Tuesday, April 06, 2010

I-Paddling


Working on an iPad is all new, a bit like paddling in an unfamiliar canoe. Sometimes it's an easy downstream flow. At other times, it is a hard paddle or even requires one to get out and portage across rough landscape. Often there are unexpected and hidden obstacles. This thing is elegant, delicate, wicked fast, exciting, exasperating, lovable, hateable, all in all quite an adventure!

The thousands of apps are exciting and fun. I've downloaded some books to take traveling, some wonderful kid stuff and musical magic for Desmond, an especially elegant word processing app. My photos have never looked lovelier, and music sounds great! We can watch movies at the tap of as finger, or surf the web to our hearts content! The screen quality is superb, speed is astounding, and multi-finger pad is magical.

BUT... Or maybe I should say AND... it is strange. There is no "desktop". The glass keyboard is so sensitive that I make a million errors, and correcting them is not as easy as I'd like. Since the camera card download is not out yet, the only way to get photos is via a computer or laptop. This may put a serious crimp in my travel blogs! So if I were to try to get my photos from Daniella's laptop, say, the iPad would probably upload all of her 12,000+ photos, taking hours to do so. (Well I've figured out how not to have that happen!) My best hope is to find an Apple store in Berlin so that I can buy the photo card in late April, as Apple promises. Otherwise,??? Had a hard time figuring out how to remove stuff I don't want on the iPad. No desktop, no trash can. But I'm slowly reading through the manual and discovering the huge range and depth and ability of this little device.

I'll get it! I like the thrill of figuring out solutions. I love this iPad, despite it's bumps. Bear with me on the travel stuff -we'll get there!

(random photo from the web above)

1 comment:

The Medical Roundtable said...

Kim... I read through all of your current blogs ending with this one... sounds like a wonderful trip! My mother grew up in Frankfurt from age 2-18 before my dad brought her to the US in the early 60s. Turkey should be exciting - let me know if you go for the Turkish massage, I did when I was about 21 and it darn near killed me!

Love your posts about the iPad... did you consider getting the keyboard dock for it since you're doing so much typing? And there is a photo dock as well available now:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/accessories/

As for your email, is there a way to make a "group" and use that for your mass email?

I just made a 10inch 2 lb "hackintosh" out of a Dell Mini - it doesn't have the cool factor of the iPad, but its a full blown mac operating system in a Netbook so that works very well for my travel - and all for $300...

Looking forward to more posts - my mom would love the textile museum as well, she still sews gorgeous dresses for the granddaughters!

Much Love - Tony