Here’s the unboxing video that a few people had wanted me to do when I got my iPad. I did some editing to the video, as it took me forever to unwrap the bubble wrap with one hand.  I think the back design by Colorware looks gorgeous with the matte finish and everything.  Thanks so much to Digg, TapTapTap and Colorware for this very excellent prize.

So far I’ve had the device for a day and my impressions are pretty mixed.  Here’s a quick run down of my thoughts

What I like

• Very snappy device.  Makes my iPhone look like chop liver with regards to speed
• The iPhone games are actually better on the iPad.  I find I’ve played games I didn’t really bother with previously because of the cramped controls on the iPhone
• The screen looks gorgeous under the right lighting conditions
• Downloaded Air Video application and it streams my media flawlessly over my network.  Saves converting my media to another format which is a total pain.  Definitely looking forward to watching stuff while I cook as we don’t have a TV on our main floor.

Here’s what I didn’t like

• No iBooks available in Canada.  Since Apple hasn’t actually launched the book selling features in Canada they have held back the iBooks app from the Canadian iTunes store.  I had a bunch of ePub books I bought in anticipation of receiving my iPad and the only free solution that I found was using Stanza, which is still iPhone only
• While the games convert well to iPad, the apps like Facebook, Stanza etc. look really crappy when blown up on the big screen.  I know this problem will be resolved when more devs get their iPad compatible versions of the apps out.
• As I know many have complained about, the smudgy screen.  As soon as you’re anywhere with sun exposure the problem becomes pretty apparent
• Since Apple hasn’t launched the iPad enabled iTunes store in Canada there is really no way of finding top iPad apps or anything.  Some apps are available through iTunes, but not really organized at all.  You can’t even download apps from the device yet for this reason, which is a pain.
• Seems odd Apple omitted a silent switch.  Have to turn the volume all the way down. Having my iPhone, iPad and iMac all notify of the same email is a bit annoying

Since my iPad is a Wifi only version and Apple saw fit to keep the device from data tethering with my iPhone. Luckily since iPhone is jailbroken I was able to buy the app MyWi and create a local wireless network to give my iPad data on the go.  Gave it a spin last night and it seemed to work pretty well, though given my iPhone is in need of a new battery I’m not sure how viable that method is for a long usage period.

I found almost instantly that all the features I miss from my iPhone are the jailbreak customizations I’ve made to my phone.  The biggest is GriP, which enables Growl style notifications for the iPhone.  Seriously I don’t know how a regular iPhone users cope without it.  Makes me wonder how long I’ll hold out before I jailbreak my iPad.

I’d say so far I like the device, but don’t love it yet.  Probably once the full app store is available to us Canucks later this month I’ll be happier with the functionality it offers.

I’ve waited a couple days now to comment on Apple’s latest product, the iPad. I typically don’t like being “that guy”, evangelizing Apple to other people. I know the company isn’t infallible, but really how many companies out there are? The iPad is definitely flawed, but I don’t think it is flawed for many of the reasons people are currently crucifying it for.

The Name
This was the first thing that people seemed to have gone off on. In the last 3 days everyone seems to have made the obvious feminine hygiene product jokes. We laughed. Stupid Apple. But didn’t we say the same thing about the Nintendo Wii? It was stupid. Everyone made all the obvious urination jokes. Boy was the Wii a failure. Oh, wait, no it wasn’t. It’s gone on to sell almost double the amount of units of it’s nearest competitor. So in the end, people will get over an unfortunate name and they won’t even bat an eye when you mention iPad.

It’s just an oversized iPhone
I’ve heard quite a few people complain about how the iPad is running “just” the iPhone OS. The problem with this argument is that it’s more then likely being used by people who have never used a tablet PC. To put it simply, a full operating system like Windows or OS X isn’t meant to be used on a touchscreen. Stuff like scroll bars and tiny interface buttons don’t work or make sense on a touchscreen. This is the reason why most tablet PCs use a stylus, as your fingers are too inaccurate for controlling a touch screen. And more then likely this is a good reason why tablet PCs have never really taken off, as they tried to put a square peg in a round hole by offering a desktop OS on a touchscreen device.

