iPadThoughts

IFixit has already opened up an iPad 2! Visit iFixit to see lots more pictures and descriptions.

While AirPrint might be available one day, right now it’s missing. I’d already found that my HP printer is not new enough for the iPad to recognize it, though it works fine with various iPad printing Apps; so I’d hoped that it would be possible to print via my iMac, but last nights 10.6.5 update [...]

Google Instant is quite an interesting new feature; when you search at Google.com you are given actual search results rather than the previous search suggestions. On a large screen computer it makes some sense: The new feature is now being made available on portable devices like the iPad – but it’s pretty pointless when most [...]

With iOS 4.2 on iPad, we can finally play Pandora “custom radio station” music in the background. A nice trick is that you can double tap the home button to access play controls (and the sadly stolen-from-switch rotation lock setting), without exiting any running App – it just slides up out of the way temporarily [...]

After a few hours, I’ve been able to get iOS 4.2 on to my iPad – some effort is needed to find a useable torrent for iPad1,1_4.2_8C134_Restore.ipsw, and also to download iTunes 10.1 beta (without iTunes 10.1, you will get an iOS 4.2 iPad which cannot be used!) First thoughts … folders are finally available! [...]

One of the things I regularly need to do “on the road” is access my office Mac computer – which also runs Windows XP in a Parallels install; a while back I tried the free Mocha VNC Lite, but there were a few issues. I’ve tried a few other VNC Apps, and settled for now [...]

With the new iPhone 4 “Retina Display” showing almost the same resolution as iPad (960×640 compared with 1024×768), I had a hope that running iPhone Apps on the iPad would replace the 2x scaling with some sort of “display at retina resolution” that would give the same screen coverage, but with no pixel-doubling. Sadly, that’s [...]

Watching a video about Google TV, I once again had issues with the YouTube feed stuttering as the data does not arrive at my iPad fast enough (this on a fast Comcast cable internet), and I wondered what it would be like to watch via AT&T 3G (which at home here is quite good). Here [...]

It turns out that you CAN use your iPad as a “voice communications device” – a Phone. Skype works fine on the iPad, even though it’s an iPhone App (it’s just a bit pixely at 2x, and a bit small at 1x – but you’re talking rather than reading!): After successfully using Skype’s test call [...]

Constantly since the iPad was launched, we’re reading about Adobe Flash, both positive and negative in relation to the iPad. Famously, Steve Jobs says that Flash is too buggy, and “New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win“, so … let’s see how the iPad does with HTML5! There’s some [...]

A nice discussion at PC World as to how long 250MB of 3G data from AT&T actually lasts – the answer, if you use your iPad as usual, with WiFi disabled … 3 days! … even just Web browsing can eat up bandwidth fast … Facebook is usually 1 to 2MB … GelaSkins.com’s online store [...]

This is stupid! While the iPad camera connection kit works fine with my iPad, it won’t work with my iPhone, running the same OS! That’s just annoying, Apple In case you were wondering, the iPhone doesn’t work with the old iPod kit either!

I finally received my camera connection kit today, and immediately set about testing it for it’s “official” purpose of getting photos in to the camera … Problem #1, the SD connector doesn’t fit nicely with the iPad case – maybe my iPad case is poorly cut, but the SD connector is a tiny bit wider [...]

We’ve had a lovely day here in Gloucester today, and I sat outside with the iPad for a couple hours – happily the screen is pretty usable, even in the strong sunlight we had today; the screen is easier to read than this picture suggests (I guess the eye is better than the camera at [...]

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

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, [...]

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 [...]