Nibbling the Apple

    I have given up and given in. I am now the proud owner of an ipad2. I even took a day off from school to be home when it was delivered. And I don't take days off easily so you can tell it was quite an event.

     As usual when I over-plan something, things went awry. Scheduled for a Thursday delivery (remember that day off?), the pad came on Wednesday. With a little scrambling my darling daughter was there to accept the handoff. But I still stayed home the next day to meet my new little friend.

    Getting set up was not too hard since I have had an iphone for some time. Get it on the network, set up mail, and GO! I figured I would sync everything and see what turned up. The first thing I noticed was that the phone apps do go to the pad, but start out small, centered in the pad screen the same size as the phone screen. There is a 2x button to the bottom of the pad and you can expand the app to fit the larger screen. But it is a fuzzy resolution when you do. Most of the time this won't bother me. I watched a 17 year old behemoth TV in the bedroom until last week when it died. I thought the DirectTV guide screen was supposed to be soft focus. What a surprise on the new TV!

     Then began the process of filtering what I wanted to keep on the pad vs the phone, along with sorting and grouping into files. I highly suggest that if you haven't filed your apps on your iphone or ipad you do it quickly. It's very simple: hold your finger on an app until all of them wiggle. Then drag to move one type of app, such as a game, over the top of another game. They will blend together into a file and suggest a name for the file based on the two apps. You can, of course, give the file your own custom name. You can also drag from screen to screen. For those of you as OCD as I am, you can even alphabetize your files. Once finished, you can easily locate even the most obscure apps, especially if you have a file marked "Obscure Apps."

     After filing, I started looking through itunes to download some must haves and to upgrade some of my old phone favs. I spent most of my bucks on Pages, the mac word processing app. At $10 it was a bit pricy, but I know I will want to do some real work occasionally. It's also easy to use. Even printing was a dream. Because I have a wireless printer on my network the pad automatically found it and printed happily away.

     Next up was Garage Band. My daughter, an existing Mac snob, tsked me and said it wasn't that great. But I think it's really cool to be able to play virtual instruments since I can't play any real ones. Air Guitar or Air Drums just won't cut it anymore. And I've almost figured out Heart and Soul!
     I also felt the need to get the newer ipad apps to replace some of the iphone ones. Those Angry Birds just look soooo much angrier in HD. Same with Yoga. Well, actually, they looked more peaceful.

     Then I went off grid. One of my big issues (along with the rest of the non-Apple world) is that the istuff doesn't do flash. No facebook games! But there are some apps which allow a parallel version to run. The ones I hear most about are Skyfire and Cloud Browse. But both are pay as you go and can get pricy. I had also heard about iSwifter and decided to give it a shot. It is free, and although it asks for a purchase, for now at least, you can keep it free if you choose.  There is a good video on it at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVIy6XeapkM.



It does work, but just as the video says, it's clunky. I won't be playing any of my timed FB games on it, but it works just great for things like slots. Another plus: Hulu movies look great on it. No problems at all.

     BFF Patti, an old hand on the ipad, also weighed in on apps for me. She had already been the final tipping point for my joining Words with Friends earlier that morning, challenging me to a game at 5:45 AM. Several friends had tried to get me interested but I had declined. But that early in the morning when the caffeine had not kicked in I foolishly gave in. Now I face a number of challengers wanting to take me down. And it's only been ten hours! Too much pressure!

     She also showed me iBooks, Scramble, and iFarkle. I showed her Mummy's Treasure and Cat Physics. You'd think we had better things to do, huh? But summer's coming. And teachers will have a life once more. There'll be time for a much bigger bite from that apple.