Geek Swagger.
Posts tagged iWork
A Week With the iPad
Apr 11th
There has been a lot of discussion in the tech community about whether the iPad is a significant new computing device or simply another digital toy that will run it's course and end up sitting in a closet collecting dust. Although I can't really comment on the device's long-term viability, I can comment on some significant realizations I've come to in the week since the iPad launched.
Believe it or not I'd say that I've used my iPad as much or more that my laptop or desktop for daily computing. Since it's small and light enough to literally take everywhere, I find it's just easier to browse the web, check my email and even do things like IM with the iPad. The display is awesome for all applications so I always have a great viewing experience, and much to my surprise typing with the virtual keyboard is a breeze (I'm using it to write this post in the iPad WordPress app). In fact, when the device is in landscape mode I can basically touch-type, and even if I do make a mistake it gets corrected automatically 9 times out of 10.
Watching movies, reading books and listening to music on the ipad are all great experiences. In fact I'd have to say that the iPad is the ultimate content consumption device on the market. One of the biggest surprises I had while first using it was the quality of the built-in speakers. They're totally listenable and I never felt the need to plug in headphones while listening to music, playing games or watching video.
Another happy surprise was the battery life. When Steve Jobs said you could get 10 hours out of this thing most people expected that would be a best-case scenario and actually expected more like 8. That's not the case though, the iPad lasts a very long time and if you're only using it lightly it could easily last multiple days.
All that being said the iPad isn't perfect. First off I think the pricing for apps has been inflated a little too much. I came from the iPhone app store where I was used to paying 5 dollars at most for applications, but on the iPad 10 or 15 dollars is the norm. I think the higher prices are somewhat a result of apple themselves pricing the iWork apps at $10 each, and I'd even say the iWork apps are worth that, but there are several apps that were mostly ported from the iPhone priced just as high. I'm hoping that the marketplace will somewhat self-regulate over time, but as of right now the pricing is unrealistic.
I also wish the app store in general had an official trial system. As I mentioned on twitter, spending 0.99 cents on a bad iPhone app is one thing, spending $15 for a bad iPad app is another. If I could preview apps, even if just for a matter of hours, my experience with buying apps would be much more pleasant.
Additionally, The iBook store doesn't have nearly as many titles as I wish it did. I've already searched for 3 different titles that weren't available yet. I'm sure this will be remedied in the future, and there are alternatives like the Amazon Kindle app, but it's still slightly annoying.
In the end I think the iPad does signal a change, or as Steve Wozniak put it a reboot of computing devices. Using this thing is fun, easy and it just makes sense for 90% of my daily computing tasks. It's the perfect device for any casual user and would probably serve well as their primary computer, and it's an excellent netbook or even laptop replacement for power users. I am a total geek and I use it for several hours a day everyday, and aside from being able to do development work it meets all of my needs. Plus, as developers get a better handle on creating iPad applications in the future it'll only get better and become even more useful.
Apple’s iPad – It’s all about the apps.
Jan 30th
I've had some time to digest Apple's announcement of the iPad this Wednesday, and despite being confused and unsure at first I think I've come around on it. Â Is the iPad perfect? Â No. Â Is it a device you need? Â No more than you "need" an Amazon Kindle. Â It's a luxury device that'll fill some use cases for you and probably make your life a little more convenient, but certainly not a necessity.
There has been a lot of commotion about the iPad being "just a big iPod Touch." Â I disagree with that sentiment completely, for a couple of reasons. Â First, it's about the user experience. Â What's the most-obvious difference between the iPod Touch and iPad? Â The display size, of course. Â Because the display for these touch devices doubles as the user input interface, it means developers can do a hell of a lot more with the software they create on the iPad. Â I think it'll be the first device to truly recognize the full potential and yes, I'll admit it, "cool factor" of multitouch. Â Sure I can do some multitouch functions on my iPhone, but usually only to zoom in or zoom out on an object. Â Imagine the possibilities of the iPad's nearly 10" of screen real estate, particularly when you can set it down on the table or in your lap and have two free hands with which to manipulate the on-screen information.
The second major difference is the horsepower. Â My current smartphone is the iPhone 3GS, which has a ARM processor clocked at 600mhz by default and only 256MB of memory. Â The iPad on the other hand, has a 1ghz processor and rumored 1GB of RAM. Â That means that the applications that are being developed for it will have a much wider range of capabilities and a richer user experience. Â While watching Apple's keynote it wasn't until Scott Forstall brought developers up on stage to show their iPad apps, not to mention when Phil Schiller did the iWork demonstration, that I began to truly understand the amazing amount of potential this device has. Â Compare the iPad right now to where the iPhone was when it launched: there are very few native applications and those that do exist were created by Apple. Â The one thing that the iPad has going for it over the iPhone though, is that we already have an SDK for the device before it's even released. Â How long did it take Apple to get the iPhone SDK out there?
