Yesterday I finally got suckered into buying an iPad. I was going to wait it out for the 3G version until its NZ release date (next month), but the deal was just too good to let go, so I reconsidered and concluded that I had Wi-Fi connectivity around me at least 99% of the time and it didn’t make sense to pay for another Internet plan (I have trouble paying for the iPhone one as it is.)
So, some initial thoughts after a few hours of playing around:
- It really is as good as they say it is.
- When you first hold it, it seems lighter than you expected, but as time goes by and you start using it in bed, it seems heavier. I have no doubt that the next version is going to be much lighter.
- Much of the tasks that were possible to do with the iPhone are now fun and practical to do. For example, when the iPhone came out, sketching apps were huge. But nobody sketches on an iPhone now — we realized the screen was just too small to do anything meaningful. The iPad, on the other hand, has the perfect form-factor for it — which explains why I’ve purchased 5 sketching apps so far.
- Typing is a challenge when you’re not on a table, which sadly most of the time won’t be true when I’m using the device.
- I imagine the iPad will replace 50% of the tasks I do with my computer 50% of the time. Mainly, the non-productive tasks that require minimal typing: browsing while I’m not working, reading, watching podcasts and movies, playing casual games. On top of that, there are going to be new things that I could never do with a PC and can start doing now: using it as a literal notebook to sketch and collect ideas, reading full books and magazines, etc.
And for a few app-picks:
Streaming
- AirVideo: specify folders on your computer and access all videos in that folder on-the-fly on your iPad. This is huge for me. When I get home, I can just browse into my Podcasts folder and watch the latest stuff, or perhaps even catch one of the 200 movies in my Movies folder. No syncing, sharing required.
- CAMERA-A: DIY-video-surveillance. Use your iPhone as a camera input for your iPad. I don’t know if I’d practically ever use this, but it’s amazing nonetheless. If I want to, I can finally do what the Home Alone movies promised me I could: attach my iPhone to an RC car and control it from a distance (given that I have awesome long-range Wi-Fi, of course.)
- AirSketch: Draw on an iPad and watch it happen happen on a laptop by going to server URL. Again, I don’t know when I’d use this, but it’s just one of those things that blows your mind.
Reading
- NPR: I’m a devoted podcast listener, and this app takes their listening experience to another level. Instead of clicking on a meaningless title and finding out who Terry Gross is interviewing today, you can look around all the content on NPR, check out the articles, make a playlist on-the-fly, and then sip your coffee as your brain gets to find out about things.
- WIRED: I’m not sure if every Wired issue is going to be $4 or that’s what I paid for the app as a whole, but I wanted to try out the magazine-reading experience after hearing all the talk about saving-the-media-industry. It delivers. This is the future of magazines. Finally, all that premium content they produce has a value that online blogs can’t replicate: interactivity.
- NYTimes Editors Choice: Unlike magazines, which offer interactivity and general premiumness, it doesn’t look like the newspapers apps are there yet. Although, I like NYTimes’ implementation — clean and content-heavy.
Games
-
AirHockey: This was meant to be on the iPad. I always thought the iPhone version was a little spatially challenged, but it’s amazing what a few more inches of screen real estate can do.
- Labyrinth HD: Reminded me how engrossing and frustrating something so simple can get. Again, another iPad no-brainer.
- Real Racing HD: A little hefty on the price, but if you want to explore the gaming possibilities of the device in terms of its graphics, it’s a must.
Sketching and notebooking
- QvikSketch: Undoubtedly the best pencil-sketching application. I don’t know what algorithm they use, but whatever artistic inferiority complex you have goes away when you make your first stroke.
- Penultimate: One of my prime uses of the device, I hope, is to no longer have to use a pen and pad. This app basically replicates the paper pad, and does so quite successfully. I’ve ordered a stylus so that I can make the most out of it.
- Draw: A good, cheap option if you just want to draw, or play dots and tic-tac-toe.
All said and done, I don’t have an inch of the buyer’s remorse I thought I would. It really is satisfaction packaged in a 10” inch glass tablet.
— | One of the many awesome Dr. Seuss quotes. |
This 15,000 pixel tall diagram gives a great sense of scale to the depths involved in modern oil drilling. Also: how amazing is it that we’ve been to the bottom of the Mariana Trench?
(via jstn)
This may just be my most favorite infographic ever. All achievement of man seem to be chronicled in these 15,000 pixels. Including a not so good one.
— | Dear Pixar: Stop Making Me Cry Like A Bitch I remember watching Toy Story 2 at least 20 times as a younger person. It was when DVD players first came out, and that DVD was probably the first we ever owned. I bet you I could story board nearly every plot-point of the movie, even now, 10 years having last watched it. Oh, and I’d probably still tear up when that ‘When Somebody Loved Me’ song comes up. Which is why this article (despite its, erm, language) rings so true. |
- Buy iPad circa August.
- Buy iPhone 4 circa September.
- Declare bankruptcy circa October.
- ???
- Profit!
Michael Sandel: The lost art of democratic debate | Video on TED.com
Finally, a non-pretentious, standing-ovation worthy TEDTalk which doesn’t make a bone about saving the world or curing cancer or feeding the poor, and is equally as important.
I am a huge proponent of philosophy. I think if it were to replace religion, or at the very least be the building blocks of our lives, our world would truly be better off.
In this talk, Sandel considers philosophy as the basis of two controversial cases. One, the question of whether a handicapped golfer should be allowed to have a Golf cart in the PGA tournament, and the other of same sex marriages. The backbone of this is Aristotle’s implication that in a world with finite flutes, the flutes should go to the best flute players because the essential nature of flutes is for them to be played well and create good music.
One other topic I’ve been doing some philosophical reading about is animal rights. You’ll be surprised — shocked — to know that not one prominent philosopher is against it. Nearly all of them believe at the very least that factory farming is wrong, if not that anything that hurts animals in any way (lab testing, animal agriculture in general, hunting) should be abolished.
What is interesting of course, are the arguments they make. Peter Singer, a famous utilitarian, says that all animals and humans have equal worth. There is no quality that can be said is an inherent differentiator between them (just like the arguments against racism and sexism), and thus believes a majority of the world — in particular, philosophers — are speciesists. The basis for his argument is that if we were to consider, say rationality, intelligence, or emotion as a differentiator, it would be hard to argue that the same could not be said for infants, or to put the ‘potential’ argument to rest, mentally handicapped people.
Then in a world where there is no basis for inequality between species, and all can equally feel pleasure and pain, and it is absurd to use mentally handicapped people or infants for lab testing, hunting, and farming, why should animal farming be allowed?
Nearly all the philosophers agree that as long as we live in a world in which profit maximization is the core goal, and where a species has no defenders other than its human activists, it’s going to carry on. A sad but true fact. But I have a feeling we’ll evolve over centuries and find a suitable profit-maximizing replacement for animal food, when speciesism will be as backward and absurd as sexism and racism is today.
Become a morning person. How to end insomnia for $520.99 
So, it turns out getting good sleep is all about the lights you expose your body to.
New 2010 resolution: cure insomnia, become a ‘morning person’. (I swear this to me seems like a harder resolution than ‘get fit’ or ‘eat vegetarian’.)
What kind of girl do you think I am?
I love these kinds of useless/profound morality discussions on things that don’t matter but they really do. I need to try this one out some day.
— | Steve Jobs at D Unless you’ve been involved with deploying a product to the world, you can’t appreciate this sentiment enough. Much more valuable than any amount of press you can get for what you do is when someone personally takes the time to e-mail you to tell you about how great your product is. (I mean, do you even do that with things you love?) |
