I received my 16gb iPad from the US around a week ago, after deciding that I couldn’t wait till July till Singapore got their first shipment in, and knowing my luck, I would have missed the first couple of batches and would be sitting here in September thinking if it was worth all the hassle and that I should possibly wait for the iPad v2. Thankfully it all worked out and I received my package last week, and so far it’s been a nifty little device which has changed a few ways that I do things in both work and play. I’ve taken some time to write a mini review on my first thoughts on the iPad.

The first thing that struck me when I opened the box was how small it actually is, I had seen enough photos of the device both on apples website and on some gadget blogs to have a fair idea, but I had first pictured the device to be a little different in my head, that said, I was pleasantly surprised with how it felt in the hands, nice and sturdy and well built.

You will need to connect your iPad to a computer to authorise it through iTunes so I plugged it into a spare USB slot at the front of my Mac Pro and iTunes did it’s thing and asked me if I wanted to restore my last iphone backup or if I wanted to set up the device as new, I chose the latter and went through the typical iTunes setup, checking which material and apps I wanted synced onto the iPad, I threw on a little bit of everything, a few gigs of music, a couple of movies (converted with EvoM), some podcasts (Joe Cartoon) and synced it with some iPhoto albums, pretty standard stuff really. It didn’t take too long, but I did notice that when the iPad is plugged into your system, it won’t charge, it seems that it needs direct power from the adapter to fully charge, although Roy (chazrt) let me know that if left overnight with the screen off, it will take some charge, just slowly.

The first thing you notice is how nice the screen is, and after a week or so I’ve found it a little hard to go back to the screen size of the iPhone to do anything other than text messaging and making phone calls, typical phone stuff! I customised my home screen and lock screens with individual wallpaper which is a nice added feature, coming to iPhone os4 soon, and although I thought the icon spacing looked a little funky at first, I really like the space that the iPad has around each icon, it makes the iPhone feel really squashed.

I sorted out all my Google Apps email accounts in the settings app and they were all added flawlessly to Mail. Mail however does have a little shortfall when it comes to working with multiple accounts, it takes around 4 or 5 taps to change between any of your mail accounts, which is a bit of a pain but that should get sorted out with the OS4 upgrade coming soon which brings a unified inbox much like Mail.app on Snow Leopard.

The keyboard is pretty good and much easier to use than the iPhone’s, mainly due to the size, and I find it works well in both portrait and landscape modes, but I spent the extra and got a wireless bluetooth apple keyboard so when my dock arrives I can use it for more heavy duty writing. The default apps are all pretty awesome, so here is a few screenshots and a little review of some of my faves.

Contacts is a much better implementation and acts more like an address book, you can view it in landscape with contacts on the left and details on the right, it has some pretty powerful tools for organising contacts into groups, editing details and sharing via email.

Calendar is one of my favourite tools on the iPad, synced with my Google Apps accounts, it allows me to see all of my accounts and appointments in a variety of ways, the daily, weekly or monthly schedules, as well as my favourite list view. It also has a pretty good search field which I use for looking up future appointments.

Maps is pretty much the same application that is on the iPhone, but it just works that much better with the larger screen, street view is awesome and has helped me find a few places around Singapore already, you can flip the page in the bottom right to toggle classic, satellite, traffic, terrain, and hybrid modes.

App Store has just launched around the globe and i’ve managed to get a few apps though the US store also, just currently waiting for Pages, Numbers & Keynote to be available for Australia and I can spend a bit of time writing some proposals down at the pool tomorrow. The App Store design isn’t actually that easy to use which is quite disappointing.

iBooks has been getting quite a bit of usage so far, I’ve purchased a book ‘Under The Dome’ by Stephen King which I’m currently reading, its really easy to change the brightness, font, size and is much easier to read on that I first thought, and it doesn’t keep Anita up at night as the brightness can come down pretty low. The page turning effects are neato, and the library has a pretty decent catalogue so far, a little pricey but hopefully that will come down with more incentives like itunes has evolved through the years. I’ve grabbed the Kindle app as well which is pretty nice but doesn’t have some of the polishes that iBooks has, so its a winner in my opinion.

Safari looks great on the large screen and the iPad is so much easier to browse on than the small screen on the iPhone, the scrolling is really smooth and it’s a totally enjoyable experience. I’ve not really had too many issues with flash not being part of the iPad, as a lot of the sites i visit are or already have made the switch to HTML5 video.

Video is great and with an awesome little app (AirVideo) I can now view any of the videos stored on my Mac Pro via my iPad, great having instant access to my large catalogue and without having to spend the time converting and syncing them, its really a big plus for me. I’m currently watching the latest season of The Ultimate Fighter on it late at night and I don’t have to worry about keeping Anita up or worrying about my Macbook Pro battery crapping out 1/2 way though watching a show or a movie. I’ve also synced the last season of SouthPark just for shits and giggles.

The other app which I probably couldn’t do without is GoodReader, which allows me to read and sync all my PDF files so I have them on the go at all times. At the moment i’ve synced a library of CSS, HTML, Web Design, & Photography books as well as a few magazines to pass the time while im riding on public transport or waiting for a client meeting, it’s a really great app.

