Search for the name on the app store.

This post is being typed in the iPad Wordpress app. The keyboard is superb in my opinion.

I also got the Apple case which should offer some protection.

I am looking now for apps designed for the iPad as iPhone sized ones don’t scale well in my opinion. They work okay in a small window centred on the screen.

I am also waiting for the book store to carry some more, varied, titles. Perhaps I have unusual tastes.

Recommendation : Go buy one ( an iPad that is).

When the Air launched opinion was devided; Many praised the refreshing lightweight design. Others complained about the lack of features (many argue that these features are never, if hardly, used – including myself).

I purchased the Macbook Air at launch and have used it at home ever since. At the time I reasoned that my main usage was internet browsing and email and this has been the case ever since. I have fired up Front Row a couple of times and used iWork occaisionally. Of course I store my pictures and music on the Air and sync to the iPhone and iPod units I own.

I often think of how Apple products can be improved, “what can they possibly do to improve this or make it more desirable?”

A year ago I wrote “The Air is so pure – so esential that everything else seems excessive” and yet I consider the iPad  to be the next evolutionary step for the Air.

Apple have minimised the Air hardware further to the point where the physical keyboard has gone along with the USB port, and the video out port. In terms of aesthetics the iPad represents an improvement over the Air being effectively the screen and enclosure with minimal switches and ports.

For the things I do with my Macbook Air the iPad would meet 80% of my needs. The only reason I cannot get rid of the Air is that I need to be able to sync the iPad with something. If I could backup the iPad to, say, a time capsule I could just get by with that. Once sync’d I could download music directly and transfer photos directly to it.

In it’s current spec the iPad will be a companion device. Perhaps in the future via the cloud or some other storage solution I could use the iPad as my only computer with a sync system over the air to my iPod etc..

When I saw the new Apple Magic Mouse it immediately struck a cord. Just from the pictures I knew it was a beautiful product. The functionality was of interest but it was the design that appealed most.

In reality the mouse is even better. The picture above shows the mouse in its clear plastic case. Yes this is really how it comes. Once out of its case and on the desk it looks like a building of the future.

It is comfortable and the multi touch features work really well.

As I type I keep casting a sideways glance at the mouse. I imagine if a car our house were designed like this.

Having recently carried out a Time Machine backup all I needed to do was to connect an Apple DVD drive to my MacBook Air and start the installation.

The software installed in about 40 minutes.

As the whole point of Snow Leopard is refinement and performance improvement, I took some measurements before and after upgrade.

On my MacBook Air 1.6GHz Rev A (Standard) laptop I saw improvements of up to 80% in some of the more common tasks. Just as important was the disk space I recovered – in my case nearly 4Gb (9%).

Using Snow Leopard I am noticing lots of small improvements and aesthetic changes. One example is when I took a screen-shot of the table below and cropped it in Preview – I saw size details as I selected the area to crop to.

This upgrade is like having a Porsche tuned and upgraded with modern materials.

Highly recommend for all Intel Macs.

Along with their refined design reduced to the essential I feel that by offering a limited product range I can clearly focus on what’s essential for me. Less choice = greater clarity.

So, at the WWDC ‘09 next week I hope that they mainly update existing products and not introduce too many new things.

Netbooks have cramped keyboards, small screens, “junky” hardware and bad software, said Tim Cook, chief operating officer of Apple, during a fiscal second-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday 22 April 2009. They don’t offer the “consumer experience” that Apple wants to offer through its Macintosh hardware.

Via Macworld UK.

… I think they have forgotten that they already make the best Netbook available.

I am proposing that the MacBook Air is that machine.

For those who don’t already know the MacBook Air is designed as a wireless ultra-mobile computer. Like a Netbook, it does not have an internal DVD drive. Apart from that it functions like any other Laptop.

If you compare one Netbook; the Samsung NC10, with the Air you will see many similarities but the Air scores higher in the areas that count i.e. Screen size, RAM, and Aesthetics.

The only positive for the NC10 would be it’s cheap price, but then a Peugeot is cheaper than a Porsche.

In a couple of months I will have owned my MacBook Air for a year and I can honestly say that no other laptop (or desktop) has ever delighted me so much. Well perhaps the original 512k Mac and Cube I owned come close.

Why am I so satisfied? What is it that ‘delights’?

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Air is a thing of beauty. Beautiful to look at, beautiful to handle, and beautiful to use.

I use it at home. The furthest it travels is a few metres from a desk to the sofa or bed. Most of the time it rests in a white InCase sleeve. The single USB (lack of more) has never been an issue for me. I occaisionally transfer photos or sync my Nano or iPhone but never seem to do more than one thing at once. I use the headphone jack now and again but never the video out port. Even this could be removed as far as my usage goes.

The Air is so pure – so esential that everything else seems excessive.

Spend a few hours with Apple Inc. products and you will really start to appreciate the thought that goes into the design.

Recently I purchased a white iPhone 3G and have been impressed with the quality and design of the hardware and the software.

I like the colour white so quite often I place my iPhone face down on the table in order to look at the back (BTW the back of this phone is “better than the front of other phones”).

As I looked at the phone’s back I considered the design and the shiny Apple logo. It then occurred to me that I could use this logo area to take a self portrait.

I could see my face in the logo and took a picture. When I checked the results my face was framed perfectly.

I reckon that Apple deliberately chose this design in order to support self-portraits.

What do you think?

Having been a dotMac subscriber in the past I had, like many, allowed it to lapse. Luckily Apple retained my ID so that when I bought my MacBook Air I was able to reopen my dotMac account (I actually got a deal from the Apple Store that reduced the cost of dotMac).

Having said all of that I was never very happy with what dotMac gave me. I liked the email address I got and used the web mail feature from a PC at work. The other features I just didn’t use because of my circumstances (Mac at home – PC at work).

Bookmarks didn’t sync from my Mac to a PC via the web and the calendar from the dotMac home page was a static display.

Now that MobileMe has been introduced and has replaced dotMac my usage is slowly rising (When I get my white iPhone it will really make sense).

Now at my PC, using the beautiful web interface, I am able to manage my contacts, calendar and mail and find that when I get home everything is synced.

Obviously when I update items on my Mac at home these changes show up at the PC. I have even added a photo to my MobileMe gallery and am planning to try-out the iDisk feature.

In future when I am not at my Mac (or PC) I will rely on my iPhone but for now I will have to be content with a beautiful, and now useful, solution to organising my life.