Leander seems to think the iPad Keyboard Dock is a no-duh-brainer for real iPad typing, but at $69.00, it’s a luxury accessory when most of us already have Apple’s own bluetooth aluminum chiclet keyboard on our desks (in my case, collecting tobacco detritus).
After all, if you already have a keyboard that will work with the iPad, the keyboard dock’s really just a stand… and New York Times’ Multimedia Editor Andrew Devigal found out that the cheapest stand solution out there for the iPad isn’t 69 dollars, but 69 cents: namely, a business card holder from Office Depot.
Of course, the dock also charges and syncs your iPad, so if you want to go with this solution you’ll need to resign yourself to losing the ability to type on the iPad when its in a vertical position when the syncing cable is attached. (Edit: No, you won’t! As Bryan points out in the comments, you can just turn your iPad upside down and it’ll automatically re-orient itself. D’oh!) You’ll also sacrifice some of the function keys’. Still, who said frugality never meant some sacrifices?
I think I speak for many Europeans when I say that Apple’s promise of a late April international iPad launch elicited a small incredulous groan. Coming just a few weeks after the US April 3rd ship date made it appear like Apple’s international launch date was flexible according to the supply demands of US consumers. With the iPad likely to be a smash success just based on Apple’s previous iDevice home runs, I didn’t put a lot of stock in Apple’s late April promise, no matter how earnestly they seemed to mean it. The US market would come first.
Looks like I was right to be cautious: Apple has sent out a press release this morning explaining that because of strong domestic sales of the iPad, they are delaying international delivery by a month to late May.
The weirdest thing about using Apple’s iPad Keyboard Dock is that you are constantly reaching for a mouse — a mouse that isn’t there, of course. The iPad doesn’t support mice. Instead, you should be tapping and swiping the screen.
Using the keyboard to work with the iPad takes you out of the multitouch mode and puts you back in mouse/keyboard mode. And while you can use the keyboard in a limited way to navigate the iPad, you can’t use many of the desktop shortcuts you’ve learned over the years, like Command-Tab to switch apps.
So using an iPad with a keyboard takes a little getting used to, but the $69 iPad Keyboard Dock is a very handy accessory, with a couple of caveats.
This is Iggy. Along with this cat, Iggy is the first in a new generation of iLolcats. They will appear on YouTube in ever increasing numbers, playing with their owners iPads until somebody makes an app called CatToy or CatNip or iNip or PadCat or something.
Wait, I typed that as a joke, then searched the App Store. There are already several cat toy apps. Whatever happened to balls of string?
This cat, on the other hand, totally fails to get it.
Earlier today, we mentioned how the iPhone’s iPod Out feature will make it safer to play DJ while driving. But SoundMan Car Audio have taken it one step further by building a custom dash that allows an iPad become the centerpiece.
In case you doubted that an iPad jailbreak was imminent, this gorgeous little image posted by hacker extraordinaire George Hotz should prove the point: Cydia running on the iPad. Now stop being coy and give us a hint at a release date already, George!
Atomic Antelope’s Alice in Wonderland app for the iPad is certainly plenty frabjous — and makes a strange case for the iPad as the twenty-first century’s digital successor to the pop-up book — but what I really want to see is how the iPad changes the reading game when it comes to drier books.
As beautiful as this adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is, it’s also an easy approach. But how will people use the iPad’s capability to expand upon the text of a book like Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan or Nabokov’s Ada, or Adror, or Eco’s The Name of the Rose, or other less playful and anarchic works? I can’t wait to see.
The evidence continues to mount that the next iPhone, iPad or both will support video conferencing. Just a few days after the iChatAgent process was found running under iPhone OS in the 4.0 Beta… and now 9to5Mac has unearthed the motherload of all video chat references.
According to Mark Gurman, “We’ve found references to moderators, chat rooms, encrypted video conferences and other features which could be even be used by developers in the future to add video chat to gaming applications, perhaps with ties to Gamecenter.”
A built-in video chat API for game developers to use in their apps is exciting enough, but 9to5Mac have also found that Apple is testing iPhone video conferencing services and have opened four servers (one external, three internal) to test out the feature.
Finally? According to 9to5Mac’s sources, iPads and iPod Touches are going to get video in the fall, simultaneous with the next iPhone release. And you thought you’d have a year before you had to upgrade your iPad.
Who knows how the iPad will ultimately be used? Certainly no one at this early date.
Is it merely an ebook reader, or is it a gaming device? Could it be an honest-to-goodness tool for business?
Like so many things, it all depends on your expectations.
It’s well known by now that early impressions of the iPad find it pooh-pooed by the technorati and generally lauded by the great unwashed as a fantastical window (if you’ll excuse the pun) into the future of mobile computing.
