Ordinary Day

Anna’s iPad Pro

Every new January for me means the coming of my birthday! This year, since I got a nice yearly bonus from the day job, I treated myself to a birthday present: a new iPad Pro. Today on Here Be Magic, the group blog I participate in, I’ve got a post up about what it’s like to use this device to write on. Here on my own site, I’d like to expand on that somewhat and talk about what I like about this device so far, and why I decided to get it.

Long post is long! The rest is behind the cut.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

I installed iOS 8 on both of my iThings this week, so here’s a quick roundup of things I’ve noticed so far. In general, iOS 8 looks a LOT like iOS 7, and the stuff that interests me the most won’t really kick into play until Yosemite drops and I can update my Mac. But that said, there are some points of interest.

The Good:

The new Health app has a tab in it where you can fill in medical data about yourself that might be critical in an emergency–allergies, important conditions of note, meds you’re on, that kind of thing. This strikes me as super-helpful, and certainly in both my and Dara’s case, there are important things that medical personnel might need to know if we’re in an emergency situation. This data is accessible from the phone’s emergency screen, the same screen from which you can dial 911. Excellent idea, Apple.

I am pleased to note that not only have the recurring Smart Playlists bugs that have plagued me through the last several iOS releases not returned this time, but a few other bugs new to iOS 7 appear to have been fixed as well. Notably, I’m not seeing weirdly missing album art anymore. And I don’t have to restart the Music app after syncing now to un-stick the Not Recently Played smartlist as I play stuff on it. AND, they fixed the bug where my Not Recently Played playlist wasn’t showing me brand new stuff. So now that playlist is behaving like I originally expected it to. Good.

Playlists in the Music app are now showing a count of songs and a run time in minutes. This is helpful to have, particularly for my smart playlists like Not Recently Played, where I can see at a glance how big the playlist currently is.

The bug with setting wallpapers appears to have been fixed–this bug being the one wherein you were unable to actually zoom a photo to the size you wanted when setting a wallpaper. This was annoying and I’m glad it’s fixed. Let’s hope it stays that way as this rev of the OS gets minor updates.

On my iPhone, battery life seems like it’s better. I haven’t burned through the battery nearly as fast the last couple of days, even if I play music through a good chunk of the day.

The Not Bad Per Se But Not of Interest to Me:

Two things got added that I immediately turned off when I discovered them.

One is predictive text, where they show you example possible words in a bar above the keyboard as you type to try to anticipate what you’re actually about to say. I found this visually distracting. Fortunately it was easy to turn off in Settings > General > Keyboards > Predictive.

The other is that in the app switcher that they put in with iOS 7, when you double-tap the Home button, they’ve added a list of your recently accessed Contacts. I found this visually distracting as well, and turned that off too. You can find the setting in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Show in App Switcher.

The Bad:

I’ve had apps hang unexpectedly a couple of times since the upgrade, requiring me to kill them in the App Switcher. This isn’t happening often, but it IS new behavior, and it’ll be something I’ll have to keep an eye on. The apps I’ve noticed this on so far have been Plants Vs. Zombies 2 and Friendly+, my Facebook app. I don’t know if this is a fault of the OS or of the apps not quite having been updated correctly for the new OS, though.

The Stuff I’m Still Investigating:

Apple’s handling of podcasts has been a mess in the last couple of revs of iOS, ever since they split podcasts out of the main Music app and off into their own Podcasts app. I’ve had recurring issues with certain podcasts duplicating themselves in my listing, and podcasts I’ve listened to still showing up in my list even though they’re supposed to have been deleted.

Still investigating whether handling of this has improved. A new version of the Podcasts app just dropped last night.

The Stuff I Will Play With More When Yosemite Drops:

You’re supposed to be able to share files across iCloud now, and have an accessible drive to put them on, similar to Dropbox, Google, OneDrive, and other such services. It’s about damn time Apple implemented that, and I’ll look forward to checking it out–since it’ll make Pages finally actually useful to me. Pages doesn’t talk to Dropbox, which has been a source of frustration to me.

Continuity will be interesting as well–the ability to answer messages across devices, such as answering a phone call on the Mac. Or starting a mail on the phone and picking it up again on the computer when I get home.

Should You Install It?:

If you have a recent device like an iPhone 5 or one of the newer iPads, yes, go for it. So far this seems like it’s a better than average iOS update.

However, if you have an iPhone 4S, you should read this. According to that article, the 4S suffers noticeable performance hits with iOS 8 on it.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

I had my doubts about iOS 7 when I first started seeing the screenshots for it, but I did go ahead and take the plunge and install it on both of my iThings this past week: my iPhone 5, and my iPad 2. And on the whole, I gotta admit, it grew on me pretty quickly.

Design

First, the things I like.

Once I got used to the new design, I really appreciated that it’s less cluttered. I didn’t like the various screenshots I was seeing of super-bright, super-flat backgrounds with all the candy-colored icons in front of them. But once I set the devices up and chose some of the darker, less gaudy backgrounds, everything looked fine. (Pro tip: the white text labels on the various icons are a lot easier to read if you do in fact choose a darker background.)

I also like how a lot more of the UI is oriented around text now rather than inexplicable buttons. (Although I also am cognizant of the localization challenge, there!)

Definitely liking that I’m finally able to stuff several of the icons for standard iOS apps I never use (e.g., Stocks, FaceTime, Newsstand, and such) into a folder so I can just forget about ‘em, and clean up some real estate space on my home screen. Also finally able to put more than twelve icons into one folder. YAY! This is helpful for my folders for games. And I do like the pagination of said folders, though this’ll mean I gotta remember to move the more important icons in a folder forward so I don’t forget about ‘em.)

Quebecois Guitarists are an Important UI Element

The new layout of the lock screen, particularly on a device with a Retina screen like my iPhone 5, is nice–but it meant that the previous pic I was using of myself and Eric Beaudry of De Temps Antan was suddenly unacceptably fuzzy. OH DARN, I said, WHATEVER SHALL I DO IF ONLY I HAD A CACHE OF SUITABLE ALTERNATE HIGH RES PICS oh wait I DO.

And now, the things I don’t like:

Not a fan of the animations of swooping in and out when you unlock the device or when you’re switching back to the home screen. It actually makes me a little motion sick on my phone, though it’s not as bad on the iPad–possibly because there’s more screen to play with, I dunno. After a few days of having the OS on my devices, as I suspected, I am getting accustomed to the motion of app switching. Still though, given my druthers, I’d turn that off.

Also don’t like that the “Reduce motion” setting, buried under Accessibility, does not in fact reduce the animations. There’s no way to turn those off, as near as I can tell. That said, I did in fact turn that setting on because I’m also not a fan of the parallax of the backgrounds. See previous commentary re: don’t really need my phone making me motion sick, mmkay?

ETA: OH YES, I forgot to mention another thing about the parallax–apparently if you have parallax on, it impacts how you can center whatever photos you may be using on your lock screen. I noticed this on my iPad, where I’m using a photo I took of my signed Le Vent du Nord poster as my lock screen photo, and the centering of it went off once iOS 7 was installed. This problem went away once I turned on “Reduce motion”.

You can find this setting under Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion.

Functionality

And now that I’ve talked about what the OS looks like, here’s what I like about what it does.

I’m really digging the new task switcher. It’s a lot more elegant, and it’s super-easy to get rid of a task just by swiping upward on it.

The new “Today” screen is very nice. Its arrangement is intuitive and the info it shows is useful, particularly the new layout of notifications.

I haven’t had a reason to find the new control center useful yet, but I’m suspecting I will. Particularly the next time Dara and I go to Canada, at which point quick access to turning wifi off and on will be nice.

They actually didn’t break my Not Recently Played playlist this time. Well done there, Apple. I’ve complained before about this–though to be fair, when they’ve broken this before, it’s seemed like it’s always been variants of the same bug, i.e., if you try to use a “Limit” criteria on a playlist. My “Not Recently Played” playlist was previously trying to limit to 200 or 300 songs depending on how long I felt like making it. And since I turned off that criterion on the list some time ago, I honestly don’t know if the bug with it is still in there.

So far the things I don’t like are few. I’m vaguely miffed that they moved podcasts out of the Music app and off into their own thing. Presumably to free up real estate for iTunes Radio, about which I give exactly zero damns since I never use Pandora or Spotify–if I like music, I’m just going to buy it, and if I’ve bought it, chances are it’s already on my phone anyway.

And, while they haven’t managed to break my Not Recently Played smart playlist this time around as has happened on previous major revs of the OS, I did notice that there’s a visual bug involving showing the wrong album art for several of my smart playlists in general.

My personal jury is still out on whether they’ve managed to make the Maps app suck less. I did give it a test run to see how well it’d handle live walking directions, on a walk that took me about an hour. I did follow its directions successfully, but I also noticed lag time several times in how fast the phone caught up with my position along the route. More than once it gave me a spoken direction after I’d actually passed the spot in question.

Other Stuff

Plantes contre Zombies

And file this under category “never tried this in a prior version of the OS, but discovered it playing around with iOS 7 and thought it was cool”–just to see what would happen, I changed my phone’s language setting to French, and quite liked that you could do that on the fly. But what tickled me even more was seeing that both versions of Plants Vs. Zombies actually dynamically changed over to French, too!

What ultimately sold me on installing the OS on my devices were a couple of in-depth reviews, here and here–but also, just hearing from Dara and Paul that they were having positive reactions to it installing it on their devices at home. If you’re thinking about going for it, do go ahead and read the reviews first, so you can get an informed idea of what you’re signing up for.

Also, two other things I’ll mention that you’ll want to keep an eye out for. One is that there’s a potential vulnerability with the aforementioned lock screen, described here. I was able to reproduce the behavior it describes, though it does require you to be very quick to make it happen. On the other hand, I also noticed that I could not actually get to any applications in my task switcher which were not themselves accessible by the control panel. For example, I couldn’t get to either my Facebook app OR Echofon (the app I use for Twitter). So be on the lookout for this, be cognizant of what apps you’re running, and if you’re feeling paranoid about this particular thing, you might consider disabling the control panel.

The second thing I’ll mention is that if you’re concerned about privacy settings, go read this article about the various things you’ll want to make sure are OFF. In particular, eh, no, Apple, you really don’t need to know what places I commonly go to in my life.

TL;DR version

On the whole, I’m considering this a win, and certainly a less painful transition than going from iOS 5 to iOS 6 was. On the other hand, I’ve also got a reasonably new phone, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to install this on an older one. My iPad 2 does appear to be handling it well, though.

Drop me your thoughts in the comments on how the upgrade’s working for you!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Finally did grab Plants Vs. Zombies 2 for my iPad 2, and I’ve been playing the hell out of it, pretty much as expected. I was a little dubious going on, since this is a Free to Play game and the whole Free to Play concept does make me sort of make this face: o.O

That said, PopCap was swearing up and down that you’re supposed to be able to complete the game without having to make any purchases. So far, I can attest that this seems to be the case. As of this writing, I’ve completed the three main levels but haven’t unlocked the boss level yet.

So what then is different about playing this game vs. playing the original?

The Free to Play experience is a big one. You will find that a lot of the familiar plants you got for free on leveling up in the original game are now plants that you have to unlock. And by ‘unlock’, I mean, you can either buy them immediately to get them, or else you can play through to the point in the game to which you get to unlock them for free. I found this only slightly annoying–I DO love that Squash that whomps on zombies, I do love it so–and have so far been generally pleased at the pacing of when you get what plants.

Some familiar plants from the first game behave slightly differently than their first game versions, too, so keep an eye out for that. For example, the twin sunflower is no longer an upgrade to the standard sunflower–it’s its own plant. So you can’t plant it on top of a single sunflower.

There are also plenty of new plants, several of which are highly entertaining. I like the Snapdragon that spits fire a LOT, as well as the Lightning Reed.

And, of course, this game in theory has an actual plot (above and beyond OHNOEZ ZOMBIES ARE INVADING YOUR LAWN, that is). You’ve been recruited to come with Crazy Dave from the first game on a time travel jaunt to try to locate his missing taco, so he can eat it again! Because of COURSE Dave has a time machine, and of COURSE the whole point of this is to find his taco. It’s really rather adorable. Now how you get from this to zombies in Ancient Egypt, the Pirate Seas, and the Wild West, you got me! But who cares? They’re ZOMBIES and if you played the first game, you absolutely know what to do.