Apple was among the first, if not the first to offer a proper touchscreen experience on a mobile phone. It’s been an obvious success as they essentially revolutionized the phone industry and caused every other manufacturer to take note and create similar touchscreen devices. They’ve already proven the iPhone OS is a winning touchscreen solution, why not have it running on the iPad?

But how will you get any real work done on this thing?
The reality here is that this isn’t even being positioned as a work machine. I think the definition of “real work” for most people would have the requirement of being able to type. If you were expecting to be able to code websites or type the next great novel you were probably barking up the wrong tree in the first place. This device is meant as an entertainment device. The type of thing you can surf the internet on while watching TV. Given the explosion of smartphones we have become a generation of multi-taskers as these devices have enabled us to passively answer emails, send a quick tweet or browse the web from anywhere in the world, including the living room sofa. Nobody complains that they can’t get any real work done on an iPod Touch. It’s simply not the reason why 99% of people bought the device in the first place.

The fact that this device starts at $499 should also tell you this isn’t meant as a workstation. This item is meant to compete with something like the Amazon Kindle DX, which retails for $489 US. People are willing to spend that kind of money on a Kindle, so you can be sure the public would be willing to spend the money on something like an iPad.

It’s too expensive
I’ve heard people complain about the price as well. This is possibly the most ridiculous complaint out of them all. Here’s a chart for the device pricing.

People complaining about the pricing are the types who don’t actually know the true cost of devices like the iPhone and similar smartphone devices. But the iPhone 3G is only $199, this is so much more expensive they might say. The fact is that is the subsidized price offered by cell phone carriers. Without a contract an iPhone costs much more. On eBay a new, unlocked 16GB iPhone 3GS sells for roughly $500 US, and $650 to $700 for the 32GB model. So you can see Apple’s pricing is quite close to being inline with the real market values of similar current generation iPhones.

I already have an iPhone, what’s the point of it?
The iPhone is a great device, but it’s not ideal for all types of browsing. Something I did this morning was fill out an online form to get tickets to an upcoming event that had been promoted through Twitter. I wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed yet, so I filled the form out using my iPhone. As I’m sure anyone whose used an iPhone or iPod Touch for filling out forms you know there just isn’t enough room on the screen to fit the keyboard and see which form box you’re filling in sometimes. This would be a piece of cake using a 10″ screen to browse the page. Another thing I instantly thought of was using an iPad in the kitchen. I like to look up recipes online, but find it a pain to actually use that info in my kitchen. I don’t have a printer(nor really want one), so I either write down the recipe on paper by hand, haul our 15.5″ Toshiba laptop into the kitchen(where it takes up valuable real estate) or I look it up on the iPhone. None of these solutions is ideal. This is exactly where the iPad comes in.

The iPad is far from perfect, but I think it’s a good start. I feel Apple made some boneheaded decisions (no USB, SD, 4×3 screen resolution among others) but the concept definitely has promise. Looking at devices like the first Eee PC netbook or the first generation Kindle have shown companies don’t always hit a home run with their first attempt, but people will buy into the concept none the less.

I think many people have gotten caught up with years of rumour mongering about this mystical Apple tablet that it could do little else but disappoint. They could have announced the iPad came with a free unicorn and the public still would have been letdown by the announcement. People had the perception that this device was going to meet all of their personal computing needs, so when it failed to meet those lofty expectations they have essentially thrown it under the bus instead of looking at what Apple is actually offering.

Sure this device isn’t going to be for everyone, but my guess is that it’ll be another Apple success once people actually have a chance to use it and figure out the value of the device. So lets take a chill pill and wait until April when you’re actually able to go to a store and try one out.