The highly regarded founder of Daily Kos, one of the Internet’s most widely read blogs, weighed in Sunday with a wide-ranging, detailed review of Apple’s latest creation and pronounced the iPad a gadget that “scored big as … a device that makes my life easier,” calling it “better than a laptop.”
Update: This article is not intended for the Irony challenged.
So I’m a hypocrite. After swearing that there was no way I’d ever own a tablet with a phone operating system, I broke down and got one. At this price point, I don’t see how I couldn’t. The wife couldn’t be happier, one needs just look at my bathroom above to see why. Gone are the endless stacks of magazines and books. Gone, is the image of her husband stuck behind his desk, nose in the computer (now, I’m on the couch, nose in the iPad, but at least being in the same room gives the impression of being engaged with the family).
Follow me after the jump for my impressions after week one.
The introduction of the iPad is a clarion call for major music labels to finally recognize the future of the music industry and embrace the development of applications made to run on Apple’s new device, according to a feature article in the latest issue of Billboard Magazine, which officially hits news stands Saturday.
Once the province of industry insiders, filled with reams of stats and reportage on music industry minutiae, behind-the-scenes comings and goings and gossip, Billboard is now a smart and snappy magazine with its finger on the pulse of the larger forces at work in the music industry, with articles seemingly targeting a more general audience while remaining the go-to source for the numbers that drive the industry.
The cover of the current issue promises a look at The Next Killer Apps, though what the article inside actually suggests is that – generally – the next killer apps on the iPad are going to be music-related offerings tied to artist branding that will give consumers something more than the aural experience provided by CDs and music downloads, and will provide the industry new realms of revenue producing products that go well beyond the marketing value of the web content and promotional aspirations of most mobile offerings produced to date.
You’ve probably got your own preferred method of propping your iPad up on your work desk, whether that’s a cheap Staples’ laptop stand or a could of clip binders stuck in an ancient block of verdantly fecund cheddar (my preferred method). These solutions are for the plebs. Meet the Joule.
The Joule is simple: it’s a CNC-machined cylinder of polished aluminum with a velvet lined slot in which your iPad’s bottom lip can be ensconced, as well as a cut-out for your iPad’s home button and speaker. The Joule stays upright thanks to a metal rod on the back which can be repositioned magnetically for extremely fluid control of angle adjustment.
It’s a gorgeous stand that wouldn’t look out of place on the desk of Ive himself, but the price, alas, is horrible: $130.
With typical modesty and restraint, Steve Jobs today downplayed the iPad hype. Pouring cold water on some of the hyperbole pundits have lavished on the device, he said:
“We think this is a profound gamechanger. We think when people look back some number of years from now, they’ll see this as a major event in personal computation devices.”
He was responding to a question about being surprised by the initial reaction. Here’s what he said in full:
OPINION: Steve Jobs saved the most important part of his iPhone 4.0 announcement today till last — the new in-app advertising system, called iAds.
The iAds system is important because it allows the App Store to create a completely self-sustaining app economy that is sealed off from the wider Web.
Tech guru Tim O’Reilly says the App Store is already becoming a rival to the web itself. The App Store, he says, is “the first real rival to the Web as today’s dominant consumer application platform.” Consumers will have no need to visit the web on their iPhones and iPads if they get everything they need from apps, which is bad news for companies like Google.
“This is a new phenomenon,” Jobs said about apps at today’s presentation. This is the first time this kind of thing has ever existed. We never had that on the desktop, so search was the only way to find a lot of things.”
The App Store economy is already pretty well developed. There is the app purchase mechanism itself through iTunes, and in-app purchases, which allow consumers to buy stuff from inside apps themselves. But there was a big hole: advertising. Ads are already a big part of the app economy, but clicking on them typically takes consumers out of the app and into the browser, an experience Steve Jobs describes as jolting.
But now Apple has built a sophisticated ad-serving mechaninsm right into the iPhone (and iPad, natch), which will make the App ecosystem like AOL in the early days — a walled garden. And one that has it’s own economy: in-app purchases, and now in-app advertising. There will be no need to go to the wider web anymore — and that cuts out Google.
“What’s happening is that people are spending a lot of time in apps,” Jobs said today. “They’re using apps to get to data on the internet, rather than a generalized search.”
No wonder Apple and Google are at war. Google swooped in a bought AdMob just to keep it out of Apple’s hands (so Apple snapped up Quattro instead). Of course, Google isn’t on the ropes yet. Android is Google’s attempt to keep it relevant in mobile, and so far it’s holding its own against the iPhone.
But if early numbers are any indication, the iPad is going to be an iPhone-sized hit. Combine the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and that’s a lot of mobile devices in Apple’s walled garden.
