Working from an iPad
October 8, 2010 No CommentsDespite Scotty Sumo Stevenson’s disdain for the new Apple iPad, I bought one.
And although it’s not designed for it, like many others before me, I proceeded to try and use it like a laptop.
After trying to do many things with it for 6 weeks, here’s what I’ve found so far trying to maintain this blog on the WordPress platform.
Tools
Like the iPhone, the iPad works through applications. There’s several that come with it and many others that you can download through the iTunes store.
To use the iPad to post to your blog, you will need WordPress for the iPad because this is the only way you can upload photos to your blog. You cannot do it through the browser at the time of writing.
It’s a free download and is just a bigger version of the iPhone app. Which is a shame because with the greater screen real estate it would be easy to include all of the features available through the full web interface. Hopefully the smart people from WordPress will sort that in a later release.
You will also need some form of basic photo editing. I haven’t tried anything other than PhotoGene for this.
I read several reviews of image editing apps and the consensus was that PhotoGene was good.
I watched a video and it looked easy enough – which it is – and quite good value also.
The iPad is good for visual editing. The draggable handle bars that appear around the edges of a screen selection are easy to work with and most applications that have them, provide the resolution of the selected area on the screen somewhere so you can immediately see the effect that moving the edges of a selected area has.
You will need to open the online version of WordPress as well.
This is to adjust some of the annoying defaults that the ipad version has – like placing images at the very bottom or very top of blog posts and removing the link text from around an image (if you don’t want it).
You also cannot place a caption under a photo using the iPad version.
Editing Text
You need to get comfortable with the ‘select’ function – pressing, holding and then dragging one corner at a time to select text.
Sometimes it can be difficult and frustrating to get the cursor exactly where you need it when editing a piece of text.
With no arrow keys on the iPad keyboard, Apple have made this tough.
An external keyboard works reasonably well. While Apple claim that their keyboards are the only ones supported, I tried a standard Dell and it worked fine.
The only way that I have found to achieve pinpoint accuracy is to use the select function (press and hold).
When you select a piece of text, a magnifying glass effect appears that shows a visual blow-up of the area immediately surrounding where the pressure is focused. You can then slide your finger right, left, up and down to get the selection exactly where you need it.
It’s nothing like a mouse or arrow keys mind you and it can be time-consuming.
Compound Images
I need to be able to place 2 photos side by side for uploading to this blog for look-a-likes.
I found and saved the 2 photos I wanted from web pages.
I searched for ‘split-view’ and found an app that provided a split view of the browser which looked interesting but nothing that would give me a split view of 2 photos from the iPad album.
It should have come to me sooner but I was able to achieve what I needed easily by creating a document in Office2 HD and just inserting one image after the other.
There was no annoying gap between the images and no formatting misalignment that you sometimes get in word when trying the same thing.
I screen-shotted the resulting document (by holding the home button and the sleep button at the same time – same as the iPhone) and then cropped it in PhotoGenie – QED.
I uploaded it using WordPress for iPad and then had to go to the web version to take out the annoying link code that it puts in there by default.
Lengthy but I made it!
The example is here in this post.
Things the iPad is great for
- Browsing images
Thumbnails are a suitable size, swiping is very quick and easy and emailing is easy (and involves an automatic re-sizing).
The iPad is also very quick with large resolution images.
I import direct from my camera card and browse on the iPad because it is quicker than using my MacBook. The MacBook takes longer to render the 5+MB photos. - Mind-mapping
There are some good apps for creating mind maps on the iPhone but the iPad is infinitely more suited to the practice. The tactile interface is probably better than a mouse and keyboard. - Presentations
A very effective presentation can be carried out on the iPad in a one-on-one situation. Swiping is an effective tactile means of moving from page to page. - Traveling
It’s weight is one of the things it is criticised for but it’s way lighter and easier to carry than my MacBook and the battery life is nearly 5 times better. That means I don’t even need to bring a power cord when I travel to matches.I can upload the photos and review/edit on the way back home.
It’s also great for watching movies.
