Tag Archives: ipad

More on Apple TV

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I’ve written about Apple TV before, but I think it’s a subject that bears revisiting. There’s a lot of people who could get a huge bang for their buck with this unit, just like I’m doing.

Do you have an HD television?

Do you have a home WiFi network?

Do you have a Netflix subscription?

Do you have one or more iOS devices such as an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad?

Do you have a computer with iTunes on it?

If you’re answering yes to these questions, go immediately to your local Apple retail store and get Apple TV. Here’s a few scenarios describing how I use mine.

Netflix Instant Watch. If you’re still fishing red DVD envelopes out of your mailbox every few days, wake up! With your DVD-in-the-mail subscription you also get unlimited streaming. There’s thousands of movies and television shows for you to choose from. And while the selection isn’t everything you could possibly want, it’s plenty large enough to be worthwhile. In fact, I find it so worthwhile that I opted for a streaming-only subscription to Netflix. No more DVDs for me. What do I do when I want a just-released blockbuster that isn’t available to stream on Netflix? Read on.

Have you seen the latest viral Youtube video? Of course you have. But wouldn’t it be nice to watch it on TV so you could enjoy it with your friends and family? Definitely. Apple TV does Youtube. (Incidentally, the Honey Badger is my animal spirit guide.)

Supposing I’m going to hang in the kitchen, cooking or doing dishes, and I want some music? I can reach into my pocket, pull out my iPhone, fire up my favorite music and AirPlay it right to my TV and out it comes through my surround sound speakers. If a clunker comes up on random? I can use the phone to skip it. Or pause it or whatever. And if my phone rings? The music fades out for me to hear it, then comes back up once I’m done talking. Remote music through the entertainment center speakers is a thing that also works with my iPad and with my computer. I think the phone is just handier.

Netflix streaming and YouTube are fine and dandy, but what do you do on a Friday night when you really want to see that hot movie just released for home video? In a bygone era, you’d have to drive to Blockbuster (hope you get there early and remember to return it on time). More recently, you could (if you had the foresight to do so) put it on your Netflix DVD queue and hope it arrives on time. I suppose some people just go to a Redbox machine or something. Me, I rent from iTunes. Yeah, it’s like $3-$4. But it works beautifully, I don’t have to leave my couch, there’s nothing to return and no late fees.

Remember when home WiFi was a new thing? And laptops didn’t all come with WiFi radios inside them? I remember having to convince people that the addition of WiFi into their homes would make their laptop so much more useful. I feel the same way now about Apple TV. It makes things like your Netflix subscription and your iOS devices much cooler than before. And for only a Benjamin!

Some will want to point out that Apple’s not the only game in town. Roku and Google TV and others are in this market as well. I don’t think any of them have gotten it just right, though. Apple’s is the solution I recommend.

Dark side of the iPad

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So I’m really digging the new iPad. But this post isn’t about how much I love it or how much better it is than its competitors. It’s about the things I’m struggling with. This, ladies and gents, is the dark side of the iPad.

1. It still annoys me that the screen gets all smudgy. It’s true that you only notice it when the iPad is sleeping, but it still bugs me. And Apple didn’t include a cleaning cloth in the box with it. I might have to invest in one. Or become less fussy about it.

2. I’m still searching for the perfect way to keep up on all my blog RSS feeds. I’ve made the switch to Google Reader on my laptop so that I could utilize the better RSS apps on the iPad. (Almost all of them are front-ends for Google Reader.) But I am still not 100% happy with any of them. I’ve tried Reeder and it’s ok. I’ve tried Flipboard and it’s nice, but still requires me to go to it rather than it notifying me that new content is there. Couldn’t they do little badges on the icon or something? Still, I think I’ll survive it.

3. I got hit with an unexpected iTunes DRM restriction yesterday. What I tried to do was play an iTunes-purchased movie on a TV through the VGA adapter: No go. “Display not authorized” was the message I got. Weird thing is, it works perfectly when streaming through my Apple TV as opposed to using the VGA adapter. What’s surprising about this restriction is that it’s the exact kind of thing that never happens. Apple’s DRM ecosphere is pretty invisible for the most part. Not in this case. I may write Steve about it.

4. My efforts do do more and more of my personal computing on it is stymied by the software keyboard. It’s a miracle of engineering, but I can tell people on the internet that they’re wrong at a rate of 80 words a minute on a hard keyboard. I doubt I’ll ever be that efficient on a smaller, touch-screen one. So I’m seriously considering getting a bluetooth keyboard to go with Mr. iPad. We’ll see.

iPad, teaching and video mirroring

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One of the reasons I elected to upgrade my original iPad to the iPad 2 is because of video mirroring. A lot of teachers feel the same way. For us, a basic requirement for any mobile computing platform is that we be able to carry it into a classroom and display it to our students. The original iPad was able to project certain kinds of content to an external display, but it wouldn’t do full-time mirroring, showing everything the teacher sees to the rest of the class.

iPad 2 seems to resolve this problem. All you need, according to Apple, is the optional HDMI adapter and you could plug your iPad 2 into a widescreen television. It even supports rotation.

