While I still really want one, in some ways I’m a little disappointed in some aspects of the iPad.
Pros:
- Price is way lower than I was expecting.
- If you can (as was implied) start/stop the 3G plan on a monthly basis that would be pretty neat if you suddenly found a need while travelling.
- Assuming there are sensible ways to work with documents, E.g. send/receive/download/edit, then the iWork apps and the keyboard make this a great substitute for a notebook when travelling.
- At 1.5 pounds it’s half the weight of the Macbook Air, which already is super-light.
- If the figures are correct, 10 hours of battery life while watching movies is remarkable.
Cons:
- 4:3 is a horrible aspect ratio that really is a step back for a device where video is a key feature.
- While the keyboard accessory is nice, why couldn’t it have worked with the existing Apple Bluetooth keyboards? Or the stand feature a USB socket that could accept any keyboard?
- No multi-tasking. The device clearly has the power and battery life, and not being able to listen to Pandora while working on email, or edit an image for a document, is a big disappointment on a device purported to be more than a phone. At this point Apple are beginning to look simply stubborn.
- The handling of existing iPhone apps is disappointing. I would have liked to see them act like widgets that could be moved around the screen and resized. With multiple widgets allowed at once.
- Despite what the press and Apple say, until there is a way to play games using a physical controller, these devices will struggle to really compete as games devices. While some games can work fantastically with a touch interface, many others range from “ok” to “mediocre”. (Most action/shooter games fall into this latter category).
I still want one though.
Is now fixed 
Thanks to all who emailed and pointed out the problem.
Last night Liz and I discovered that for some reason the first episode of the new Bing Bang Theory, our premium "watch together" show, hadn't been recorded. No problem, we just flicked on AppleTV, went to the TV section and…. couldn't find it anywhere.
Infact there was no sign of season two either, just season one. Very odd. (next-day googling reveals that Warner Bros are withholding it from online distribution to try and increase the value of the show for syndication).
This of course led to a small dilemma. Missed show, no scheduled repeats, no way to buy it online or watch it in Hulu/CBS.com. Hmm. In this day and age do content providers REALLY think people will wait for the repeats/syndication/dvd? I mean really?
No of course not. Instead they* head over to somewhere like The Pirate Bay or the other zillion torrent sites and grab the episode for free. The content owners lose out on the money people were willing to pay (or advertisements to watch), and viewers have to go through a bit of hassle to obtain a copy of variable quality (although one that's almost always better than SDTV).
Nobody wins, aside from the torrent sites with all the advertising. It's quite sad really.
*(by they I mean everyone else, and this is not at all what I did…)
Posted via email from Andrew Live!
Since upgrading to 10.6.1 (and possibly before) Snow Leopard has consistently failed to perform Time Machine backups to the Time Capsule on my network. The backup starts but quickly fails with the message “The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk.”
After rebooting both my laptop and Time Capsule, and even trying to create a fresh time machine image I finally discovered a way to fix this issue – downgrading to 7.4.1 of the Airport Extreme / Time Capsule firmware.
To do this open Airport Utility, hold down the “option” key on the keyboard and choose “BaseStation->Upload Firmware…” from the menu bar. You should now be able to downgrade your Time Capsule / Airport Extreme to previous firmware versions, and 7.4.1 works flawlessly with Time Machine / Snow Leopard 10.6.1 for me.
Hopefully this will save others from lots of head scratching
Dear AT&T,
Instead of sending me spam email advertising your new GPS service, how about pulling your finger out and providing the MMS service that Apple have been dubiously promoting for around six months now? (“Late Summer” my arse).
The moment I can get an iPhone on Verizon, you guys are toast.
Bests,
Andrew
Testing posterous… The view from my office
Posted via email from Andrew Live!
I’m not entirely sure that this isn’t a mistake, but Amazon are currently offering the Blu-ray version of 2001: A Space Odyssey for the bargain price of $10.49 (regular MSRP is $28.99).
-> Add To Cart!
No, none of these were the number I eventually chose, but I do wonder why companies such as AT&T don’t offer anything like this. (Ok, I already know – these types of company rarely innovate until forced to by threats to their market share from younger companies or changing technology).
If you haven’t checked out Google Voice yet then you definitely should, it’s very very neat.
It’s been a wee while, but then I’ve been a wee bit busy lately!
Part of that is because I’ve left behind the sun-drenched beaches of Los Angeles for the slightly chillier climate of the Bay Area – San Francisco to be precise. Despite dropping about 10 degrees in temperature (5.5 degrees, Celsius readers) I’m very much enjoying the change. It’s nice being back in a city where walking and public transport are a part of everyday life, definitely an improvement over the car-centric nature of Los Angeles. Also I’m living in the North Beach district which means I have a huuge number of bars, restaurants and shops just a few blocks away, which is fantastic for those summer weekends and evenings
And with a change of city comes a change of job! About a month ago I started at LucasArts and so far it’s been brilliant. I’m part of a team working on something that’s fantastically exciting, but also highly highly confidential and several years away. I’ve always avoided talking about work here other than in the abstract and that’ll continue, but I do look forward to the day when I can say more
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