Internet to a new group of people, that had no interest in dealing with the hassles of multiple box computers with their mysterious cabling, installation complexities, anti-virus, etc, etc … built on the capabilities of the iPhone OS and the App Store, the iPad eliminates [...]
Tonight I saw mention of PhotoPad by ZAGG; it’s “free and will always be free” so I thought I’d try it. I’ve also been a Photogene user on my iPhone, and might buy that for the iPad eventually (once I have the camera connector) – but trying a free program is low risk so why [...]
Soosiz is another wonderful iPad game – and my preferred “platformer” game style. Hardly much like an old-school platform game, but still of the “run around, collect things” genre. Much cuter though! In the game, you control the main character as he(?) travels through lands collecting friends and coins, and largely disobeying the traditional laws [...]
I don’t buy into the iPad as a laptop replacement—not quite. But it is fantastic at tapping into your computers to access video and audio, documents, and even your full desktop, remotely. Here’s how. GIZMODO discusses Air Video, StreamToMe, GoodReader, Mocha VNC Lite and Desktop Connect. I’ve used VNC Lite, but it can’t handle the [...]
And re-assembly! This is a really nice video, showing details of the iPad interior in an entertaining way – definitely worth watching …
From NCWinters.com via appstorm
Yes, a very mysterious effect … but after experimenting for days on the issue of slow connectivity of my iPad (WiFi tests, App store tests), I have a conclusion / solution – but it’s stupid and disappointing … Here, I’ve video’ed my iPad loading the App store when it has just a few hundred photos [...]
Even before getting my iPad, I’d been thinking about developing a better browser than Safari – and especially once I got my iPad, since switching from one “tab” page to another in Safari is much too inefficient. I was thinking that it would be great to be able to swipe left/right, maybe with two fingers, [...]
This is definitely a MISS for me! Weather Underground has a very popular weather website, but WunderMap disappoints me! The App starts well enough, with a scrollable map and temperature / forecast display – tap the “locate me” button and you get local info abbreviated (current temp only) or full, including a forecast: The map [...]
My concerns about iPad WiFi performance continued to worry, and while it seems that holding the iPad “correctly”(!) significantly improves connectivity, I still found the App store really sluggish – taking maybe 20s to load up, especially poor when compared with my iPhone that loads so much faster. Of course, the iPhone App store needs [...]
This Computerworld article closely echoes my own sentiments about the iPad, and it’s use by non-tech people: … When I got my iPad, I immediately installed several software packages on it … Each installation was simple: I ran the App Store application, found the tools I wanted, and clicked the purchase icon. Within moments, each [...]
Citing “heavy demand and swift sales after its launch in the United States“, Apple has announced that international availability of the iPad will be delayed another month, to the end of May! Visit Reuters for the full story.
One thing I really found my iPhone too small for, was playing games; the iPad is perfect for this, with a bigger screen but all the ease of use of the iPhone … a favourite game in my first week of iPad ownership is Cash Cow Deluxe: The simple object of the game is to [...]
In the “hilarious video” category, from Doobybrain: (I need to see if my cat is as interested in my iPad!)
Sadly not everything about the iPad is “magical” yet! Example: When I sync’ed my iPad, I let it sync my complete iPhoto library – this was a mistake for a couple of reasons. First, the sync took many hours as my computer compressed the photos for transfer to iPad (but that’s a good thing at [...]
The iPad is new, and many released Apps are not yet perfect – be sure to check for updates regularly (just visit the App store on your iPad); you’ll be glad you did, when your Apps work better and crash less!
The iTunes store classifies this under “photography”, but it’s a fine line whether it belongs there or in “news”; either way, it’s a very nice App that offers beautiful photographs from around the world: The App opens with a full screen photo; at the bottom left is a caption which can be removed (tap the [...]
I’d planned to write some comments about the Apple iPad case, but happily Erica Sadun at TUAW has written almost the exact same thoughts … For US$39, I really thought Apple would deliver a protective case that perfectly augmented the iPad using experience … I hate the hard edges … I hate the folding bit [...]
