iPad Screen Cleaning

It might have an oleophobic screen but the iPad picks up fingerprints like you wouldn't believe. The only time you can type without marking the screen is immediately after you've washed your hands in hot water; this doesn't last.

Removing grease and fingerprints from the screen can be a bit of a challenge. Cleaning it with you shirt cuff doesn't really work. Jumpers and sweatshirts tend to be pretty useless as well. You can use tissues but they're not much more effective than wiping an inverted iPad over your jeans, which doesn't do much more than smear the grease. Oakley sunglasses bags work reasonably well but take a fair amount of effort. I haven't tried carpets but I don't think I'd advise their use. Soft velvet curtains might work and you might find one in your local National Trust property, but that's not a very practical solution (and the NT room stewards can be a bit scary if they think you're damaging their charges).

So what are your remaining options? I've found that the best tool for cleaning the screen of my iPad is the cleaning cloth supplied with our LG LCD TV, which works really well. No idea what it is made from, so this advice is not going to be uniformly helpful, but if you've got an LG LCD TV kicking around you should find that the green cloth they include in the box is really good and fits easily into many iPad cases for handy carrying.

Your Flipboard is Ready to Customize

I had an email from Flipboard this morning (see below) telling me that I could now configure the app to work with my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Having now done this, I can tell you that Flipboard is a really nice way to consume these sites, far nice, in fact (in my opinion, and after only a short time playing with them) than either the the websites or apps of these sties (there isn't a dedicated Facebook iPad app - you can use the iPhone app, or the website, but that's it).

The Twitter integration is particularly impressive. Rather than simply giving you a list of tweets, which would be a little dull (I can't see myself wanting to use another Twitter client, to be honest, except to post new tweets), Flipboard pulls in some of the photos and stories linked from the tweets (should "tweets" be capitalised?) and presents them in the "standard" Flipboard magazine format. This looks great and works really well.

If you've got an iPad, Flipboard is the killer app you must install. If you haven't got an iPad, get one, then install Flipboard.   

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Flipboard, Inc." <no-reply@flipboard.com>
Date: 29 July 2010 01:19:09 GMT+01:00
Subject: Your Flipboard is Ready to Customize

Hi there. We're now ready for you to set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts on Flipboard. Try it out and let us know what you think. And thanks again for your patience and enthusiasm.

- The Flipboard Team

Short Review - Pages for iPad

So here I am, drafting a blog post using Apple's Pages application for iPad; it is undoubtedly a good app, as far as it goes, but it's not quite all I had hoped for. For a word processor at the cheap end of the market (£5.99, to be precise, although that's fairly expensive in iPad app terms) it's very good but with some unfortunate feature holes that rather reduce it's usefulness.

For example, there's no way (as far as I can tell) to add a hyperlink to a document except by including the URL (for example http://myryama.blogspot.com), which is a little inelegant. Exporting the document (assuming that you don't want to use iTunes) requires that you either email it (in Pages, Word or PDF formats) or share it via iWork; an option to save to the cloud (MobileMe, Dropbox etc.) seems like an obvious omission for a portable Internet device. To export to iWork you will need an active Internet connection, so don't expect to be able to hit share on the plane and have your document appear in iWork as you wander out through the terminal building (this might be fixed in iOS 4 when multi-tasking becomes available, but who knows?).

So, given these problems, what's so good about the app? Firstly, it's very easy to use. The controls are simple and logical; positioning elements (photos, shapes, tables etc) on the page is straightforward and intuitive (although precise placement is sometimes tricky as the train bounces along); formatting features and options allow for the creation of presentable documents; icons and general functionality conform to expected (ie Microsoft Word) norms; file management, including autosave, is simple (although the apparent lack of a folder structure might prove tricky once the number of documents grows large).

Overall, it's worth investigating if you want to do more than capture plain text (mail, Evernote or Notebook will do that for free) and you need to be able to create new, rather than edit existing, documents. The weak file-sharing features mean that syncing documents with a PC or Mac isn't going to happen and this could be a killer problem if your intended workflow requires editing in both mobile and fixed environments. Pages is not without its weaknesses, of course, but as long as you want to create and export new documents they are (probably) manageable inconveniences rather than compromising faults.

Apple Addiction, Part 2

When last we discussed my Apple addiction (posterous, blogger), the story had reached 2009 and it was time for a break. Now, read on for the next thrilling instalment!

Actually, having acquired the iPhone, Apple TV and an iPod Touch our Apple cravings were pretty much sated and for the next year or so, the only things we bought were music and movies from iTunes, apps from the App Store and odds and ends (headphones, cables, cases etc.).

