Over a Candle

My iPad 3G arrived two hours ago. I have already started the business of bringing over music, videos, photos, and apps from my MacBook. Actually, I have most of what I need. Now I just need to decide which apps I really want to use on this platform, and which I will leave just on my iPod (because they aren’t really optimized for the iPad).

I’ve already taken pictures and imported them into my iPad.

I just downloaded the Flickr App which will allow me to upload to Flickr and then cut and paste the address from Safari. See?

The keyboard dock really makes writing a post easy. And using the touch screen already feels natural. Indeed, using the iPad in the keyboard dock, while interfacing with the screen using swipes seems like the most obvious way to interact with it while typing a blog post.

Now I have to run to a meeting. But two hours into having this, and I’m already in love.

Sad, isn’t it?

Addendum:

This didn’t go up when I first wrote it. I had to run to a meeting, and I forgot how to upload posts using this App. (I haven’t used it since last summer. Now I expect to use it more.)

I can already tell, as I walked around with this over the last couple of hours, that this will be much more convenient for casual computing while I’m out and about. I may notice problems after I use it for longer, but so far… This is a lot of fun.

It just works.

It’s been a busy couple of days. Watching live blog updates on Apple’s announcement of the new iPad, blatantly ignoring the political theatre that is the State of the Union, and then making a decision to not wait for an iPhone any longer. So much to do, so little time.

Yes, I’m interested in the iPad. I can already think of certain uses for it. For instance, the iPod Touch I took to Ireland last summer was perfect for many things. It’s the perfect size for a pocket. It allowed me to check the web, email, and get a currency converter (among other things). But the one thing where it fell flat was text entry.

I didn’t mind the onscreen keyboard for emails and the like, but trying to type an entire blog post on it was usually more time consuming than I liked. I could do it, mind you, and I got really accustomed to the on-screen keyboard. But pecking out an entire post with just my thumbs got to be too much, and I gave up.

The iPad helps that problem immensely. With both a bigger on-screen keyboard and a keyboard doc option, it would make text entry a lot easier. I can certainly see other uses for it, and I am very likely to get one after they are released.

I do feel badly for Apple. With the hype and anticipation leading up to this announcement, I can’t imagine what they could have released that would have lived up to it. (Well, maybe if they had announced a cure for cancer. )

Still, what I really wanted from that announcement was some indication that I could get an iPhone this year. Had the iPad come out for Verizon as well as AT&T, for instance, I might have had some hope that I could get an iPhone in this coverage wasteland that is the upper midwest.

But those hopes were dashed. So yesterday I went out and finally bought an HTC Hero, which runs on Google’s Android OS. I felt a little guilty doing it, but I was getting desperate for a new phone.

Now that I’ve had the Hero for a little over 24 hours, I think I’m ready to share my initial impression of it.

It took a bit of getting used to, after using the iPod Touch, but I’m really liking the Hero. One nice feature are the widgets. Widgets allow you to access the functionality of apps without having to actually start the app itself. They run in windows on the screen of the phone, giving you instant access to weather, music, calendars, Twitter, Facebook, and more. The widget scheme is handy, though I’m worried about battery usage, so I don’t leave too many of them up and running.

Apps are accessed through the menu at the bottom of the screen. You can put a shortcut to an app you use a lot on the screen itself. This is a shift for me from the iPod, as I’ve gotten used to all the apps being on the iPod screens. But it’s handy, as I only need shortcuts for those apps I use often.

Also, there is a notification scheme that tells you when you’ve gotten an email, a text, or a voice-mail. A small icon at the top of the screen shows you that something has happened, and a quick swipe down pulls down a menu showing you the different things that have happened. A quick touch takes you to the right program.

I’ve only had one phone call so far, but the quality was very good. The on-screen keyboard has physical feedback to help simulate the feel an actual keyboard. It’s not the same thing, mind you, but it’s a nice touch (no pun intended).

So far the only thing that really annoys me is that the touch screen is not quite as sensitive as I’d like. Sometimes I find myself having to tap several times to get the input recognized. This is something the iPod Touch does very well, so maybe I’m spoiled.

I also wish that the phone would sync with a Mac out of the box. Getting my contacts and calendars into the phone is the one thing I really was getting frustrated about with my Palm Centro. (The close connection between Palm and Macs was what had kept me buying Palm products for so long. With that gone, there was no real reason to stay with them.)

Missing Sync, a good third-party app, gives me this functionality (available for both Android, Palm, and many others). Except for my calendars.

Missing Sync is in beta for Android, and it won’t sync repeating events with exceptions (like all my classes that meet for sixteen weeks, with the exception of Spring Break). So most of my events didn’t sync. Then I noticed that none of my nonrepeating events synced either. I’m still trouble-shooting that. A friend of mine has suggested he might have a solution, and I’m hoping he does.

Still, the struggle over the calendar is something I was already having with my phone, so it’s not really a loss. And if I can get it working, then I’ve already got a vast improvement over my previous phone.

I’ll be curious to see what I think about the phone after the next week or month or year, but after the first day, I’m very happy with my purchase.

I can almost forget that it isn’t an iPhone. Almost.