The iPhone’s stripped down version of Safari lacks many of the features of its more well-endowed OSX brother — for instance, Mobile Safari won’t do tabs, or let users make in-page word searches. And iPad’s Mobile Safari won’t perform those tricks either.
A couple of months ago, we reviewed Vais Salikhov’s Find In Page, a $1 app that patched the latter hole, making in page searches possible on the iPhone. Version 2.0 was just released yesterday, making it fully compatible with the iPad.
Find In Page is probably even more of a must-have item on the iPad than it is on the iPhone, since the iPad is such a surf-board that Safari will probably get used much more heavily than on the iPhone. Although, maybe a few hours worth of patience are in order here — it’s entirely possible the tweaks revealed within the next few hours or so might contain this same little fix.
As noted by new iPad owners (including the Cult’s editor, Leander Kahney), the iPad is a hungry baby, and sucking at the teat of some older USB ports leaves it screaming for more juice.
What about keeping the iPad topped up on a road trip via the USB car-charger you bought last year? No can-do — the one or half-amp those older chargers generally put out is fine for the iPhone, but just like other aging USB ports, starves the iPad.
Which means you’ll end up having to pop for something like Griffin’s new PowerJolt for iPad or Kensington’s PowerBolt (yeah, no potential confusion there), both $25 — about $5 more than what the old, lower-rated units sell for; the chargers are backward-compatible and play happily with all current iPhones and iPods.
Is printing directly from your iPhone or iPad in the cards for iPhone OS 4.0?
Well, maybe, although the evidence is pretty scant.
. Check the support pages for iWorks, and you’ll find this little note on the subject: “Printing directly from iPad is not currently available.”
The operative word here is currently, and while we’re reading a lot into it, it does at least hint that Apple’s considering how to best go about bringing direct printing to its line of handheld devices… and give iPad and iPhone users one less reason to open up their laptops.
Like many questions about iPhone OS 4.0, we expect to know more about this at Apple’s corporate event on Thursday.
You won’t see this on the App Store anytime soon, since Nintendo would pretty much throw a conniption fit, but here’s Super Mario Kart running gorgeously on the iPad through the glories of emulation.
The emulator’s from ZodTTD, who has previously done iPhone’s SNES and N64 emulators. All we need to do now is just wait for the iPad jailbreak to mosey along and we’ll be racing Yoshi and fighting Gannon with the rest of the non-Apple tablet world.
The hellish ordeal of going through airport security may involve throwing away all your liquids, walking shoeless on a filthy floor, being groped by a glorified rent-a-cop, and becoming the nude subject of body scans… but at least you won’t need to take your iPad out of your bag along with your other laptops. Yet.
According to the TSA, iPads don’t need to be removed from carry-on luggage when going through X-Ray screening.
It all comes down to thinness: the iPad’s svelte design makes it easier for the scanner to identify. Additionally, since there’s a minimum of peripherals available for the iPad, the tablet is unlikely to be obstructed by other hardware as it passes through the scanner.
Good news for frequent travelers, but consider me suspicious: this is just too reasonable of a position for the TSA to take for me to believe it’ll be in place for long.
Having some problems with your iPad’s WiFi connection? Apple’s aware of the problem, and has some ideas on how to fix them.
According to Apple, the iPad might not automatically rejoin known WiFi networks using third-party routers that are dual-band capable (802.11 b/g and 802.11 n) when each band’s network uses the same name or use different security settings.
Apple’s recommendation? Try creating separate network names for each separate band’s network (ie: add a G to the end of the name of the 802.11 b/g band) and making sure both bands’ networks use the same security settings.
We’ve been lucky enough to not have this problem, but what about you? Is this solution fixing your problem, or is their a bigger issue afloat?
The guys iSuppli are wonderful techno-vivisecters, capable of dismantling the latest Apple product with a few quick twists of the screwdriver and telling you how much all of the limbs and organs cost.
Predictably, they haven’t waited long to do just that with the iPad. So how much does that pretty 16GB iPad sitting on your lap right now cost Apple to make? Just $259.60.
The iPad, as we all know, does not have a camera. But one developer has come up with an ingenious way of getting round that minor inconvenience, and turning the iPad into a photography device.
As a Douglas Adams fan, I’ve always envisioned Apple, and not the great publishing companies of Ursa Minor, as the most likely creators of one of the most remarkable books in the universe, and I was hoping Gelaskins would already have a skin up transforming my iPad into the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by emblazoning it with the large and calming words: “DON’T PANIC.”
Unfortunately, they don’t, but in the meantime, I think this “Keep Calm and Carry On” skin might do the trick.
Check out Gelaskins for more ways to temporarily tattoo your tablet.
