Category — Additional Information

Adam Engst of TidBITS has a smart piece on the demise of iWork.com, the never-out-of-beta sharing site for iWork files. Go read Apple Finally Puts iWork.com Out of Its Misery. It’s a good piece, but there’s this really smart observation at the end:

Put bluntly, Apple has never understood how to support collaboration, and technologies like iCloud and sandboxing seem to be headed in the opposite direction.

I think this is very true. iCloud does syncing, mostly, but it really needs to go beyond that. Other than the utility of storing and being able to re-download content purchased from Apple, and the usefulness of iTunes Match, Dropbox offers me more ease of use and functionality than iCloud. I can sync, backup, share and collaborate.

The TidBITS staff, including my co-writer Michael E. Cohen along with Adam Engst, Tonya Engst, Joe Kissell, and Matt Neuburg appear on The MacJury podcast. Host Chuck Joiner attempts to herd cats while discussing Apple’s March 7 announcements regarding the third iPad, iPhoto for iOS, the refreshed Apple TV, and iOS 5.1. You can hear or download the podcast, which is both interesting and thoughtful, here.

It’s my turn to be a guest blogger at Peachpit. I’m doing “5 Tips in 5 Days,” about the iPad.

Five iPad 2 Tips in Five Days: Tip 1 – Consolidate Your Apps into Folders

Five iPad 2 Tips in Five Days: Tip 2 – Stream Your Music and Other Audio with AirPlay

Five iPad 2 Tips in Five Days: Tip 3 – Set up an iPad without a Credit Card

Five iPad 2 Tips in Five Days: Tip 4 – Get ePub Books on Your iPad without Using iTunes

Five iPad 2 Tips in Five Days: Tip 5 – iPad Keyboard Tips Your Mother Never Taught You

My co-writer Dennis R. Cohen is blogging about the iPad over at Peachpit:

5 iPad 2 Tips in 5 Days: Tip 1 – Watch Out for the Camera Lens

5 iPad 2 Tips in 5 Days: Tip 2 – Clear Out Background Processes

5 iPad 2 Tips in 5 Days: Tip 3 – Video Is a Space Hog

5 iPad 2 Tips in 5 Days: Tip 4 – Be a VJ

5 iPad 2 Tips in 5 Days: Tip 5 – Print without an HP Printer

Dennis on iPad, Mostly Love, and Some Annoyances Abated:

I love my iPad and (most of) the apps on it. I qualify the app assertion because there’s one from Apple for which I have zero love (GameCenter), but can’t get rid of it and there are a couple I have because I need to refer to them when editing books about the iPad (FaceBook and Flickr).

You can read more at the link.

Over at Peachpit’s blog, my illustrious colleague Michael E. Cohen has blogged about the Top 10 Reasons I Sleep with My iPad 2.

10. Reading under the covers without a flashlight.
9. Netflix on the pillow is tastier than a chocolate mint.
8. Sleep-timer apps and my music library.

Read the rest here.

At Apple’s Big Media Event™ this week, Steve Jobs™ announced that iOS 4.2 for iPad will be released in November. If you’re dying to know what that version will bring to your magic slab of fun, Apple has posted a page listing the high points.

Aside from the features that we already know from i0S 4 on the iPhone, I’m most looking forward to printing, AirPlay, and on-page searching in Safari. How about you?

The New York Times has an unsigned op-ed piece today in which they say

Antitrust regulators are right to look into whether [Apple] is leveraging [its] clout to stymie the development of applications for its rivals, closing the door on competition.

One supporting reason? This:

[E]xperts estimate that Apple accounted for virtually all the roughly 2.5 billion app downloads last year.

Given that Android, Apple’s leading competitor in the app market, only started selling apps last year, this is disingenuous support for the op-ed’s argument at best. Even more so given the enormous inroads Android devices have made in the market this year.

And what the op-ed doesn’t mention is that the Times has a vested interest in having the Feds disallow Apple’s development standards: that way, the Times can use a set of cross-platform development tools to build their online apps for Apple, Android, and others, instead of devoting resources to building first class apps tailored for each platform.

I call shenanigans!

I had assumed, however foolishly, that taking screenshots on the iPad was pretty much the same as taking them on the iPhone.

It is, and it isn’t. You still use the Home and Sleep buttons. The sequence in which you press the buttons doesn’t matter, but the rhythm, so to speak, does.

1. Hold down either the Home or the Sleep button.

2. Press the other button—Home or Sleep, the one you’re not holding down, and release it quickly.

If you are successful, you’ll see a brief screen flash of white to alert you that you’ve been successful. If not, you’ve succeeded in putting your iPad to sleep, and haven’t managed a screen shot.

The screen shots will appear in the special “Saved Photos” album accessed via the iPad Photos application.

The conventional wisdom used to be that, to prolong battery life for portable devices, one should periodically (say, once a month) run the battery all the way down and then charge it all the way up. But battery life really isn’t why you may want to do a full discharge/recharge cycle periodically on your iPad.

Here’s what Apple says about the lithium-ion polymer battery used in the iPad:

Lithium-ion polymer batteries pack in a higher power density than nickel-based batteries. This gives you a longer battery life in a lighter package, as lithium is the lightest metal. You can also recharge a lithium-ion polymer battery whenever convenient, without the full charge or discharge cycle necessary to keep nickel-based batteries at peak performance.

Instead, the real reason to engage in a complete discharge/recharge cycle is to make sure that your iPad’s battery indicator is reporting the charge correctly:

For proper reporting of the battery’s state of charge, be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).

If your iPad charge indicator seems to be accurate, you don’t need to engage in battery charge-cycle voodoo: top off the charge whenever you like.