Mar 25, 2012 |
Another quick video using iMovie on the iPad – this time with a few of the more advanced features (not that the video itself is any more sophisticated than before, particularly). I think this is something I’ll probably get better at with time. But it’s fun playing with new toys.
The point is, the movie itself is not the main thing. Making it was.
But I feel like being able to blog, edit, publish, write and just generally do stuff (including serious work stuff) using the iPad makes the device more useful and less of an expensive toy.
Mar 22, 2012 |
Halfway through my first day using the iPad as my sole computer and seeing how that affects what I do and how I do it. Right now, I’m typing on the screen rather than using the Bluetooth keyboard, which is not ideal, but not a problem particularly.
I was concerned that there might be things that I would have to stop doing until I’m back on the laptop – but it hadn’t occurred to me that there might be things that I would start doing as well. But it immediately turns out that there are.
Mar 21, 2012 |
I’m toying with the idea of trying to do the work I do using only the iPad and an external keyboard. From the point of view of portability and convenience, it would be worth attempting.
There are a few workarounds I’ll have to adopt and I’m sure there will be some niggles (like not being able to Cmd-Tab my way around applications) but I think there’s very little I won’t be able to do.
I suspect some of the activities I do regularly (like blog posts) will take a little while longer than usual – at least at first, and I won’t be able to upload audio from my Zoom H1, video from my Flip camera or photos from my Lumix digital camera – but I can use my phone and the iPad itself for capturing media – and while it won’t be quite to the usual quality, I don’t think there’ll be too much of a trade-off.
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Sep 4, 2010 |
Photo of Jake ‘Andy Warhol’d’ on the iPad
I thought this would be a shorter blog post than usual. I wrote it on an iPad – and while that’s not as arduous as some people would have you think (“It needs a real keyboard!”) it’s a slower process than writing it on the laptop would be. I’m still getting used to it, in other words. But it wasn’t too bad. I’d say 40wpm rather than my usual 50.
But typing is not the only way to interact with digital media – and nor is taking a photograph.
One of the criticisms of the iPad as a device is that it assumes the user is a passive consumer. It’s advertised as a piece of technology on which you can read books, listen to music, watch movies, see photos and so on. “Lean back” rather than “lean forward” media.
But that’s not my experience of the device. In the less than 24 hours I’ve had my hands on one, I’ve done a lot of different stuff – and quite a bit of it has been creative and active. It’s all about the interface.
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Aug 25, 2010 |
Photo by mkorchia
In a new Wired magazine article called The Web Is Dead, Long Live The Internet, Editor in chief Chris Anderson (author of ‘The Long Tail‘ and ‘Free‘) declares the demise of the web browser in favour of dedicated apps on devices such as iPads and iPhones (no mention of Android handsets, then).
It’s an interesting article – or rather, the first half is a reasonably convincing and interesting article, and the second half is a slightly less interesting, less convincing one. But Anderson’s technologically determinismistic search for cause and massive societal, cultural and economic effect gets in the way – and he ends up saying little, which is a shame, because there’s actually a good point to be made here – though it is one I’ve sort of made before.
In short:
1) the internet is like electricity;
2) individual pieces of software that use the internet (browsers, email clients, iTunes, etc) are like appliances that plug into that electricity; and
3) you CAN dry your hair with a toaster, but it’s not the best tool for the job.
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