iPad is in the House!

WARNING: This post may be a little on the geeky side. I've done tech for the last 30 years, and am told I no longer know how to not use geek-speak, so bear with me, and Google the TLAs and FLAs for more in depth understanding.

As you already may know, Misti got an iPhone for Christmas, and I've been very impressed with how much it has become part of her every day life. She uses it as much or more than I use my Blackberry Bold. I have been very impressed with the app selection (particularly all the FREE ones) and Apple support (although getting the WiFi to work consistently has been an ongoing problem). 3G connectivity has been working fine, and she has an unlimited plan, so hasn't missed the WiFi much. I got an iPod Nano as my 5 yr commemoration gift with Akamai, so I have also tasted of at least some of the cool iPod content. I really like the Nike+ pedometer app as well.

KK got her new iPad WiFi/3G today. We installed the iTunes update, synced the iPad, and were off and running. We activated the 3G unlimited data access plan with ATT with amazing simplicity. The smoothest device activation on a cellular data plan I have ever seen! Then of course we HAD to do the obligatory speedtest.net visit. Turns out "they have a App for that" I think we may end up saying that quite a bit. With WiFi on, using our Comcast 12 Mbps broadband and a Netgear N router, we clocked 8531 kpbs D/L and 2456 kbps U/L. With ATT 3G, we clocked 1772 kbps D/L, and 355 kbps U/L. That's at least twice as fast as the speeds I got (from same location) with my Sprint 3G USB (Novatel) on the laptop - go ATT! No wonder Misti isn't worried about fixing the intermittent WiFi problem.

Kristi's excitement grew the more she explored. She loaded the iBooks app, and looked at the movies available for rent or purchase on iTunes. Then we decided to try the Netflix site. We have been able to watch Netflix (powered by Akamai now ;-)) on just about every computing device in the house (Wii, laptops, desktops, iPhone, and the Theatre+ HD from Seagate that my brother Bryan helped us get with his employee discount last Christmas), so we went to the site and tried it. Up pops guess what, yep, another App. So we downloaded the Netflix app, and were able to immediately stream an season 4 episode of Bones, and also tested a movie (Julie and Julia). Playback was smooth and flawless, with NO buffering. Website browsing was also lightning fast as we tried gmail, facebook, etc.

All was going just peachy, until she tried Google Docs. The read-only nature of her book on gdocs was a disquieting and tearful event. Apparently, the mobile browser "Safari" that ships with the iPad does not support a key HTML attribute "contentEditable" which Google Docs uses:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Docs/thread?tid=621ad46f8aa70336&hl=en

http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/technotes/tn2010/tn2262/index.html#SAFARI_ON_IPAD_READINESS_CHECKLIST-6__USE_TEXTAREAS_INSTEAD_OF_CONTENTEDITABLE_ELEMENTS

This setback took a lot of wind out of her sails, as one of the key reasons she got the iPad was to be able to use Google Docs on her writing for her upcoming novel "Eye". I did some quick research on the subject (I too was very surprised that this did not work already, and found the limitation noted in the Apple Developer notes, and several blogs. Luckily, I found references to an App in iTunes store called "Office2 Pro" that looks like it may do the trick, but only time will tell. Sounds a little buggy at present.

All in all, the device is very sleek, and will work very well for consuming media in many formats, and may eventually be a laptop killer when the office productivity apps are ready for prime time.

Now then, what does all this have to do with the theme of this blog? Well, there's an App for that! Actually, several. My favorite is the "LDS Music" app, which allow you to have the hymns and primary children song book (words and music and graphics) with you on the iPad. Having the free www.lds.org internet version of the scriptures is pretty awesome too. Imaging being able to fully prepare a lesson for sunday school, priesthood, or primary from any location or at any time, including the online reference to all Ensign, New Era, Friend, and other gospel library resourses. Imaging being able to show the latest lds.org videos at church from your iPad hooked to a library TV. Any where access to www.mormonsmadesimple.com is pretty good for missionary work as well, to explain the LDS church in a non-threatening third party perspective with simple illustrations/animations in a video format. radio.lds.org is also highly recommended!

Podcasts on a variety of interesting LDS subjects are available as well. My favorite so far is the History of the Hymns.

I'll be trading up from my Blackberry to an iPhone very soon now. We will save $15 a month on the difference on the data access plans from ATT (as if that were the only incentive). Blackberry's App Store is growing, but will have a long way to go to equal what I have seen on the Apple App store.