> That's a good review, Ken. It's probably a little eccentric in that
> it approaches the device as though the user will naturally choose not
> to use iTunes for management of data. But I am very sympathetic to
> that approach!
Thank you, Joel. Other than the backup/restore feature, iTunes is
oriented towards extracting every least dime from the consumer and
managing your music and video files. I consider it anything but an
adequate tool for professional applications.
> I agree that the impasse with Adobe over flash is unconscionable. A
> Zune scaled to iPad sizes would be very devastating competition to
> iPad if one's uses for it were mainly for web stuff.
Much of the success of the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone is directly
related to the perceived value and quality that Apple products bring
right now. These devices give the user tremendous warm fuzzies with
the smooth scrolling, zooming and location linking with maps. Oh, and
they are awesome media players too. But after you strip away the gloss
you discover just how incomplete the things are. It is no secret that
the iPhone's functionality as a cellphone is lackluster at best with
marginal audio quality and low reliability. I find it quite
interesting to see how quickly so manypeople will dismiss valid
criticsm of these hallowed products and instead quickly show you
pictures of their cat on the devices.
> I am currently happily exploring input and output to the iPad through
> ReaddleDocs. I plan just to build a file system using it -- mostly to
> locate docs temporarily on the iPad for immediate use away from the
> office. I have not done much editing on the iPad, though I expect to
> do more. I need to learn more fully the capabilities of the
> touchscreen keyboard. If I can get it to do some slightly more than
> perfunctory things, I may be able to use the free (or cheap) RDP app
> to attach to my office computer via Remote Desktop and actually do
> some grown up work.
I'm using VNC and other than that one previously mentioned bug
(feature?) with video and non-32bit color, I've had tremendous success
with it. I've been using VNC no less than two hours a week for three
years now.
As to ReaddleDocs, I'm still looking into it, but for now I've been
trying out FileApp for FTP transferring of stuff back and forth. I'll
probably break down tomorrow and spend the $4.99 for ReaddleDocs.
> You don't mention the iPad much as a device for reading, but it is
> fantastic for that. iBooks is the local iPad brand, but Amazon makes
> a free app for Kindle, so no need to buy a Kindle if you have an iPad.
I've got both going and the iPad version is a little nicer, but both
are quite good. I also loaded up "Free Books" and am pretty pleased
with that. As a reader, they are pretty good. What I don't like about
the iPad is that it is a little harder to jump around in the book and
return back to your current page.
> With the backlit screen
> you can read comfortably in a dark room. Don't eat crackers in bed,
> but the iPad should not offend.
This is actually the one thing where I think the shape of the iPad
bites. It is so thin and smooth (with the exception of those razer
sharp edges), that it is difficult to hold it with one hand. When you
do, you end up changing pages. I really need to get that grippy stuff
for it.
AG
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