So far i’ve only gotten a couple of games from the store, PinballHD and Plants vs. Zombies, both are great and the graphics and gameplay are really addictive…

So that’s my basic review of the iPad, i’m really stoked on how well it’s worked for me and for ChillyBin, as clients have been impressed and it makes meetings really easy, as all I have to take now is my iPhone and iPad and I have instant 3G internet access (check out jailbroken iPhone app MyWi) so I can access client sites and utilities when I am out and about away from the office. So the wait now is on the developers to get the applications developed and updated for the iPad as there are still a few of my favourite iPhone applications that are not yet optimised for the larger screen size, and im not a total fan of the 2x pixel doubler.

Anita and I last night went to the 2nd annual Big Night Out show at the Singapore Indoor Stadium to see Rise Against, Saosin & Muse. We had been looking forward to the show since it was first announced as we had tickets to see Rise Against in March 2009 in Sydney. We weren’t able to go as we we moving over to Singapore a few weeks earlier, a real dampener as we both really love Rise Against and when they were announced as part of the Big Night Out show we were quite excited that we would be able to see them.

We got to the Singapore Indoor Stadium after grabbing some tea around 7pm thinking that we would be able to walk straight into the general admission area as we’ve done at so many other shows, alas were we mistaken! The queue to get in was about 400 metres long winding 1/2 way around the bloody stadium! So we joined the end of the queue and patiently waited while Saosin started their set (It must have been really empty in there), around 45 minutes later, about 8pm we reached the doors and finally made our way through police checks and onto the floor. It was a pretty strange feeling being only 20 people back from the front considering we waited for that length of time outside. Some things Singapore just has no idea about, and organising large (if you call 6000 people large) public gatherings is one of them. It would have been great to see Saosin, while not being a massive fan it’s nice to see them doing well as I have fond memories of hanging out with them in Sydney when I worked for EMI.

Anyway, we were in and thats what mattered, Rise Against came on shortly after and played a pretty powerful set of tracks mainly from their last 2 albums, Appeal To Reason & The Sufferer & The Witness. The crowd reaction was a lot better than I was expecting with quite a few singing along, to the new album mainly. Unfortunately you could tell that they had just finished the Big Day Out tours in Australia as they did look a little bit out of it and the vocals suffered a little as a result. The middle of their set was punctuated with Hero of War and Swing Life Away, you can watch a couple of minutes of the latter on the video player below (filmed with my iPhone 3GS so excuse quality). A 45 minute set is never quite enough and while they played a lot of their most popular tracks there were at least another 10 or so that would have been really awesome for Neetles and I to hear, especially some older tracks. So, after years of being a fan, I finally got to see them and it’s only left me with wanting to see more, lets hope they tour the next album to Asia, or that we are back in Australia by then!

Muse were on later with a pretty large stage production and light show including some pretty interesting video walls. I’ve never really been a big Muse fan, there is just something about every song sounding really similar that really annoys me. It’s like they get into the studio and try to write the most epic songs ever, and for me it always seems a little contrived. However, seeing the crowd reaction I am definitely in the minority here with the crowd really coming alive for the headliners set, It was good, but I don’t think I would ever see them at their own show, and we snuck out before the encore to get a cab home.

A pretty good night in the end but just makes me miss the music opportunities in Australia just that much more…

Spent a couple of hours this mornibg playing around with my iPhone and checkih out the latest MacThemes forum threads. In the end I coupled together a few different elements from around the forums and came up with a setup I’m pretty happy with, only to find out right afterwards that two new themes were released in Quab & Oletus.

Here’s my setup anyway, (view the full shot on flickr) just make sure that you jailbreak your iPhone and install WinterBoard & SSH for all complete UI control.

Icons: Classica 2 by Dustin
UI Theme: MatteUI
Lockscreen: Personal Tenuitas Mod

Happy New Year!

Abeo for iPhone

Tenuis Lockscreen

My Icons

At least we have our trip to NZ to look forward to, off in a couple of weeks for just under 3 weeks. Thought it was about time I had a look around NZ, it’s been a few years since i’ve been back so it will be choice to see everyone again.

Plus, when we get back there will be new Heroes to watch, haha

And that was the start of the fun, since then I think i’ve restored my iPhone from factory settings about 4-5 times to install new firmware and jailbreak. Yesterday was the final straw, the ‘Phone’ application was crashing, I coudln’t even see recent calls or get to the dialer, so after spending most of the night lastnight restoring the firmware, setting the phone up as new, & quickpwning I think we are back to a stable platform, now if all the apps would stop crashing ..

I love my iPhone, just ask Anita, but it’s been so much work getting it to a usable state, I found that manually managing it caused a few issues so i’m back to an automatic sync with some quality controlled iTunes playlists. Time to get back all those awesome jailbreak apps, Snapture, Cycoder, MxTube, Winterboard to name just a few …

Rocking the Deep iPhone theme by ToffeeNut

Deep by ToffeeNut