As more and more people become connected using smartphones like the iPhone and Blackberry it has become even more important for websites to feature mobile portals that make it easy to access websites. Here’s a list of the major Canadian news outlets and how they’ve fared with each of their offerings. I’ve tested each of these on my iPhone, but they should viably work on Blackberry, Android and other smartphones with a decent browser.

CBC.ca (http://cbc.qwapi.ca/)
CBC’s mobile website probably has the most visual style of all the sites I’ve looked at. They pack the most content onto the page, though that comes at a price. A lot of the links are just on the cusp of being too small to comfortably read from a distance, especially on the content pages where the text isn’t bolded like the links of the same size. Adjusting from portrait to landscape on my iPhone does help the size, but I find reading the complete width left to right on the screen to strain my eyes a bit at that size.

Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/iphone/)
The Toronto Star’s mobile site strikes a good balance between being functional while having a little bit of visual flair. The design works well both portrait and landscape modes. Their start page offers 2 lead stories from each main topic, then a link to more stories.

National Post (http://www.nationalpost.com/m/)
I find the National Post’s offering seems to come off as the most pedestrian of all the sites. It’s not bad, but doesn’t seem to do anything with any flair. The only thing featured on the start page are the top stories, with all the links to the rest of the sections buried at the bottom.

Canada.com (http://www.canada.com/mobile)
Canada.com is the news portal associated with Canwest Global. This site is presented well and features some nice usability tweaks. There is menu dropdown at the top that allows you to quickly access the major sections. As well the footer has links to all the major sections, plus collapsible menus allowing you to quickly down into further subsections of content. The footer also has home and back to top buttons which are handy. I think these tweaks come as a trade-off too as the site seems a little slower then some of the other sites.

Canoe.ca (http://m.en.canoe.ca/)
Canoe is the news portal for Quebecor Media, which owns The Sun chain of newspapers. I would say their mobile site is easily the crappiest of all these media sites. There seems little to no effort put into styling the content for the page. The other beef I have is that they paginate the content. My iPhone can easily render more text on the page, making me load a new page every 6 paragraphs is annoying. They definitely have a long way to go to catch up.

Globe and Mail (http://m.theglobeandmail.com/)
The Globe and Mail’s mobile presentation isn’t the flashiest, but it features probably the nicest typography of all these sites.  The part I like about it is that it does load quickly and gives you plenty of links from the various sections.  It also allows you to sort by top stories and most recently posted.

Ever since the iPhone was released, along with the iPod before it, it seems companies have constantly released devices that have been labeled as Apple “killers”. Devices that aim to finally knock Apple off their pedestal as market leader. To date there has yet to be an “iPhone killer”, yet that doesn’t stop the media from ramping up the hype for the next upcoming device.

I was recently at a monthly meetup of designers and developers in Waterloo and a representative from RIM was there presenting on the merits of the Blackberry as a development platform. At one point during his presentation he mentioned how Apple was very good at articulating what they are good at, yet Blackberry does a crappy job of this very thing. To me this isn’t something that is exclusively the realm of Blackberry. Pretty much every smartphone manufacturer has the same problem when competing with Apple.

After seeing this new Verizon commercial yesterday, this served as a perfect example of what handset manufacturers are doing wrong. It’s a quaint and clever concept that I’m sure Verizon paid a boatload to get the rights to using the Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer characters. But after watching that video, what handset got the most facetime in that commercial? While it wasn’t the actual iPhone in the commercial, the viewer saw Verizon’s iPhone stand-in on screen for 20 seconds of a 30 second spot. The Verizon handsets only show up between 23 seconds and 28 seconds of the video. So 66% of the commercial featured the iPhone, and 10% was spent talking about the products they sell, then the other 24% spent talking about Verizon and their network.
Message: The iPhone is useless because AT&T has a crappy network. Verizon has an awesome network. Buy this Windows phone, or buy this Google Android phone.