So what next? What we really wanted was an iPod docking station for the kitchen to replace the ageing Philips CD player (which had always been a bit rubbish, even when it was new), preferably one that included a DAB radio and a Disc spinner, and that was, if at all possible, a British brand. Finding such a beast turned out to be a bit tricky but eventually we chose the Roberts Roberts MP43 Sound, a very nice piece of kit with a DAB radio, CD player and good sounds quality - bonus!

At the same time we grabbed a Roberts iDream CRD42 to replace the little-used, over-large and ugly stereo in the bedroom. The iDream is rather less of a product (smaller, cheaper, fewer features) than the MP43 but it's still a very good clock radio and it sounds much better than the average bedroom timepiece.

With these equipments installed there was nothing to do but wait for the iPad to reach the UK, which it duly did at the end of May 2010. Let me start the iPad comments by saying that my wife doesn't share my enthusiasm for the iPhone and she wasn't even slightly interested in the iPad. She quite fancies a MacBook and she's got a couple of iPods but otherwise her interest in Apple products is pretty much non-existent.

So what happened? We were in the car on the way to PC World to collect my iPad and the Wife asked "would you buy me one if I wanted one?", to which the only possible answer is "er, yes, love to". Of course, after about 30 seconds playing with the Photo app she was hooked and we left the store with two iPads (64Gb 3G for me, 32Gb Wifi for her), two cases and a bruised credit card. Having two turned out to be a good thing. There's absolutely no way we'd have been able to share one and it would just have caused problems (to read about somebody else's experiences with a shared iPad, have a look at this account from The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

Early June rolled round and with it the iPhone 4 demonstration. The Wife didn't understand why I might want a new phone as well as an iPad (what can you say?) but I was still out early on the Thursday morning trying to buy an iPhone 4. I failed miserably, of course, and had to wait till the following week to make my acquisition (16Gb, Black). It's great, of course, and I haven't experienced any of the issues reported in the press; if you're using a 3G you should definitely upgrade - it's life-changing.

What next? Nothing for the moment. Various other life events mean that cash might be tight for a few months so even with new iPods and new laptops expected fairly soon we probably won't do more than browse. The new Apple store in Covent Garden, when it eventually opens, will present a daily temptation (it's a five minute walk from my office) but I'll probably only buys with apps and accessories (I fancy a Dodo Case). Might grab a new iPod Touch for the Wife if it has a FaceTime. Might also need a new rucksack, a Bluetooth keyboard and an iPad stand (or two). Hmm. Updates to follow.

Flipboard; the app the iPad was made for?

Sounds a bit strange when you read about it but it works beautifully and is remarkably easy to use. The presentation of articles is so good that it pretty much makes magazine apps redundant; all publishers need to do is provide a suitably rich feed of articles and Flipboard can re-build the magazine. That won't happen, of course, because there's only a very limited revenue stream for the publisher, but it's nice to dream.

So should you investigate further? Yes. Download it now, accept that some features aren't yet available and enjoy the rest while you wait for the initial surge to die down.
You may not have heard of (http://www.flipboard.com/) because it's rather new. So new, in fact, that they haven't yet activated all the features for all their users because they're struggling to cope with demand.

So what does Flipboard do that is so great? It pulls together your chosen feeds in to a new, but familiar, magazine format and you flip through the pages browsing the articles, newest first. You then open interesting articles by tapping the summary, from where you can head out to the source page.

Apple, Covent Garden, London

Pocketlint have this teasing photo of Apple's new Covent Garden store, expected to be one of its biggest in Europe. No information on an opening date but it surely can't be long; next week, maybe?

My Predictions for iPad 2

I've had an iPad now for a six weeks or so, and an iPhone 4 for about three. They're both great, but I can't help wondering about what might feature in the next releases, particularly iPad 2. Here are my predictions:
1) Forward facing camera for FaceTime support.
2) More memory, specifically 512Mb to match iPhone 4.
3) Improved performance, probably by further reducing the silicon footprint (ie fewer, smaller chips).
4) A compass and an improved gyroscope.

And then there's a short list of things that probably won't feature in iPad 2:
1) Backward-facing camera - the iPad's form factor doesn't really support photography. An app (or iOS features) that used wifi or Bluetooth to connect to a third-party camera for setup, review and backup purposes seems more likely.
2) Retina Display - it would be pretty fantastic, but a 10" panel at 320+ DPI doesn't sound very likely.
3) New case - it's not impossible that iPad 2 will feature a case and antenna layout that mimics that of the iPhone 4 but I don't think there's enough time to deliver such a radical change if Apple run with an annual upgrade schedule; look for this in iPad 3.
4) USB or HDMI ports - I don't think the existing case is thick enough to house either of these connectors and I don't think they fit the product's philosophy. Don't expect either to arrive in iPad 2.