Problem. While televisions might be standard equipment in primary and secondary education classrooms, they aren’t in higher ed. Instead we have podiums with computers hooked up to a data projector. These rigs don’t typically have HDMI plugs available to the instructor. They have VGA ones.

But does the new mirroring capability in iPad 2 extend to the VGA adapter and not just the HDMI one? It took a little digging to find out, but it does. So I ordered the VGA adapter with my new iPad 2.

I stil have one question, though. What about iPhone? I have an iPhone 4. I could plug it into the VGA adapter, as the iPad and the iPhone use the same 30-pin connector, but would it also mirror to my class? I don’t know. But I’ll find out next week when it arrives.

iPad made me switch to Chrome

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Kind of.

Through a crazy domino effect of techno-causality, a desire to do more of my browsing on the iPad led me to start using Google Reader on the MacBook Pro and Reeder on the iPad. Having made that switch, I saw little reason to stay with Safari. (I’d been in love with its RSS feed handling.)

Having three great choices–Safari, Chrome and FireFox–I decided to give Chrome a shot. One day in and I’m doing OK with it. One small annoyance so far is that it puts the tab close widgets on the right-hand side of the tab–very Windows-like. But if that’s the worst transition pain, I just might have a new browser for the long term.

HALP: RSS on iPad

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I’ve managed to get along very efficiently without a third party RSS reader on my MacBook Pro, thanks to the way Safari handles RSS bookmarks. But Safari on my iPad is a different story. Lifehacker readers recommend something called Reeder, but it turns out it’s just a front-end for Google Reader–something I don’t use. Others have suggested Flipboard, but after having looked at it for a few days I still can’t figure out what it actually does.

What I want is something as close as possible to my desktop Safari experience.

Are you using RSS feeds on your mobile devices? Let me know what you’re doing.

The Ars Xoom review

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No 4G. No Flash. No microSD capabilities. Half a dozen app crashes per day. Poor standards support in the browser. Email client “leave a lot to be desired.” Its weight and size is problematic for reading ebooks. A total of sixteen tablet-optimized apps available in its store. (Which is five fewer than the number of malware apps available in the Android store last week.) “Feels like a beta release.” “If you compare the Xoom against the iPad 2 today, there isn’t much of a case to be made in favor of the Xoom.”

Read it for yourself. There’s good stuff in there, too, of course.

Like Ars, I think that the Android platform is really promising. But it’s clearly not ripe yet.

Don’t judge

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Yes, I’m on my third iPhone–but I only ever got a new one when my contract provided for a subsidized upgrade. And I don’t even own a laptop or a desktop computer. (The MacBook pro belongs to work.) So don’t judge me when I tell you I’m planning to get the new iPad 2 next Friday.

Xoom

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Reviews are coming in for the Motorola Xoom and they’re pretty positive. I have to say, though, that it sounds a little bit like the Xoom is getting extra credit for trying hard and being the first tablet to even approach iPad quality. Judge for yourself. Here’s Scobble’s, Mossberg’s, Engadget’s and Ihnatko’s reviews.

Yay for being the first Android OS that doesn’t stone cold suck on a tablet! And isn’t it cute that Google’s actually trying to provide polished software just like Apple does? “A” for effort!

I guess we’ll have to wait a week to see, but my money’s on the iPad 2 for delivering the superior tablet computing experience.

Here’s an odd thing working in Android’s favor, though. Techies looking to polish their nerd cred will always choose Android over iOS (it’s OPEN man!), but I’ve chatted with one or two ordinary tablet-curious folks who expressed doubt about using an Apple iOS device. Because they ran Windows on their traditional computers, they wondered about compatibility issues. I literally had to remind them–hello!–that the Xoom and the Galaxy Tab don’t run Windows either. Is there some kind of special Microsoft stink on the Android brand that makes Windows users assume it’ll play better in their ecosystem?

Shazam! It’s like I’m from the future.

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So what’s Apple got cooking for its press conference next week Wednesday? I’ll tell you what is going to be talked about.

1. Developer preview of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. (Available as of today.)

2. The non-beta version of FaceTime for the Mac OS. (Available as of today.)

3. New MacBook Pros…

4. …With Thunderbolt I/O technology built into their mini display ports.

5. Changes to MobileMe services which will finally help explain that huge data center Apple built in North Carolina.

6. And one more thing: the new iPad. Faster. Lighter. Has cameras. Possibly even “world phone” wireless radios.