Category: iPad

Of Stationary, Ebooks, and Writing Tools

Stationary has always been a weakness of mine. I love having notebooks of various sizes and weights of paper. I love the smell of printer’s ink. I love loose leaf binders and rulers, pens and pencils, and stencils like the flow chart template that used to be popular in college book stores. Do colleges even have book stores any more? I know they do but with so much of our information being delivered online, the advent of the electronic book, and the relentless competitiveness of online commerce, it is hard to believe that the campus book store will survive per se much longer.

My fetish for writing tools extends to computer programs as well. I have a huge collection of different text editors, word processors, outliners, mind mappers, and other programs for capturing ideas on a computer. Just this weekend, I installed a program called Instiki that allows me to easily create my own private Wikipedia-like hyper-linked collection of notes.

I still like the feel of physical books but I have to admit that I can store a whole lot more books on my iPad than I can in all the bookshelves in my two bedroom apartment. And so the trade-off has begun. I only buy my favorite author’s books in paper editions. The rest I buy ebook editions of. I sometimes buy the ebook edition of books that I also own the print editions of. That way I can carry it with me where ever I go without hauling around all that extra mass.

Physical books don’t take batteries. They survive power outages. That may be solved in the near future as we keep producing batteries with longer and longer lives. We may eventually build an ebook that can derive power from the environment without having to be explicitly charged.

Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the people you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.

WordPress App on My iPad

I downloaded the WordPress iPad app and I’m trying it out with this post. It is about as easy as any iPad text app can be. I will probably prefer it to my Star Trek themed app. Let’s face it, writing on an iPad without an external keyboard is hunt and peck any way you slice it. If you’re dedicated enough, you could post to a blog using Morse code. It wouldn’t be much different than this.

Expectations

I am a little upset by all the negative press that the nay sayers have been giving the iPad. I haven’t even gotten my iPad yet (I waited for a 3G model) and already I’m being told that it is only a toy. It is not as good as a netbook and much more expensive. I’ll give it to Sign543, he has managed to review the iPad withoug dampening my enthusiasm with his comments, not that they were all positive.

I must say, this feels like when I was a teenager and all my guitar playing friends were getting electric guitars and I was given a classical guitar with a ceramic pickup in it. By the time I actually got a real electric guitar, some of my enthusiasm had been dampened. I ended up being enthusiastic about the guitar anyway because it was so cool. But some of the social coolness of it was squashed by poor timing. I suppose much the same thing will be true with the iPad. After all, many of my friends on the Mac discussion list at work have decided to wait for the 3G version as well.

I have been very busy lately so I haven’t spent as much time studying up on iPad/iPhone development as I was for a while there. I will get back into it but I’ve got so many other responsibilities making demands on my time that it is frustrating. I did find a great resource on iTunes University. It is the complete video lectures from the Stanford University class CS193P on iPhone development.

Meta Essay

I’ve been a long time fan of Dave Winer. While I often agree with his insights on software, the internet, technology, etc., I always appreciate his succinct, well reasoned writing, whether I agree with him or not. His recent article on the iPad announcement is a case in point.

While I am still in the thrall of Steve Job’s reality distortion field, Dave’s article helped me to stop and think. I realized that the iPad was version one of a new category of product. As such, it is far from the ideal product that the category will eventually produce. After all, the first iPod was a shadow of the product that the modern iPod has become.

None the less, I will buy an iPad because I have been waiting for this product category to hit the market for at least twenty years. I want to write apps for it. I am not thrilled with Apple’s app approval process but I have gold fever and the rush is on.

I guess my point is that Dave’s writing provokes thought. The more thought provoking writing that you read, the more likely you are to write thought provoking essays yourself. At least that’s my theory. I guess we’ll see how well it works out.

Aha!

So after watching the reality distortion field (the video of Steve Jobs announcing the iPad), and sleeping on it, I think I may have a solution. I can afford an iPad if I replace my MacBook with a 21.5″ iMac and use the difference between the price of that and the price of a 15″ MacBook Pro and a 24″ Viewsonic external display to buy a 32GB iPad!

I’ve noticed a bunch of people nay saying the iPad today. One person that agrees with me is Steven Fry. I knew he was an Apple fan boy but I was surprised at how astute he was. I think the key fact here is not that the iPad is the best tablet there could ever be. It’s just that it is the first one to “get” what sets a tablet aside from a laptop. It has certainly captured my imagination.

There. I think I’ve got it out of my system now. And now back to your regularly scheduled blog posts.

In which: We explore the author’s obsession with tablet computers

The internet was on the blink last night at our house. Thus, no blog post. This morning, I thought I knew what I wanted to blog about but somehow throughout the day so much happened that I decided to put that topic off for another day. I had forgotten that it was the day that Apple announced their new product. You know, the one that everyone has been talking about for years, the iPad.

I have wanted a tablet computer ever since I read Alan Kay’s description of the dynabook. I wanted one. Later, I read Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer and the flames of my passion were stoked even higher. I couldn’t afford a Newton but it became obvious that it wasn’t the holy grail after all. I owned 3 different Palm Pilots. They never quite filled the bill.

I’ve been waiting for the Apple tablet, the iPad, for years now. Today, I found out that I can have one, … in 60 to 90 days. Now I’ve got to decide whether I want one enough to pay the Apple premium. I am very intrigued. But it won’t be a laptop replacement. It was never intended to be that. I have been planning to buy a MacBook Pro to replace my aging MacBook. I can’t justify buying both a MacBook Pro and an iPad. Therein lies my quandary.

Of course, the rational side of my brain says it is better to wait and see how things play out. After all you should never buy version one of anything. But it is so damn sexy! I wants it. My precious.

Okay, so I buy the 16GB wifi version. That’s only $500 bucks. But for $600 bucks, I could have the 32GB version and for $700 bucks, I could have the 64GB version. And for $830 bucks I could have the 64GB 3G version. I can’t afford $830 bucks. Lets start over again.

No, let’s not. Once again I will be a responsible adult and buy the MacBook Pro. I’ll wait and see how things pan out. It may be a flash in the pan like the AppleTV. I don’t believe it for a minute but time will tell. Maybe by the time it is actually shipping I’ll change my mind. Even better, maybe I’ll think of a creative way to finance one; write an article; sell a program; get a moonlighting consulting gig. Only time will tell.