Contrast that ad with an Apple ad selling the iPhone. Nothing but the phone and its function are shown for the first 23 seconds. 1 second devoted to app store logos, 2 seconds for iPhone logo, 2 seconds for carrier logo and 2 seconds for Apple logo. So 76.6% of the commercial was devoted to showing the product and 23.3% was used for the of branding various partners. Apple didn’t once mention verbally the network or the carrier.
Message: Look at all the cool stuff you can do with your iPhone

Can you see the disconnect here? A new device like the HTC Droid hits the market within the last 2 weeks. It’s supposed to be a real contender to the iPhone throne. Yet the handset is relegated to 2.5 seconds of face time in this Verizon commercial. Do we know anything that the device is capable of? About the only info you get is what smartphone OS the phone is running and the price. Apparently the only reason to get one of these 2 phones Verizon is offering is because their network is better.

Apple’s device has been on the market for over 2 years now, yet Apple focuses on the positive. They show you what cool things the iPhone empowers you to do. They maximize the amount of time you see the product on screen and keep the message simple and on point. The carrier is an afterthought.

This is where Apple has diverged from all other handset providers. They control how the iPhone is sold and marketed. They don’t allow it to be lumped in with a bunch of other similar looking phones in the carriers marketing. Essentially they are selling a phone, they don’t care about the network or the carrier, they allow their product to sell itself instead.

When talking to the RIM rep I commented to him about Apple’s carrier relationship and marketing contrasted with how Blackberry and the rest of the smartphone makers. He mentioned that BB spends a lot of time managing and working their partnerships with carriers, helping them implement things like carrier branded app stores. While I’m sure they do great business together, Apple has done it differently. They only need the carrier for their network and retails sales channels. Apple handles pretty much everything else. The carrier is an afterthought.

You would figure that Apple’s way of doing business would have carriers running the opposite way, yet as seen in Canada recently, nothing could be further from the truth. Bell and Telus, after losing large chunks of marketshare to Rogers and their exclusive iPhone arrangement, spent billions of dollars to build an HSPA+ network in part to accommodate the iPhone. Now that Rogers exclusivity agreement with Apple is over rivals Bell and Telus will also be offering the iPhone as well. This after Bell spent the summer mocking the iPhone in their Palm Pre ads. It will be curious to see how Bell and Telus will market the iPhone, given Apple controls the advertising and they won’t be able to play the my networks better then your network card against Rogers.

Handset manufacturers will never create this “iPhone killer” if their device is always playing second fiddle to the carrier.  By allowing the carrier to handle promotion of their devices they are shooting themselves in the foot with every new handset they release.  While Apple’s iPhone stays in the spotlight, the latest RIM, Motorola, Palm or Samsung device just becomes part of the crowd because carriers don’t market one smartphone any differently then they do the others in their lineup.

Win a free copy of Strips for iPhone / iPod Touch! Just leave a comment about your favourite webcomic below! US iTunes account required to win.

I was recently privileged to have taken part in the beta for a great new app for iPhone and iPod Touch called Strips, which recently launched on the App Store.  I recently went to a designer meetup in Waterloo where the developer of the app, Jeff Verkoeyen, was presenting his creation.  Being what I would call a lapsed webcomic fan I was instantly interested in what this app had to offer.  I used to read a bunch of webcomics, but as time went on I just found the process got unwieldy as I read comics that were dailies, 3 times a week, weekly, bi-weekly.  It just became too much and I eventually drifted away as I started falling behind on my favourites.

This app pretty much solves those problems for me.  One of the issues with trying to read a couple years worth comics is page load times.  Most comic publishers have nice sites with lots of graphics to wade through just to get to the comic.  Strips cuts through all that loading just the strips for you.  Even better it caches a bunch at the same time, so you’re probably only loading new data maybe once every 10 strips(that’s a guess on my part).  This enables you to just hammer through years of worth of comics with relative ease.