I'll be the first to admit that I think the way they've chosen to integrate iPhone apps into the iPad is a little cheesy. Â You can either run them in a native mode, which displays them in a tiny black box in the middle of your 9.5" display, or you can use "pixel-double" to expand them to fit the screen. Â Pixel-double might be good for apps that are predominantly text or image-based, but I have a feeling that there's going to be significant graphical degradation with video playback and games. Â With all that said though, iPhone apps on the iPad are not what users should be excited for. Â Software developed with the iPad in mind will truly make the device sing, and I think it'll be the best media-consumption device we've seen so far.
Plus you can't read ibooks on your iPod Touch, you illiterate brigand!
Apple’s Keynote at Macworld ’09
Jan 13th
This year's Apple keynote had a lot riding on it - firstly because Apple announced that it would be their last at a Macworld event, and secondly because Steve Jobs bowed out from doing the presentation which left Phil Schiller holding the bag. As always there have been a ton of rumors leading up to the event (including seemingly outlandish claims of an iPhone Nano, or a tablet computer of some sort), but I don't really want to spend much time on the speculation. I wrote a post a few weeks ago stating what I thought would go down and I have to say I'm pretty happy with my predictions.
The first thing Schiller announced was a new version of iLife. iLife '09 looks to be a solid follow-up to the famous Mac suite even though only a few applications were demonstrated. He started with iPhoto, which now lets you sort and categorize your images in a few new ways. The first is called Faces, and what it does is scan your iPhoto library for, believe it or not, people's faces. This is all done with face recognition software, and it lets you group photos by the people in them. For example if I had a bunch of images of my niece Lilly I could have a Lilly section of my iPhoto library. The second new categorization feature is called Places. Places lets you use geo-tagged images (or images tagged manually) to group photos by the place from which they were taken. If you recently took a trip to Dublin, Ireland for example, all of those images would be grouped in the Dublin section under Places. They also announced that you can now easily upload your photos to Facebook or Flickr, and your Facebook friends can even tag your images with the people that are in them, and that information will be synced back to your iPhoto library.
Next up was iMovie. iMovie now incorporates a lot of the features that many people were upset about it missing from iMovie '06. It uses the same interface, but it incorporates a timeline and lets you do some cool new things as well. First off, you can now drag and drop clips together without having to split each clip individually. For example, if I have one clip that I want to play in the middle of another, previously I'd have to split the second clip and put the first in between the two parts of the second. Now I can just drop the first right into the second without splitting anything, and iMovie does the work for me. It also lets you use just the audio from your clips, letting you mix bits and pieces of audio from your entire recording. Add to that my favorite feature, image stabilization (it will come in very handy with the Flip Mino HD) and iMovie '09 seems to be a very solid upgrade.
Garageband '09 was also shown, but I don't really use that application too much so I figure I'll just stick to what interested me for the sake of brevity.
Next up came iWork '09, and iWork.com. iWork.com is an online sharing service that lets you share your iWork projects with your friends or co-workers, and is platform independent. The interface looks just like the iWork app itself, and it enables discussions to be held on the status of the project, or comments to be added if there are changes to be made. As far as I know however, you can't actually edit the documents from iWork.com, just view them. Right now the service is in beta and is therefore free, but Apple is planning on charging for it down the road. I don't think that's a very smart decision because it seems to be the sort of feature which, if bundled with the purchase of iWork '09, could be the factor that persuades unsure users to go ahead and purchase a copy of the suite. As a separate charge it might end up being unsuccessful in the long term.
Obviously iWork.com is just the beginning. Each of the apps in the iWork suite (Pages, Keynote and Numbers) will see significant updates for the '09 release. Pages is getting a feature similar to WriteRoom's which lets you have full-screen text editing, as well as a new outline mode and more templates. Keynote has new transitions, and even does automatic animations with a feature called "Magic Move." With Magic Move you can have an object on one slide, and then the same (or more) object(s) on the next, and Keynote will automatically animate these images from slide to slide. Apple has also added a new app to the iPhone app store called Keynote Remote. This application lets you use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a remote for your keynote presentation, letting you switch between slides from the device as well as view presentation notes. It's odd to think that my favorite feature from the iWork '09 suite would be an iPhone app, but this is it. Finally, Numbers is getting more formulas, advance charts, and of course additional themes.
Next up came the 17" Macbook Pro unibody. This announcement came as a surprise to no one. Much like the other Macbook updates, the Macbook Pro 17" will finally get that nice aluminum and black bezel design. It also comes with either a glossy or matte screen, and it packs a whopping 8 hours of battery life. The only downside is that the battery can't be removed, a major gotcha for a lot of folks out there. There isn't much else to be said about the 17" Macbook Pro, except that it's $3,000 so I'll never be able to afford one. =)
Lastly and, in my opinion anyways, most importantly, was the announcement that iTunes is finally going DRM-free. As of the keynote there were 8 million songs switched to DRM-free, with the promise that the entire iTunes library would also be by the end of the year. The only problem is that Apple seems to have buckled to the record labels in order to get this deal done as now their music will have variable pricing. Some tracks will cost as much as $1.29, while others will be as cheap as $0.69. Phil Schiller assured the crowd that there would be many more 69 cent songs than dollar 29 ones, but only time will tell if he was being truthful. In the meantime I'm going to scope out some of the albums I've been meaning to purchase to see if I an get a DRM-free deal on them!
