Unlike earlier iPhone OS devices however, the iPad only syncs over standard USB; it needs more power than that specification can deliver to actually charge. USB 2.0 only provides 2.5 watts for devices to pull in order to recharge their batteries.

The iPad’s power adapter (in the shape of USB; it looks like the old iPhone adapters, or like a mini MacBook power supply) provides 10 watts.

So unless your system’s USB ports were specially designed to put out 10 watts (and most if not all weren’t), you’ll need to charge your iPad using the supplied adapter, and not an iPhone one or a typical PC USB jack. It might take a lot longer to charge it from a standard USB port.

Fortunately, the iPad’s battery lasts a long time.

Location:Highland Pl,Monrovia,United States

Whaaa ?? This completely took me by surprise.. You can install this Mac OS X extension on your Macbook or iMac and use your iPad as an extra monitor.. what’s more, the iPad’s touch interface will work well with your Mac apps.. craziness…
Here is the link: ShapeServices

Thanks to Erica Sadun over at TUAW for a fine piece of reporting on the iPad…

If you have an iWork.com account and have uploaded any documents there, you can easily whet those documents into your iPad. Just login to your iWork account in Safari on your iPad and then open the document to view. There will be a button on the top right corner “Open in Pages” or Numbers/Keynote. Tap that button and voilà – the document gets downloaded into your Document Manager on the iPad. Couldn’t be easier. And you can send any document to iWork from your iPad already..

Reading on the iPad is quite a immersive experience. Here is the front page of WSJ as rendered on the iPad. It’s very close to what the print edition looks like.

The WSJ charges $17.29 a month for the full newspaper and archives. In the free version you only get today’s newspaper but with ads, like you see the Coke ad in the bottom left corner of the screenshot above.
Also, you get online videos with the articles:

That’s a screenshot of a video related to the article. Very cool..

USA Today meanwhile has a really cool iPad version of their print paper with a lot more pics and videos. Here is their screenshot:

As you see, it’s a very glitzy almost Star Trek version of the print newspaper. Very interactive and everything scrolls so smooth.. This app and the content is free with a small ad banner at the bottom..
Another favorite content app is the NPR app. This app has text stories as well as audio shows. Plus you can listen to any NPR station (local or remote) while you are reading the articles.
Here is a typical screen:

I am listening to the live stream of KPCC my local NPR station (shown at the strip at the bottom of the news stories. And here is a screenshot of the program list:

Pretty comprehensive. And very smooth delivery over wifi. I wonder how these will perform over ATT 3G.
Here is a shot of the reading experience:

You can close the news drawer at the bottom for more reading real estate.
So that’s the reading experience for news and newspaper on the iPad. Next article will look at the book reading experience..

Location:Highland Pl,Monrovia,United States

After waiting all morning, Ms. Brown delivered my iPad.. Unboxing and setting it up now. All synced up and ready to go..

So I decided to pre-order the iPad and skip the long lines at the local Apple / Best Buy Store… Maybe that was not a good strategy as the UPS guy has not yet show up and it’s already 11.26 am PST. Hmm, so while I am waiting for Mr. Brown to make an appearance I started planning my iPad plan for today…
Apps I am gonna try out first:
1. NetFlix
2. iBook
3. FaceBook
4. Safari
5. Mail
6. iWork Apps

Those are my most frequently used apps. And then to explore the new iPad App Store Category.. Already my iTunes is showing apps segregated by device (iPad Only, iPhone/iPod Touch Only and all 3)..
What is your iPad plan for today ?

There are rumors flying around online about a 10 inch subnotebook sized MacBook from Apple that has a solid state harddisk. But knowing the Rumor Distortion Field around Apple (like the REALITY Distortion Field around Steve) your guess is as good as mine.

Well, since Apple is taking it’s own sweet time to introduce solid state hard disk in their notebooks I decided to be proactive and try this myself.

I had a 1999 original clamshell Tangerine iBook that a friend of mine (thanks Jay) donated since he was upgrading to a more recent iBook. This clamshell is a 300 Mhz G3 with 192 Mb of RAM with a 6GB hard drive. Luckily it also has a Airport 802.11b network card. The hard drive was quite noisy when the iBook was turned on and the whole laptop heated up significantly. Also, the battery was dead having passed it’s charge cycle limit.

So I decided to replace the 6GB hard disk with a 4 GB Compact Flash drive.
continue reading "Build a Solid State CF based G3 iBook for $23!"

This is a great little DVD Player that can also play video’s stored in
your video iPod. For $250 you can get this 7 inch DVD player that has a
iPod dock. You can then view the videos stored on the iPod either on
the 2.5 inch iPod screen or on the 7 inch iLuv screen.
It also comes with car straps and a card ac adapter for viewing in the
car. Plays DVD, VCD, MP3 audio and of course iPod video files. And it
comes in Black or White. Read more about it on the product page at
http://www.i-luv.com/iLuv/product_info.php?products_id=286

According to some patent filings with the European trademark and design office, Apple recently filed designs of new iPod controllers. See the picture for some idea of what the next iPod Nano might look like. The first looks like a mobile phone while the second looks like a game controller.

There are some more which have a totally different controller. Seems like trackpads and some kind of joysticks. What gives ? Let’s wait and watch. Hopefully sometime before Christmas this year we should get some new iPods.

In one word: this machine ROCKS ! I mean R-O-C-K, rocks !

By the way, I coined the term ‘iiMac’ to mean ‘Intel iMac’ and it fits quite nicely. Dont you think ?

continue reading "The Intel iMac (iiMac) review…"