Be on the lookout for zombies with new attacks, too, based on whatever world you’re in at the moment. Ancient Egypt has Pharaoh zombies that can steal your sun, Anubis zombies that can generate new gravestones, archaeologist zombies with torches that can set your plants on fire, and zombies in sarcophagi which are real hard to take down. Over in Pirate Seas, you’ll find the zombies keep saying “BRAINS AHOY”, which totally made me giggle. And be on the lookout there for zombies carried by parrots who can fly over your plants, and the tiny zombie you may remember from the first game as being carried by the Gargantuars now being shot out of cannons. And in the Wild West, I’m deeply charmed by the Saloon Piano Player zombie, who, once he starts tinkling the ivories, gets all the zombies currently on the screen dancing. Also, two words: ZOMBIE CHICKENS.

Music-wise, many of the gameplay themes are familiar, yet with amusing variations and new instruments depending on which world you’re in. Listen for the squeezebox in Pirate Seas and the banjo in Wild West.

They’ve tweaked Crazy Dave’s appearance a bit, as well as the appearance of pretty much all of the plants, yet everything still looks generally familiar. And I like as well that once you finish playing a level proper, you can keep doing side branches of it with interesting puzzles in order to pick up more stars and keys to unlock yet more stuff.

Also: as near as I can tell the whole front-facing camera thing does indeed ONLY come into play if you want to add a photo to your player profile on game startup. Which I didn’t even bother to use. I just tried the UI just to see what it would do, and it gave me a message saying that the photo would only be saved to “this device”–which makes me think this feature is entirely unnecessary. For my money, they should have left it out in order to make the game available to generation 1 iPads as well.

On the whole though this game is definitely entertaining, and while the sheer fact that I’ve seen these game mechanics before does diminish the freshness a bit, nonetheless all the new additions are delightful. Especially the zombie chickens. Here’s hoping the game will be deployed out to other platforms and that a version will deploy to desktops, in particular. I totally want this thing on my Mac, and I want to give them money for their work!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

This one’s for any of my fellow Apple users out there who have a Mac running OS X 10.7.2 (the latest update of Lion), and an iPhone or iPad running iOS 5.

I’ve got an iCloud account set up to sync reminders between my devices and my computer. This is working beautifully between my iPhone and iPad, and the reminders are also showing up in iCal on my Mac. But the problem is, on the Mac, I cannot edit them. I can’t even click a reminder to mark it as done; I have to go over to one of the iThings and do it there.

Here’s a screenshot of what I see when I try to doubleclick on one of my iCloud reminders from my Mac!

This don't make no sense

spazzkat, who also has his Mac laptop and his iThings updated to the same revisions that I do, has not experienced this problem. However, the main difference I’ve been able to note between his system and mine is that he has a full MobileMe account, including an email address, that he set up to talk to iCloud. I don’t have a MobileMe account; I’ve got iCloud using my Apple ID, which is my gmail address, to log in. I would like to HOPE that this shouldn’t be causing my reminders to be showing up read-only on my Macbook, but hey, I’m QA–I know how theoretical functionality doesn’t necessarily line up with what the code is doing, even after it ships.

So what say you, fellow Mac geeks? Any of you experiencing this problem? Any of you know how to solve it?

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Before I go on Internet hiatus next week, it is only just and appropriate that I give some blogging space to my very first PAX this past weekend!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

As a Big Fish Games employee, it is my duty to inform you all that we’re having a massive sale of all our iPhone and iPad games this weekend–every last one of ‘em is .99 a pop. Go! Buy a few! You’ll be paying my paycheck, and hey, I’m FOR that. :D

I am personally very fond of Hidden Expedition: Amazon on the iPad (excellent soundtrack, fun plot, monkeys, and a dorky professor you have to find using clues left in his scattered journal pages), and Atlantis: Sky Patrol has some fun marble-shooty action going on, with a bit of retro, art deco sort of look to it. Drawn: The Painted Tower is gorgeous. And Azada is a nice family-friendly game that those of you with i-Devices AND kids might enjoy playing along with a youngster, since it’s all about various and sundry classic stories.

Search for Big Fish Games on the App Store, or, if you want a super-quick way to get to all of our i-games at once, you can find ‘em on our site right over here.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

So I’ve had the Shiny for a day or so now and am beginning to have thoughts about it.

Things I don’t like:

• The mail app has a preview pane I can’t turn off.
• My laptops USB ports are apparently not powerful enough to let the iPad charge when I have it plugged in for syncing.

