DDI and IPAD

[guivre]

Have you tried reading PDFs on it yet? I'd be interested to know how it behaves.

Also - can you delete podcasts from the iPad without having to sync through iTunes.

It beats the pants off of every other e-reader out there, soundly. The only thing missing is e-ink and that cuts both ways as that's part of the reason it's so responsive.

PDFs work great. I'm using GoodReader which was .99. I'll pay more for more features if another pdf reader comes along that looks good but this will do. It renders both landscape and portrait pdfs well. Swapping pages is near enough to instant on reasonably sized pdfs. Large pdfs, like Pathfinder work as well though page switching is slightly slower.

Worth the price as an e-reader alone. Between iBooks, the Kindle app, and GoodReader (or something similar) you've covered all your bases.

You can delete podcasts from the iPod app.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually, from what I understand, there is one aspect in which the iPad stumbles as an e-reader. Its glass screen- while capable of color and all kinds of nice high-res stuff- apparently washes out a bit in bright light...and can produce some distracting reflections.

The other e-readers, apparently, with their B&W screens are a bit more visible under those conditions.

 

[Mistwell]

Hmmm... wasn't there supposed to be some layer in .net that made it easier to make your .net app a web app? Maybe it was a web app only for windows machines.

I'm getting an ipad. There is this NASA app where you hold the thing up to the sky and it becomes this annotated window to the night, labeling stars and planets and the international freaking space station.

You can move it around the the sky so it shows you details of the sky behind it. You can zoom and dig down and find out about the objects tagged and get video and audio and history and way cool.

That is a Droid app as well. My wife has it on her Motorola Droid phone.

 

[OchreJelly]

The ebooks look very nice to me so far. You can adjust the brightness of the backlight. The true test for me will be to read an entire book casually, so I'll hold off final judgment until then.

In very bright situations, eInk probably has it beat. Personally, I wouldn't use something like this for beach-reading anyway.

It bares mentioning that it does have some heft to it, but really no more than a typical hardcover.

 

[Morrus]

Somewhat related, I've put a list of iPhone/iPod applications for RPGs on the news page.

 

[Tarrl]

Link to a Slate article.

HP Promises Everything the iPad Isn't with Slate - PCWorld Business Center

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

Morrus, will you be getting an iPad?

 

[coyote6]

I dunno, that article (on the Slate) sounds like FUDish marketing-speak -- "the iPad is awesome, but the HP Slate will be more awesome! Look at these features!"

Note that I don't own an iPhone or an iPad; if either had USB or SD cards or some of the things mentioned in the article, I probably would, so I'm entirely open to a better device.

Articles like that just trigger cynical instincts, though. Can the Slate do everything the iPad can? How fast is the Slate? How's the battery life? WiFi? 3G wireless? As information goes, the article just makes me curious to see if the author's bank accounts have deposits from HP, Microsoft, their marketing/PR agencies, or proxies thereof.

Me, I'm hoping Notion Ink's Adam lives up to its promise/hype. It sounds awesome.

 

[Morrus]

Morrus, will you be getting an iPad?

Not in the first generation, no. I'll do what I did with the iPhone - wait a year.

 

[Enclave]

I dunno, that article (on the Slate) sounds like FUDish marketing-speak -- "the iPad is awesome, but the HP Slate will be more awesome! Look at these features!"

Note that I don't own an iPhone or an iPad; if either had USB or SD cards or some of the things mentioned in the article, I probably would, so I'm entirely open to a better device.

Articles like that just trigger cynical instincts, though. Can the Slate do everything the iPad can? How fast is the Slate? How's the battery life? WiFi? 3G wireless? As information goes, the article just makes me curious to see if the author's bank accounts have deposits from HP, Microsoft, their marketing/PR agencies, or proxies thereof.

Me, I'm hoping Notion Ink's Adam lives up to its promise/hype. It sounds awesome.

Since there are already tablet PC's out there that already do more than the iPad, well it's not hard to believe that HP could and would build a tablet of this sort and not be exaggerating on it's capabilities.

In fact, HP already makes tablet PC's. Look up their TX line of laptops.