One of the big features of this app is the push notifications, so you can get an update when your favourite webcomic is updated, which is pretty cool.  The app also allows you to easily navigate through the timeline of your favourite comics.  If you want to start at the beginning, or want to see the strip from May 13, 2002, the app has a good UI setup to quickly get you back reading again.

So far I’ve only caught up with stuff I’ve previously read like PVP, Ctrl+Alt+Del and Penny Arcade, but there are currently over 40 comics and more to be added.  I’m personally hoping Diesel Sweeties and Scary Go Round get added, as I have a few years worth of stuff to catch up with there.

If you are a fan of webcomics, this is $1.99 well spent on the app store.  But as luck may have it, Jeff gave me a promo code for a free download of the app to give away.  So if you’d like to win a copy of Strips for iPhone and iPod Touch, just leave a comment below stating what your favourite webcomic is.  The winner will be chosen at random from all the commenters.  Unfortunately this giveaway is only for people with US iTunes accounts.

Buy Strips from the iTunes App Store

Yesterday I broke down and upgraded my iPhone 2G to the most recent iPhone OS 3.0. Since my iPhone was jailbroken this process wiped out all my jailbreak apps and settings. It’s been a long while since I’ve used a virginized iPhone, so my first impressions of using 3.0 was mainly all the great things I was missing. I’ve seen many people online mention about what is the benefit of actually jailbreaking would be anymore, given 3.0 was supposed to remedy many of the main benefits of jailbreaking, like data tethering and copy and paste functionality. While those issues are now moot with the new update, there are still plenty of reasons you might want to jailbreak a phone running 3.0.

SBSettings – This is a great little add-on that allows you to change settings from within any app on the iPhone. Just drag your finger from the top of the screen to the middle and it will pull down a menu with many handy options. I find I use it the most when my phone has inadvertently latched onto an open wifi network and I want to use an Edge connection. Many of these settings are buried 3 menus deep within the phones settings, so being able to change these on the fly is very handy.

5×5 icons – I find this one makes you realize how much wasted space there is on an iPhone. Being able to cram a whole other row and column of icons onto your screen is great since it means your apps now take up less pages. Once you get a few pages of apps you know how annoying this can get. The video I linked to shows you what you need to do to give your phone the ability to show up to 25 app icons on your screen compared to the usual 16.

5 row QWERTY keyboard – There are all sorts of keyboard tweaks you can do when you jailbreak, but none are as handy as having a 5 row keyboard. Not having to go to the second page and back just to put in a number or special character is quite awesome. Sure this isn’t for people with overly large fingers, but I wouldn’t say I have small fingers and I do alright with it.
Update Jul 20/09 Unfortunately we’re still waiting for this one to materialize. The holdup is that iKeyEx hasn’t been updated yet, mainly because there were apparently a bunch of changes made with regards to how the iPhone handles the keyboard layouts in 3.0

Categories – Along the same lines of fitting more in, the Categories app allows you to group your apps in folders. I have my stuff grouped into games, media apps, net apps and miscellaneous. It just generally allows you to keep on top of all the various apps you have and only keep the ones that you use on a regular basis available and cut out the rest of the clutter.

Custom backgrounds – And by background I mean pretty much anything on the screen. You can change your icons, colour of your wifi indicator, fonts, you name it, there’s a tweak for it. Default black and white for everything is no longer necessary.

Video applications – If you’re like me and have a 2G, or even the 3G iPhone Apple still hasn’t unlocked the ability to capture video on our iPhones. Given this is one of the main selling points for the new 3GS model, I can kind of understand why they wouldn’t want to suddenly open that functionality for the previous models. Well fear not, there are loads of jailbreak apps that allow you to capture video. I personally use Cycorder and Qik on my phone. Qik is great in that it automatically streams your video to qik.com and it’s instantly viewable to others. It also allows queuing of videos, so if you don’t have a data plan or wifi connection you can still capture videos and upload them later.