Things I do like:

• The on-screen keyboard is a little weird, but I can work with it. Between that and a reasonable amount of screen space, I am fairly sure that I will be able to write on this thing, although polishing of format will likely still have to be done on the laptop.
• The smart cover is pretty nifty, and I think I chose well when I chose the brown leather one. It’ll look nicely natural as it gets more use.
• It is amazing how cold the back of the device feels compared to my laptop, especially if I am carrying them both from room to room. And it’s pretty cool having the thing in my lap right now as I write this post, and to not have heat radiating off of it.
• About half the apps I had put onto my phone are universal binaries that also work on the iPad, and of those, several of them look way nicer. The WordPress app, which I’m using right now, is a nice example.

I’ve been doing a bit of reorganization of my apps in iTunes, trying to determine which ones need to stay on the phone and which ones will move primary operation to the iPad. So far the book reading apps and the HD games are the big things I am moving over. And I am a sucker for those damn birds (SO ANGRY!) and zombies (brains), so I bought the HD versions of both of those games. I’m downloading a lot of Big Fish’s shiny HD releases too–as a proud Big Fish employee, I feel that is my beholden duty. :D I’ve played a bit already with Hidden Expedition: Amazon, which I’d previously played on the computer. But it looks REALLY good on the pad, and it also has a multiplayer mode in this version, where you can have two people on the same device searching for hidden objects at once, either competitively or cooperatively. I want to try that!

(switching back to the laptop)

It looks like the WordPress app has got some problems (it can’t handle HTML tags well right now and it seems to be stripping out all my damn quotes, which is not helpful), so I’m having to finalize this post via the actual web UI on my laptop. But that’s the fault of the app and not the fault of the iPad; I had the same problem using the WordPress app on my phone.

Anyway, still getting everything the way I want it on the device, but so far so good so shiny!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Something that has really come to light for me in the last couple of years is that I’m really, really, really tired of the “my choice of technology is better than your choice of technology” attitude so many of my geek brethren espouse. Whether it be “Linux is better than Windows” or “Macs are better than PCs” or “Open Source is better than paid software” or “my smartphone is better than your smartphone”, I have yet to see that this is anything more than the simple human tendency to divide up into camps and loudly proclaim how one’s camp is superior to everyone else’s.

And you know what, folks? When it comes to geek technology, this is really kind of silly.

When you get right down to it, no matter what operating system it runs, a computer is pretty goddamn awesome. So are smartphones–I mean, c’mon, you guys, we are all carrying around tiny computers in our pockets. And when I think about this, especially when I think about how computers used to be gigantic boxy things that would take up entire rooms, it’s even more amazing to me.

I’ve been thinking about this this week because I’ve gotten the expected amount of shit for the fact that I’m getting an iPad. But really, I’ve been thinking about it ever since a coworker of mine showed up at work preemptively expecting that the team was going to give him shit for having a Windows phone. That struck me. If you’re going around automatically expecting your fellow geeks to hassle you about the device you’ve chosen to purchase, that really takes a lot of fun out of having it. And it shouldn’t, because again, computers are awesome. And smartphones are just tiny computers.

So I would now like to take this opportunity to celebrate all technology, no matter who makes it. I invite folks to join me in the comments to express love of whatever technology you have and why you love it. I’ll start!

I love my MacBook because it’s clever enough to dual-boot between OS X and Windows 7.

I love Windows 7 because it’s a version of Windows that is not only not sucky, it’s elegant, doesn’t get in your face with the UAC dialogs, and able to play nicely with Bootcamp.

I love Linux because I’ve found it to be an excellent platform to write Python code on. Also, excellent for running our home servers at the Murk, and for playing Nethack on, and hosting my web pages and blogs!

I love Open Source because of healthy respect for the ethic of creating programs just because you love to code.

I love paying for programs I need or games I want because I myself work in the computer industry, and I love supporting my fellow geeks for their work.

I love Firefox because c’mon, FOXES, how can I not?

I love Safari because it’s fast.

I love Internet Explorer 9 because whoa, hey, a version of Internet Explorer that’s actually fast and compliant to recent web standards? Awesome! Well done!

I love my iPhone because it’s a tiny, tiny thing and yet it lets me do so much.

I love my nook because it lets me carry around an amazing number of books with me, and in one small sleek package.

I don’t own one but I love seeing other people’s netbooks because small, cute technology that can go toe to toe with bigger laptops is awesome.

I don’t own one but I love hearing from friends who own Android phones or Windows phones just because a friend saying “I have a toy and it does this really, really cool thing” is awesome, too!

I love flatscreen monitors because yay for occupying less desk space, not to mention no longer throwing radiation at my poor neck.

And I’ll save telling you about why I love my iPad after I’ve actually had some time to break it in. :D

Your turn, people! What technology do you love, and why? (And remember, this is not about ‘I love technology X because it’s not technology Y’–please, let’s not snark. Let’s make this a celebration of all things that are awesome. Thanks!)

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I got the news this morning: my and solarbird‘s iPad 2′s have shipped! ETA: this Friday! We haven’t decided on names yet, though, and this will clearly accelerate the naming schedule. Not to mention I’ll have to make a point of swinging by the Apple Store this week so that I can buy my iPad its own cover.

Meanwhile though I thought I’d expound a bit on what exactly I plan to do with mine, since Dara and I have been asked a time or two what we’ll do with them.

First and foremost, I plan to put Big Fish Games releases on it! I’ve been an avid player of our Mystery Case Files and Hidden Expedition games, and the iPad form factor is very well suited to the Hidden Object genre of casual games. In fact, I’m thinking I’ll probably enjoy them more on the iPad than I will on my laptop, since I just have to tap the screen to select the object rather than doing a mouse click. So that’ll be easier on my hands.

And I’ll play other games on it too of course–Angry Birds and Plants Vs. Zombies are obvious choices, but I also have a couple other games I’ve been playing on my iPad (a Mah Jongg game and a Kakuro game) that I’ve been enjoying, and I expect to enjoy them on the iPad as well.

Secondly, I want to see if it’s possible for me to write effectively on it. I already know I can thumb-type fairly well on my iPhone, but the tiny screen has proven to me to be less than ideal for how I work on a novel. I’m hoping greater screen real estate on the iPad will counteract that problem. Again, this will be a question of being easier on my hands. I’ve been very fortunate in my life to NOT have suffered carpal tunnel yet like so many other folks my age who’ve worked in the computer industry, and I figure any preventive measures I can take to keep avoiding that problem will be wise.

I also figure that it’ll be a better writing device than the laptop for when I go to conventions or something, such as the forthcoming Norwescon. It’ll be more portable, and last a lot longer on battery life, and shouldn’t heat up like my laptop does.

Third, I fully expect to use it as a reading device, despite the fact that I’ve also got the nook. I do have a small number of books I’ve purchased from Amazon as well as a whole lot of PDFs, neither of which are easily readable on the nook without going through a bunch of hoops that I don’t wish to go through. And, if for whatever reason my nook breaks or something, I can read my B&N books on it as well with the nook app.

Fourth, if I find it’s not a good writing device, I will probably shift to using it to monitor Facebook and Twitter and my RSS feeds and such, while segregating the laptop to be writing ONLY. The idea here would be to encourage myself to have a mental space of “if I’m on the laptop I’m writing, DAMMIT, so no looking at the Internet”.

Fifth, I fully expect to use it to watch videos, perhaps on airplanes or trains or something. I do have some Torchwood I need to get caught up on, and now that I’ve been clued in to the wonders of Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital combo buys for movies, I expect I’ll have a few more interesting digital copies of movies showing up in my library. (Russell Crowe leads the way, AS HE DAMN WELL SHOULD, with The Next Three Days. XD )

A lot of this is, I grant you, perpetuating the whole idea that “bah, iPad users are just consumers of content!” (An attitude which annoys me, as I’ve already ranted about on this blog; after all, us creative types need people to consume and appreciate our content, so it is not at all nice to snark at people who do so.) On the other hand, a lot of this is also stuff I already do on both the iPhone and the laptop, including my own creative output. The overall idea here is going to be finding out whether the iPad will serve me as a better device than the laptop does, or what. And all in all, I expect to enjoy the hell out of it!

And I’ll see if any other amusing things to do on the iPad present themselves. For example, spazzkat has been overjoyed with the Garage Band app on his iPad (he’s got the original model), and has had great fun creating little musical compositions with it. (Take that, ‘iPad users are only consumers of content’ people. ;P :) )

iPad users who may be reading this, tell me about anything awesome you’ve done with your devices! Especially if you’ve found ways to be creative with them, and what apps you’ve found that let you do that!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.