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My Tech on iPad
Is the iPad’s 15 minutes of fame almost up? In the last few weeks the only gadget on everyone’s mind has been the iPhone 4. Nonetheless the iPad isn’t that bad…but it’s missing so much that could have really made it a lot better. No doubt all part of Apple’s game plan for future generations.
When the iPad was released earlier this year I was in no rush to buy. No front or back camera, low RAM and no flash support, and this product was meant to “revolutionise” mobile computing :S. A couple of associates had imported from the US, so we were able to have a peek before it was officially released here in Australia. First thing I noticed was how easily the screen smudges. The good news is that when the screen is on you can hardly notice the greasy marks. My first impression was this is just an iPhone on steroids. Many others obviously disagreed as they were prepared to wait in queues hours long to be first to get one. Since then there has been very limited stock, especially of the 3G version.
Fast forward a couple of months and iPads have been trickling in here in Oz. I received one as a gift recently and after using it for a while I must say my opinion has changed. This thing actually has a lot of potential! I can tell because after loading up some frequently used apps, bookmarking my favourite sites and setting up my email accounts I’ve hardly used my laptop since.
I doubt I would ever read a physical book again thanks to iBooks. Save any PDF document from Safari and it’s there in iBooks ready for offline reading. Perfect for a plane or train trip. There is a variety of books in the app store, but also check out the Kindle app for an even larger selection of titles (and generally cheaper) from Amazon.com.
The iPad's screen is amazing for reading digital books
Unfortunately compared to the large amount of iPhone apps in the App Store, only a small percentage of them are iPad optimised. I’m hoping this is because the iPad is fairly new and developers are still hard at work porting their mobile apps. All iPhone/iTouch apps can run on the iPad, however most I’ve tried look horrible magnified 2x. There are exceptions such as Bejeweled, Trees of Doom and Fruit Ninja (which also has a HD version). Here is a list of iPad apps which I have installed and use often:
Team Viewer HD – Easily gain secure access to your own or a friends PC for remote help; this is the best remote desktop client app I have ever used. Free for personal use and works great with Windows and OSX.
Bloomberg – Excellent finance and share watcher. Looks amazing on the iPad plus it’s free. Watching your stocks drop in high res sort of makes up for the loss….well almost.
Dropbox – I’ve discussed Dropbox previously and it’s only natural an iPad version exists. One of the best free cloud storage solutions.
IMDB – Read up on and rate movies and television series’ using the Internet Movie Database App.
WordPress – Fantastic free app for admins whose sites use WordPress. Easily connect to write new posts or edit existing ones.
Feeddler RSS – Awesome free RSS reader that syncs with Google Reader.
Evernote – Synchronises notes across multiple platforms. I’ve stopped using the built in notes as Evernote is all that plus more.
Jumbo Calculator – Why Apple thought the iPad didn’t need a calculator I don’t know. It could be useful. Jumbo is free anyway so if you need a big ass calculator check it out.
Surprisingly a Facebook for iPad app does not exist. If you don’t want to use the iPhone version check out touch.facebook.com. This site is presented very nicely on the iPad but there is no FB Chat.
If you come across any iPad games or applications you would like to recommend please use the comment section below.
Currently running on special version of iOS 3, the iPad doesn’t yet support multitasking (unless you jailbreak). This is set to change later in the year when a new software version is released. It is definitely much needed! Some other minor OS improvements I believe would make the iPad better include being able to attach more than one file to an email and having way to connect to a printer from the Email and Safari apps.
Categories: iPad
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