This episode was hosted by:
Katie Floyd – Mac Power Users http://www.macpowerusers.com Twitter- @katiefloyd
John F. Braun – The Mac Observer’s Mac Geek Gab http://www.macgeekgab.com/, Monday’s Mac Gadget http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/features/mondays_mac_gadget/ Twitter – @johnfbraun
Allison Sheridan – NosillaCast Podcast http://podfeet.com Twitter @podfeet
Adam Christianson – http://www.maccast.com Twitter – @maccast
Victor Cajiao www.Typicalmacuser.Com Twitter – @victorcajiao
In this episode we discussed the iPad:
How we got our iPads
preorder vs. reserve vs. show up?
how was it?
First impressions
Happy Impressions
- books
- maps
- typing is better than I thought
Negative impressions:
- heavier than I thought
- hard to plug in the connector
- can’t figure out how to sync up my podfeet.com email
- tried creating calendar event – add invitee, but NO….
- gathers dust and finger prints pretty easily
- Apple case: $39, bought it instead of a dock, weird flap, very thin, roundy standing up, maybe it will get a crease? not very Apple-like, kinda hinky.
- Fail on download of Pages. Had to download via iTunes. Didn’t tell me it failed, just stopped and didn’t show up. grrr… trying to download again told me I had to go to iTunes
Mini rant 2: I did go out and get 1PW for iPad and then found out I did not have to do that. 1PW did send out a link to clarify but I had not seen it before. I put a post up to let people know and that has a link to the iTunes store to get a refund.
iPad Apps
- Some are VERY expensive
- Ability to do hybrid Apps
- Some developers (1Password) are offering iPad upgrades for those who have alerady purchased.
- Other developers are requiring you to purchase new versions at a premium
Mini-rant about apps, a well-written app, be it on a iPhone/iPod Touch, Mac, PC or iPad, should not make assumptions about screen size. If companies are just charging extra for something they should have done to begin with, that’s a ripoff. If it takes advantage of the features of the iPad, that’s different.
Font Scaling?
- The old raster (bitmap) versus vector (paths) font issue
- iPhone apps at (2x) size suck
Charging issue
- http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/03/consumer-reports-discovers-ipad-charging-issues/
- Seems older cables will charge when connected to AC adapter, but not computer
- Older cables will not sync
- You will get a “not charging” message
Accessories
- Bluetooth Keyboard
- Apple Case
- charger for car – USB Kensington http://store.apple.com/us/product
- AppleCare?
LCD Visibility Outdoors
- Any different than any other LCD screen?
- Mac OS X 10.5.8+ required
iPad Internals:
http://i.imgur.com/It9To.png
iPad versus Baseball Bat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGUppxoJUVg
Best and Worst apps:
Worst – we give them 60 days to fix them
- Netflix but we applaud them for being there
- Wall street journal – expensive AND popup ads! plus it’s slow, unintuitive
Best
- Marvel (free with some free comics)
- Google Maps
- Drawing Pad
- USA Today
- ABC App (no scrubbing through the movie tho)
- Twitterific
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Just a correction to my comment in the show about Things. The iPad version of their App is $19.99 but the iPhone is $9.99. I incorrectly said the iPhone app was $19.99 as well.
Comment by Katie — April 4, 2010 @ 2:24 pm
There seems to be a problem with the download – iTunes error -8006 and Safari “too many redirects”
Comment by Luigi — April 4, 2010 @ 4:01 pm
@Luigi – Libsyn, our media host, is apparently having issues. We’re seeing this on other Libsyn podcasts as well. We’ve filed a support request but there’s nothing we can do but wait. The problem seems to come and go so the only advice I can offer is to keep trying. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Comment by Katie — April 4, 2010 @ 7:34 pm
About the rant on ‘good development practises’ that focused on being resolution independent. That statement is completely wrong. While yes in general that can be done for minor changes in resolution (say 800×600 -> 1024×768 or slightly more), you can’t compare the UI/UX issues of developing for an iphone interface vs. an ipad. Any app that doesn’t completely rethink it’s UI is kidding itself if it calls itself an ipad app. The design possibilities on one device are completely different from the other, and when design changes, while the backend code won’t change, a ton of connector and GUI code must change. That does take effort, and frankly, the UI/UX code is very often the most time consuming part, even with ‘well designed’ applications.
Even on computer screens the statement doesn’t really hold. An application designed at 800×600 looks comical on a 1920×1080 screen (unless it has a non-existant UI, like a text edit). While, yes, it’ll work, the waste of space is obvious. It should have been redesigned to make better use of the space.
Honestly the logic is somewhat backwards, after all, GUI/UX is the main reason we like Apple products, and it’s the hardest to get right. So to complain (or postulate) that developers have written bad code because they can’t rework the UI with minimal work, is to miss the point that the reason Apple stands out is because it focus’ on UI/UX when most other companies focus on hardware specs.
Comment by Ben — April 10, 2010 @ 7:15 pm