OK so the iPad. For a proper review head over to Mr Sharpe’s Place. I can’t review it because I have never actually set hands on one. But I have seen one up close and they look very, very cool. But I have a problem with them. I have an ideological dislike of a computer which is not open enough to allow its user to access the file system or to install software without approval from the machine’s manufacturer. I think the limit to what the computer can do should be set by what people can get it to do and not by what its vendor decides it wants it to be used for. My case in point here is that a friend of a friend wrote a video camera “app” for the first 3G iPhone. Surprisingly enough it was rejected from the “store” and hey presto! the next iteration of the iPhone had video camera software built in. Colour me cynical. But simultaneously I am a practical kind of person. If someone is selling a product that does what I want it to do and has the added bonus of looking extremely cool then I am likely to be tempted.
I am a twenty-four hour party person and I now have a job as line manager to a long list of other twenty-four hour party people. This is a good thing. But this new job is going to require me to be about six times more organised than I am currently. I am going to have to have large quantities of information at my fingertips and to be able to pass information around between my managees and managers at the drop of a hat. I want to engage some modern technology to make this easier.
What I need is actually quite simple. I need to have ready email access and to be able to open, edit and forward on Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. I need to be able to carry around all the data that I need to have ready access to.
I can think of two possible solutions. One is to get my current laptop a 3G USB thing and carry it all around so that I can whip it out at a moment’s notice. Second is to stick to my current phone and just forward attachments to whatever computer I am nearest to and then send them back.
But third is for someone to invent a “proper” computer which looks as cool as an iPad and won’t annoy me by being bulky and heavy or a nuisance to use. So that is my challenge to the computer manufacturers of the world. Make me a machine which is as slim and pretty as the iPad but with the functionality of a regular computer with full-fat “productivity” software and I’ll buy one.
Until then I will see if I can make it work with what I already have…
Mrs Q can’t get her i-tunes to transfer to an SD card to play in the car. Has to be deprotected, transfered to cd, then back to Pc as Mp3/4 file and then to MP3 sd card. “can you do this for me?” she askes. Can I F***, erm, I mean , heck.
Well…I warned her…
Luckily, all my MP3 compatible windows songs work just fine.
iTunes downloads (often) use a format called AAC; you can convert these to MP3 by going to Advanced –> Create MP3 version
Tried it. Nothing happened.
What now DK? Google is no help on itunes.
The Dell ThinkPad, perhaps?
Or whatever it is they are calling their proposed iPad rival.
BE you pose some interesing questions and I don’t know what the answer is.
At the moment I have an iPod Touch and an crappy old phone. I’d really love to bring these two together (adding a camera and 3G internet access) so that I’m only carrying one gadget around with me. At the moment I feel like my only choice is an iPhone because I made the decision (silly or otherwise) to go with iTunes for all my music & podcasts a while ago. I have also recently brought a MacBook. Has this effectively ruled me out of the Android market?
I’ve had a quick play on an iPad. I think it is pretty cool (as you’d expect), but also heavier than you think. That is ok if you are lying on the sofa at home or in bed and messing about on the net (but why can’t you use a laptop for this?).
I think the weight really makes it fall down as an eBook reader for the bus or train. Unless you want a 45min weight session at the same time.
Ricardo, that is interesting about the iPad being heavy – something I had not heard before. It **looks** as if it should be light but maybe that’s because it is shiny!
I suppose what I really want is a tiny laptop with a 3G card, but being me I also want it to be a decent machine because having more than one computer would just annoy me.
I don’t know if Android phones can play iTunes format music – I suspect not. Apple is like that.
For the moment I will stick to forwarding things between email addresses!
BE,
“I don’t know if Android phones can play iTunes format music – I suspect not. Apple is like that.”
Aaaaaargh!
iTunes downloads (often) use a format called AAC; you can convert these to MP3 by going to Advanced –> Create MP3 version (apart from on DRM protected ones, and the DRM is not Apple’s fault).
Otherwise, you could just import all of your songs to iTunes using standard MP3 encoding (as I have done since the beginning)—they will then play anywhere, on anything.
Yeah, Apple is definitely interested in locking you in.
That’s why it (and Google) sponsor the best standards-based browser in the market, WebKit (the rendering engine behind Chrome and Safari).
That’s why iTunes/iPods/iPhones/iPads play almost every format under the sun, apart from Microsoft’s proprietary format.
That’s why Macs are compatible with most software (as compared to Microsoft’s oh-so-open formats, yes?) and…
Oh, I can’t be bothered. Of course Apple has it’s dodgy or unwelcome practices, but they are almost never the ones that people think they are.
DK
@DK – I wish I had imported all my music in MP3 format from the start. Sadly I wasn’t that forward thinking.
BE,
I am getting rather tired of people whingeing about the iPhone/iPad’s closed system. It’s not closed; the App Store is tightly controlled, but there are other ways of developing Apps for the iPhone OS. For more, why not look here: http://daringfireball.net/2010/06/iphone_os_too_closed
There are—what?—200,000 Apps in the App Store? If you cannot find something that does what you want, you aren’t looking properly.
But then most PC users are barely aware that software other than Microsoft’s exist; there’s huge numbers of applications for the PC—how many do you use? There are more for the Mac—thousands of brilliant applications, productivity tools, etc. How many do you use?
The vast majority of people who rubbish on about Apple’s “closed system” are the kind of people who will never install anything other than MS Office (except, perhaps, a few games. And there are plenty of those in the App Store).
How about you put aside other people’s prejudices and look at whether the iPad will do the job you want it to (it might be too much: you could do what you describe on an iPhone: why do you need an iPad?); if it won’t, don’t get it. If it will, do.
DK
Ha! I was waiting for an Apple Nut to come along.
1) The iPad is not a Mac 2) I was not complaining about the Mac 3) Can the iPad do what I have described what I want it to do? 4) I didn’t know you could install your own software on the iPhone/iPad, thanks for clearing that up 5) Untwist knickers
PS I also said that I would happily buy an iPad if it did everything I wanted it to.
I grew up on Macs, you can hardly accuse me of being a Windows Evangelist.
B.E. you are just lucky he didn’t swear…mind you he is a good boy now.