Finally, there may be some features in iOS 5 to strengthen the iPad/iPhone link and to make them natural operating partners:
1) A fast, multi-tasking local network between the two devices to allow files or pictures to be shared without requiring a third-party through which to sync.
2) An emphasis on cloud services, possibly making DropBox (or something similar) ubiquitous with developer APIs to simplify it's use.

Of course we won't actually find out what's in iPad 2 till spring next year and I don't plan to upgrade until at least the 2012 (unless iPad 2 is spectacularly better than iPad 1). If you're in two minds about buying now or waiting, my advice is to buy now and enjoy the existing features rather than waiting for new gizmos that might, or might not, appear next year.

iPad iOS 3.2.1 is out

I'm not close enough (by about 350 miles) to download 3.2.1 but here is the list of fixes: 

• Improved Wi-Fi connectivity
• Fixed an issue that stops the copy/paste of single-page PDFs in Mail
• Addressed issues that causes video playback to freeze
• Improved reliability involving the video-out using the iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter
• Added Bing to Safari's search options

Improved wifi connectivity would be a big fix for me if I hadn't already invested in a new 802.11n wireless adapter that completely fixed the problem, which may, for me, have been related to the use of a cheap Sky router running 802.11a/g.

So Apple have announced an iPhone 4...

... press conference for Friday morning. The expectation is that they will announce something related to the antenna problems (maybe the root cause, a software fix, a recall) but, as with all Apple's announcements, nobody really knows. Whatever they intend to say, I'd just like to state now that I've had no issues of any kind with my iPhone 4 and I'm really pleased with it.

Apple's Bookstore and Amazon's Kindle

When it comes to reading text, my opinion, and I've used both apps, is that iBooks is better than Kindle but Kindle is still good enough. Functionality is basically the same, so it comes down to personal preference, and I prefer iBooks. For their respective bookstores, however, there's not much in it; both, from my perspective, are seriously flawed.

Apple's store, for example, has a very small choice of books (about 31,000 at time of writing) and many of those are duplicates (some books have both free and charged versions) or foreign language texts. Their book categorisation and search tools are not very sophisticated, it's quite difficult to browse their offering and even for authors for whom they stock a reasonable number of texts they generally don't have a complete set.

Surprisingly, for the world's largest bookstore, Amazon also suffer from a shortage of texts. Although they have a very much wider range of books on offer, they only sell through Amazon.com in US dollars and many texts aren't available to customers in the UK. As long as you stay in the dedicated Kindle store you can be reasonably confident that the listed texts are available for purchase in your territory, but the author's Kindle pages (which are a great feature) don't flag unavailable texts and you have to drill down to the book's page to find out if you're allowed to buy it.

So what now? Both stores are broken to some extent. Amazon need a UK version with a more complete set of titles. Apple, currently adding texts at a rate of around 300-500 a day, need to be an order of magnitude faster if they're to offer a reasonable selection before, say, Christmas. As of now, at least in the UK, the race is wide open and neither company could be said to have delivered a killer product.

More on Evernote for iPad

Evernote for iPad is a nice application and I use it a lot but it has a couple of annoying bugs and one frustratingly absent feature. Bugs first. Sometimes, if I create and save a note on my iPad, it then won't let me edit it without going through the "Can't edit rich text, Append/Copy?" process. There is also an occasional problem reopening notes created on my iPad; the thumbnail shows correctly in the left-hand note list but the text doesn't show in the main window and the note can't be edited.

As for missing features, the only one that really bugs me is the lack of rich text editing. The Evernote blog suggests this is coming in a future upgrade (and, to be honest, it's not really a vital feature in a notebook app) so I don't want to complain too much, but I'd really like to be able to add hyperlinks, lists and font formats to my notes (particularly when I'm composing blog posts).

In general, though, I really like Evernote and I use it on all my devices (iPhone, iPad, laptop and desktop). Definitely a recommended app.

Pages - to buy, or not to buy, that is the question

I think I might have to splash out on Pages, Apple's word processor for the iPad. I don't really want to; the reviews have suggested that it's an excellent product but with severe restrictions when it comes to sharing files (no integration with the cloud, for example) and I had planned to hold off for a later version. Unlike most technology purchases, however, the trade-off between "buy now use now" and "buy later get better features" is less important since any upgrades to features are likely to be rolled out for free to existing users.

Hesitance is, therefore, illogical and I should buy the app as soon as I have a use for it. As of now, the only use I have for it is to enable me to write rich text blog posts but, as Pages only costs £5.99, it still seems like a bit of a bargain so I think I'll take the plunge. I'll let you know how I get on.