You can head over to MacWorld, and read why the iPad is not for Ben Long, or for much more hilarious entertainment, listen to Ben reading the article! Note: Contrary to Ben’s opinions, this was written via the web interface of WordPress, on the iPad. It was easy to do, except that due to some [...]
More and more as I use my iPad, I’m concerned that WiFi performance is poor – it takes much too long to access the Apps store, and sometimes I see long pauses accessing websites (or even the “connecting” message appearing, when WiFi is unchanged and I’m not moving!) I’ve found this iPhone speed test website, [...]
A quick couple of comparison photos, showing iPad and iPhone views of iPadThoughts.net, in landscape and portrait views. You’ll see that the clarity is pretty well identical, but everything is smaller on the iPhone: Here are full scale crops from two photos I took, of the iPad and iPhone together at the same height (same [...]
Following on from iGlaswegian’s video comparison of the iPad and iPhone keyboards, here’s some photo comparisons … First, comparing the iPad landscape keyboard with the current Apple wireless keyboard; it’s easy to see that the iPad keyboard is hardly more cramped, due to Apple’ trick of omitting a number of buttons: Now, let’s compare the [...]
I found iGlaswegian.com today, via this excellent “typing on iPad” video, comparing the iPad to the iPhone: Head to YouTube for a full size viewing experience
TIME Magazine App is one of the first “new wave” media attempts on the iPad, and it’s generated lots of opinions; I was very reluctant to “encourage” charging $5 for a single issue of a publication, but since the cover has Steve Jobs I decided to try it! There’s quite a lot to like about [...]
When I got my iPad, I expected to be able to use it instead of my Macbook Pro for most quick tasks – accessing mail and websites from a comfy chair, etc. But one thing that’s frustrated me is RSS feeds! I’ve set up Google Reader to track RSS feeds from various forums and websites [...]
There’s MANY web pages discussing whether or not the iPad has WiFi connectivity issues (here, here, here, …). My experience has left me thinking there are some issues – but it’s really hard to be sure of anything. First, in my opinion the official Apple response is irrelevant, no more than an attempted smoke-screen to [...]
The iPad, like the iPhone, has a brightness control buried in Settings: Like the iPhone, it’s supposed to auto-dim in response to environment lighting – though I’ve not really noticed it working (at least, if it does have any effect, it’s minimal compared to the iPhone). Perhaps for this reason, there’s a “quick adjust” in [...]
I’m disappointed by the BBC News App; growing up in England, the BBC News is “the” news, so I had great hopes for this App … Sadly, it’s rather too poorly implemented at the moment. The App opens (in landscape mode) with half the screen listing stories (each with a thumbnail image), and half the [...]
Of course I’d say “yes”, but USA TODAY offers a well written cross-section of positive and negative opinions (although once again, the negatives come from folks who have not used an iPad): … The iPad will absolutely change the way people kill time in back seats, airports and 747s on their family vacations … … [...]
Honestly, the iPad should have shipped with some of the announced-today features of OS 4; but at least you can watch the presentation on your iPad, to see what you’re missing (till “Fall 2010″, anyway) … I didn’t see any mention of a way to fit more App icons on the iPad screen, either! Click [...]
Are you a techie / geek that needs to know the insides of everything? You might like Pad Info, which is free (but offers advert links) and does one task only – displaying a pile of internal iPad data: So now you know all about the iPad memory usage, although the rest of the info [...]
I tried connecting my iPad to my Audi Q5 stereo today – it works fine with my iPod and iPhone, but the iPad was not recognized by the car, and continuously repeated this display till I disconnected: I’ve read elsewhere that the iPad doesn’t “play nice” with other car stereos either – not sure if [...]
I think Reuters News Pro for iPad might be my News App winner; it looks good and offers loads of news stories and pictures, with seemingly no adverts! On the “front page” you scroll vertically to access all the different news topics (which includes top news, business, US and World news, technology, science … as [...]
AP News is another News App choice on the iPad; when I first tried it, I thought it a very different and nice styling, with horizontally scrolling article snippets, below highlighted photo and video choices: It’s possible to customize the included stories (though the process is not “iPad intuitive” and it doesn’t seem possible to [...]
