more great apps!

I have been using three really great apps lately. First, Procreate, which somehow manages to do all that the Photoshop app should do but doesn't. Layers, in particular.




I have started to experiment with QR codes and after reading this app's developer's material, just had to get his app, Qrafter.




Finally, at the same time I have been exploring the use of truncated URLs, on my websites mainly and in other uses. I first tried tinyurl's app, but didn't find the combination of ease and power I was looking for. So bitly's short menu got the nod. Great app!

Just checking in...

Two years in and it hasn't lost its luster for me. Great device! And jailbroken I can input and output files of all kinds via thumb (flash) drive! This is a subject all by itself, but I can see why Apple focused on cloud functionality. One day maybe I will rely on offsite storage more than I do today. But my Boomer sensitivities don't lend well to it, lol! In the meantime, thumb drives it is! For the record, here is what I do with my iPad:
Build and maintain my several websites
Perform CRM duties
Write blogs
Maintain a Facebook presence
Maintain shop inventory and communicate with vendors
Maintain a presence on several user forums
Maintain my YouTube channel
Store and maintain a tech document collection
Store and maintain an image collection

still enjoying my iPad!

It's still the best thing going. Instant on, a genuine lap experience, and the epitome of portability.

iPad update

It's been a while since I mentioned nuisances, so here are three more. iPad and I are still getting along, if not famously, then well enough. It is still the best all-rounder in my opinion. Lately I have been a little annoyed by three pet peeves, and I'll share those now. All have to do with typing. First, somebody at Apple decided, evidentally, that the user would want a capital letter to appear whenever backspacing some misspelled letters away. And that is what iOS does, consistently make whatever letter you type after backspacing, a capital letter. Such as this exAmple. Very annoying and a cumbersome waste of time. Second, just as trying and maybe more so for a dedicated writer, is the iPad period issue. Apple's iOS doggedly insists on putting a period at the end of every sentance, no matter what else is in the sentance by way of punctuation, giving you sentances such as, Mary had a little lamb whose name was "Fred.". I did not put that second period there, iPad did, and does, every time. I have yet to find a way to defeat it. Third, it is kind of silly, but it is all too easy to outpace, or out-type, the iPad. At best I do maybe 30 wpm, but the iPad artificially keeps that down to 15 or 20, I am guessing though I have never measured it. Get to typing in a hurry and it just can't keep up, lagging behind until, if you insist, it simply crashes. As far as fast typing goes, I mentioned the apostrophe issue before also, that it takes a full two seconds to make an apostrophe, so there again you have a speed limiter built in.

But I suppose the very fact that I have to work so hard to come up with these iPad foibles says something about the product. I am definitely enamored with it, its few warts notwithstanding. :-)

Apple and Flash

Viewing one of Steve Job's last interviews on YouTube, I heard him make reference to this white paper.  Check it out, about Flash.
Jobs on Flash

Steve Jobs

I really like my iPad! A lot of folks are wondering, after Jobs' passing, if Apple will be able to continue making products people really like rather than products people eventually learn to put up with. That has been Apple's thing for most of its history. I wonder, too. I watched several YouTube videos about Jobs today. Here are a few of them.
A short history of Apple. There are many of these but this one is newer.
Jobs' last taped appearance
The iPad's introduction
Jobs' most revealing interview. Long but really fascinating!

Microsoft's Surface Pro

Was invited recently with some other content developers to an official Microsoft hosted review and demo of the company's new Surface Pro tablet. It *is* impressive. Solid state hard drive, full USB and HDMI functionality, Windows 8 desktop OS (thus fully MS Office) capable, and Flash friendly. Ultra thin keyboard/cover, very modern surface-style charging connection, and very impressive multimedia power and seamlessness. Not to mention fast, crisp, and pretty. Gotta hand it to them, a nice piece, though only the OS and hard drive really stand out among the android tablets available. So I was the first with my hand up when the presenter was through with her well-executed opening spiel, after which we each in the group got an hour one-on-one with the device. "Battery life?" was all I said. She grimaced. Between two and a half and four hours, depending on what you run, of course. Ouch!

Other negatives? It's pretty heavy. It's very thick. The initial navigation screen is Windows phone, which to me is ugly and disfunctional, but that's a nit. I could live with it, probably. It seems to me however that this tablet isn't meant to reach the same folks as does the iPad. Are iPad users bemoaning the loss of Windows? Of MS Word? Not hardly.

In addition to all this, I long ago developed a philosophy about MS products and operating systems, after too much of my adult life spent struggling with various versions of Windows from 3.1 forward, including the Windows 7 we all are using today. In my view, like McDonald's, Gates and company have succeeded somehow in taking over the world, market share wise, with a patently inferior product, and one that only sheer worldwide saturation and determined perception-crafting could possibly have catapulted to its present glory. I mean, is there such a thing as common sense, or is salt and fat and if-all-else-fails-reboot, really good things? As a Mac devotee once said to me, "Why would anyone let themselves be yanked around like that?". Why indeed.

The deal breaker for me is the battery life. The game ends there. Which is why I say the target for this tablet has to be different than that for the iPad. But for those whose marriage with all things Microsoft has been a good one, and who don't therefore cringe at the thought of not only dealing with Windows at the office but also carrying it around with...good for you. Go for it.