Hands-On with the New iPad (3 Gen)!

Having had the new iPad for a couple of weeks now, I thought that I’d share my experiences with readers of the Irish Apple blog – but, what is there to say that hasn’t already been written by the major blogs or tech sites? A cursory search will bring up a glut of “First Impressions”, and “Hands-On” reports from all the names in the tech industry – here’s Ian Osborne from Macformat, for example, and Andy Ihnatko, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times. Yes, the new Pad is everything that they say it is: a beautiful machine; fast, responsive, with a wonderful display, making the most of photographs, games, and videos.

The real beauty of the machine, however, lies in the actuality of the device itself. Back in 2010, when the iPad was first launched, Apple spoke of having created a whole new category – the reality of that claim is apparent to anyone who has spent a bit of time with an iPad. The screen size and clarity brings a host of Apps to life; from sketching or journaling to browsing the web or game playing – the iPad is by far the best device; but more than that: the iPad is the more appropriate device on which to engage with certain Apps.

Indeed, the iPad has barely left my side since I bought it: from having it by my bedside as an alarm clock, which displays time, weather, tweets, Facebook updates & rss feeds through Alarm Clock HD; checking all my Google Reader feeds with River of News; watching live news broadcasts from Al Jazeera, France24 & RTE News Now; to reading books with Apple’s iBooks or Amazon’s Kindle app. But lest one think that the iPad is just a device for consumption, it is much more than that: full office suites, blogging tools, handwriting recognition, websites on the fly – the iPad handles it all.

That, perhaps, is the secret of the iPad: more intuitive and less formidable than firing up a laptop – kids, for example, can operate the iPad instantly – and more reasonable than trying to accomplish tasks on the tiny iPhone screen – and more, the iPad is so easy to handle: swipe, touch, boom! You’re in and working, or playing!

 

 

(This post comes courtesy of iPad App Blogsy)

 

 

 

Apple’s Education Event

Intriguing post from Loop Insight : Look beyond the headlines?

We are all expecting announcements centred around textbook publishing, and third-level texts in particular. What if Apple uses this opportunity for One More Thing?

A 7″ iPad anyone? Competing with the Amazon Fire..? It’d be particularly handy for schoolkids/students; could be competitively priced…

Better tune in on the 19th for the definitive answer!

UPDATE: Andy Ihnatko hands-on with the Amazon Fire, here

Mike Elgan details Apple’s impending war against Amazon – introduces the notion of a possible iPad announcement…

 

UPDATE #2: More details, or “rumours”, if you will, are emerging about the Apple Event on the 19th – specifically, that Apple will introduce a Garageband for ebooks which will “allow authors to easily develop ebooks for iPad”. There’s no further scuttlebutt about a product announcement at the Education event, however, at least one report has it that the iPad3 will be introduced at a separate proceeding in February – see Boy Genius for further details

Obsolescence guaranteed?

Recently I’ve been having a few problems with my MacBook – the type of problems that are faced by many users – apps hanging, the appearance of the dreaded SBBD, performance slowdown, etc. Nothing unusual there, my MB is a late-2007, Core2Duo, 2gb RAM, 250Gb HDD, so due an upgrade – or replacement.

Yeah, I’d say most people would think of rockin’ down to their local Apple Store or Reseller and picking up an MB Air or Pro, maybe pass on the older model to a family member…but with the prospect of shelling out €995 for a base model MB Air I began to recall an article I read recently regarding planned obsolescence – the concept that, after a certain length of time, the relevant product will be of little use and will need to be replaced, rather than repaired. For those of us who are Apple owners, this state of affairs is very familiar! Every year a newer, better product – in 2012 alone, we’ll get (in order of appearance) upgrades to the MacBook Pro, an evolutionary iPad, upgrades to the MacBook Air, and possibly the fabled iPhone 5 just in time for the Christmas rush…and dare we even mention the legendary iTV, a 50″ version of which is rumoured to be in Jony Ive’s lair?

So, in these times of austerity do we need to dance to Cupertino’s tune?

The answer is probably fairly simple: anyone who can afford to throw a couple of grand at Apple every year or two, will continue to do so; for those of us mere mortals with constrained budgets, however, we may have to rethink our computer’s longevity. We will have to decide whether we can live without iCloud, multi-touch gestures, OS support. If the response is “yes”, then there are a number of options open to those with older Macs.

First up: Throw more Ram at your Mac. This is the ultimate ‘no-brainer’ – install as much memory as your Mac can handle, you will notice a significant change in your computer’s performance. Word of advice, though: for economy’s sake choose a third-party memory supplier like Kingston, or Crucial – Apple levy a hefty premium on memory chips – if you take your chances with ebay (and who hasn’t?), there are significant savings to be made on brand memory modules.

Next, big up your HDD: you can never have enough storage. It’s relatively easy to switch hard drives, video walkthroughs are everywhere on Youtube, for all models.

If you’re feeling very adventurous, you could add a Solid State Drive (SSD) to your Mac – though these drives are relatively expensive, they offer much better response times/performance than regular HDDs. Another option for those with laptop Macs is to remove the optical SuperDrive, replacing it with a SSD, while retaining a HDD in addition! The idea is to load the OS and applications onto the SSD, while keeping Documents, Photos, etc on the HDD.

For a detailed explanation, and other advice, see this article on Wired

All components can be obtained on eBay…

In other words, it may be worth spending maybe €500-€600 to revamp your old Mac and extend its life considerably, rather than an outlay of upwards of €1000 for the latest shiny offering from our favourite California provider..

(In the interests of full disclosure, I am intending to purchase the iPad, courtesy of Santa, when the upgraded version is released in early March!)