There’s a lot of choice when it comes to News Apps on the iPad (and that’s ignoring all the News websites you can visit!); right now everything is bargain priced (free!), and there are a lot of different ideas on the right way to do News … the New York Times offers an Editors Choice [...]
The big news today is Apple’s iPhone OS 4, which presumably will also be iPad OS 4 … but rolled in with those announcements (visit Engadget here for a live feed) is details of the first five days of iPad sales in USA: Update … oh, Apple has said now … iPad does not get [...]
My un-measured speed testing of the Apple iPad (using it!) suggest that it’s pretty quick at loading web pages, but can be sluggish accessing the iTunes App (of course maybe that’s due to all the new iPad owners accessing the Apps together!) An excellent iPad review over at AnandTech includes a web page rendering speed [...]
I’ve had my iPad a few days now, long enough to have a happy opinion of it; I have a few negative feelings, but they’re mostly related to third party Apps or websites that don’t (yet) perform perfectly – for example, the Google Reader website is quite disappointing right now (but I’m certain it’ll get [...]
I can’t understand why it is a surprise to some people, that the cost of the components in the Apple iPad is significantly less than the final product price … A Bloomberg report indicates that iSuppli Corp estimate the 16GB WiFi only iPad parts build cost at close to half the final price. Materials for [...]
A great read, from Gizmodo: To call the iPad a big iPhone is both truth and disservice, belying the simple fact that changing the screen size really does change everything … One of the ways it’s fundamentally different from the iPhone is that the interface and software are now truly designed to be used equally [...]
Whenever a new gadget appears, there’s always some need to post “unboxing”, showing pictures of the box, contents, gadget, etc. But this video (linked from TUAW), is a beautiful alternative – a stop-motion “self unboxing” created by Brian Stark: iPad – Unboxing Video from Brian Stark on Vimeo. (sadly it uses Flash, but iPhone/iPad users [...]
How many iPad owners thought that, when they opened their iPad and first saw the default home screen, with great scratches all across it: Whoever thought that wallpaper background would be nice, should have removed the “star streaks” that look just like scratches (or maybe it was deliberate by Apple, so that anyone who has [...]
When I started writing up weather Apps tonight, The Weather Channel App was my preferred – mostly because of the nice “local” screen with clear weather forecasts for the day, and the next 10 days too: Tap on the map, and it opens to a full scrollable display offering display of radar history for the [...]
Having deleted Accuweather, I tried WeatherBug, another weather App that I’ve used successfully on my iPhone … sadly WeatherBug doesn’t really satisfy me, either! Happily, I can freely scroll and re-center the WeatherBug map, so finally I can see what the weather is like in Gloucester, MA! By default, WeatherBug does not show radar, so [...]
Apple did not include Weather with the iPad, so there’s a need to find a good weather App … my first stop was Accuweather Cirrus Free, since I use it regularly on my iPhone. Sadly, it’s quite awful on the iPad! The initial screen is OTT, with huge graphics conveying the forecase – have you [...]
I’m getting on fine typing one fingered on the virtual keyboard in portrait mode, sneaking a thumb in on the space bar. For a while I was hitting shift instead of delete, because I’m used to the iPhone version. Just tried two hands and it was poor! But lets try two fingers in landscape mode [...]
(repeated from GBMINI.net) My iPad arrives! I do think it’s strange, wrong even, that you can’t do anything with the iPad unless you have a computer to connect it to, and run iTunes – seems like a significant error in Apple’s concept there; maybe non-computer owners get the chance to set it up in the [...]
I got my Apple iPad on Saturday … it’s really a very nice piece of technology, but I’ve had lots of thoughts / opinions, both good and less good, and I wanted to gather them all together on the web. So here it is!
For a thorough, positive, and intelligent review of the iPad, find a few minutes to enjoy Andy Ihnatko’s “zero day” write-up at Chicago Sun-Times: Apple promises that the iPad will run for ten hours on a single charge. And well, I’ll be damned: I was able to get in a full day’s use out of [...]
