As a photographer one of the iPad accessories I was most anticipating was the iPad Camera Connection Kit. This kit consists of TWO adapters that connect right to the iPad's Dock connector. The first one is a standard SD (SDHC) Memory Card reader. You connect it to your iPad and then insert a memory card with images/videos on it and transfer those images to your iPad. No software to install because the iPad already has this ability built-in to the Photos App. The second adapter has a standard USB port on the oppositie end of the Dock connector. With this one you can not only connect your camera via USB and transfer images directly, but as my video above shows you can even use a Card Reader with it! This overcomes (although not as elegantly) the problem of wanting to use Compact Flash or other card formats.
These are exciting times in the publishing industry! The tools have never been better to get your word out. With the introduction of Adobe Creative Suite 5 and in particular InDesign CS5, my head is spinning thinking about all the possibilities. I can use one industry standard app to publish for Print, for the Web with NEW Interactive features and now more easily than ever to standard eBook Reader formats such as ePUB. There's also a lot of excitement around the Apple iPad. The beauty here is that I can use my new found publishing power and Apple's popular device to get my content in front of more eyeballs than ever.
The Project
As you may know I co-authored one of the best selling books for the iPhone, "The iPhone Book". I've been very happy with the success of that book and of course as soon as the iPad was introduced, many eyes turned towards me to question if I was going to write a book for this new device. While the project seemed interesting (and still is), I wanted to try something a little different this time around. I wanted the iPad Book to be an iBook on the actual iPad. All of my books are already being laid out in Adobe InDesign. So there's nothing new there, except there is something new there in terms of capabilities. The enhanced capabilities around the ePUB format and Interactive Document publishing beyond PDF. So I wanted to do two things: I wanted to get a sample out there of what an iPad book on the iPad and I wanted to experience first hand what it was like to create one from scratch using InDesign CS5. So I enlisted the help of my colleague at Adobe, Colin Fleming (eBOOK guru) and Colin gave me the inside scope and even some sample demo documents that he had put together. This was a great jump start and helped me avoid some stumbling blocks. Yesterday, I started my sample "25 iPad Tips" and today I have a FREE iBook that you can download right here.
The Making of my 1st iBook (ePUB)
The iBooks App on the iPad reads standard ePUB documents and Adobe InDesign CS5 just so happens to export them out directly. Great! There are some limitations that you have to be mindful in your document itself. These are limitations on the standard more so than of InDesign. For example, InDesign is an amazingly powerful page layout application that pretty much allows you do do anything you want on the page. However, ePUB has limitations on how the content has to flow to make it possible to have this single document on a multitude of different devices. I recorded this video to walk you through some of those things to look out for:
Downloading and Installing my FREE "25 iPad Tips" Book
The first step is to download my ePUB file here. Once you download the ZIP file, unzip it and you'll have a short readme.txt file and the actual "25 iPad Tips.epub" document. Open iTunes 9.1 and higher and simply drag the ePUB into the Library area of iTunes on the left side. It should now appear in the Books Area of iTunes and once you plug in your iPad via the USB cable, you can select it as a book to sync in the Books Tab in iTunes. Enjoy!
Sprint says come on over and use our 4G data card with your iPad. Now I get that this is just Sprints way of trying to get in on a good thing with their newly introduced 4G Case for iPad. Clever! However, it reminds of one of the biggest broken promises of 2009.
Last year (June 18, 2009) AT&T told us that iPhone tethering (the ability to use your iPhone as a data connection for your laptop or in theory iPad) was "coming soon". By soon most of us assumed that meant by the end of the year. Well 2009 has come and gone and now it's the later part of April 2010 and official iPhone data tethering support is no where to be seen. To make matters worse or to give us more of a rub, Apple announced and is about to ship the iPad WiFi+3G model, which again runs data on AT&T's network!
So AT&T let me get this straight…
You can provide unlimited data to iPhones. You can provide tethering support to every other smart phone you make. You can provide 3G data cards for laptops to anyone that wants them. You can even bring a relatively low cost, contract free data plan to Apple's NEW iPad, but you can't provide tethering support for iPhones yet? I don't get it! No one is asking for FREE tethering support. So chances are you're going to charge for it and because you're going to charge for it, it means that not everyone is going to use it. Is your "improved" network still that fragile? Really?
I have no love or hatred for AT&T. For the most part my service has been fine and I travel all over. I just wonder what's really going on here?
When I ordered my iPad, I actually ordered some accessories to go with it. They have been arriving piece by piece, so I thought I'd give you a look at the first batch. In the video above, I check out the iPad Dock ($29), iPad Keyboard Dock ($69), iPad VGA Adapter ($29), and the iPad Case ($39) by Apple. Of the accessories I've seen so far I would say that I like the Keyboard Dock the most. Although the iPad supports a bluetooth keyboard and I probably even have one lying around here, the thing you're still going to want to do is to prop up the iPad while you type. That's why the Keyboard Dock is great. It's a stand with audio out AND a keyboard specifically made for the iPad with buttons along the top that control iPad functions. Of course the one accessory I'm very anxious to check out is the Camera Connection Kit! As soon as it arrives it will be next up for review.
Check out my original iPad review here. Check out my 10 Must Have iPad Apps here.
Apple just took the wraps off iPhone OS 4.0, which is due out this summer for the iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 3G, iPod touch 2nd and 3rd generations. They are touting over 100 NEW Features. Here's a quick run down of many of the HOT new features with my favorites in bold:
Multitasking – Run Multiple 3rd Party Apps at once!
Unified Mail inbox – Finally!
App Folders – for better organization!
File & delete Mail search results
Search SMS/MMS messages
Web search suggestions
Choose image size in Mail messages
QuickLook
Bluetooth keyboards
In-App SMS
iBooks
Calendar Access in the SDK
Mail gets Threaded Responses, in App Attachment Viewing and Multiple Exchange Accounts
CalDav invitations
Larger fonts for Mail, SMS & alerts
Cell data only setting
Spell check
Persistent Wi-Fi
Gift Apps
Birthday calendar
Recent Web searches
Create Playlists
Top Hit in search
5x digital zoom
Nested Playlists
CardDav
Tap to focus video
Upload workouts to Nike+
Places in Photos
Home screen wallpaper
Wake on wireless
There will also likely be NEW iPhone's this Summer too!
IMPORTANT NOTE: No Multitasking on the iPhone 3G or iPod touch 2nd gen. Also no OS 4 for the iPad until FALL
The good news is that so far the iPad battery life is really good.However, there are some things you should be aware of when it does come time to charge it. When Apple introduced the iPad and subsequently put the specs up on their website, the first thing that jumped out at me was that they were specifically calling the fact that the supplied charger was a "10W USB Power Adapter".
The fact that they were announcing the wattage was an alert to me that the iPad had different power requirements than the iPhone and iPods. Typically if a manufacturer calls something out it's for a reason and I was right. So here's what you need to know:
