iPad Love

Sometimes people feel bad for us– us December and January babies with our birthdays so close to Christmas. They fear our gifts just get lumped together and/or neglected. But actually, it’s not so bad when you use it to justify even bigger, better gifts… an iPad for instance?

Ernie definitely earned a bajillion good boyfriend points when he made this box appear at my apartment. Isn’t he great? Oh, hello pretty!

Oh, Apple. Such perfect little packaging.

I just used the iPad as my notes for my workshop yesterday, and I showed photos on it  in my first client meeting today. And just when I thought it couldn’t be more awesome, I loaded Erin & Nick’s Seaglass Cinema onto it, and I just about died from sheer joy. Whatever magic contrasty thing Apple does on their screens, it makes the video look amazing. Truly.

In order to fully understand my excitement, you should know– as much as I love and embrace technology, I don’t actually have that many gadgets. I still have a dumbphone and lost the only iPod I ever had four years ago. You’ll have to forgive me. But be warned, I might have to do this dance again in a few days when they announce the iPhone for Verizon.

Anyway, now I will list a few of my favorite apps I’ve discovered in the last couple days. If you have any recommendations (there must be some other iPad users out there), please share!

Free Apps I love:

• Photos. It’s the built-in viewer that plays video too. This is what I used for my client meeting. It’s pretty basic, but it does what I want!
• IM+. Great for handling gchat or other chat clients. You can also view your twitter feed on here, but since I have so many twitter accounts, I don’t really use it for that.
• Google. I like this because it’ll display when I have unread emails in my dock, though the app itself really just links you to the different gmail pages in Safari.
• Wikihood. Love the interface this provides. You choose a location (or it locates you) and it lists all the things and neighborhoods surrounding you. I can definitely see this being useful for location scouting for shoots.
• Wi-Fi Finder. Shows you all the public wifi access points around you free or paid. I haven’t actually tested the reliability of the locations, but it seems to have a lot more listings than other apps. Also lets you download an offline copy so you can search the map even when you’re not connected to the internet (which makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?).
• Sudoku Daily. I am a dork. I love that this app not only has puzzles but actually teaches you advanced sudoku techniques.
• TED. I have to watch TED videos after I watch too many youtube videos or Millionaire Matchmaker and I feel my brain dwindling away. I like the “Inspire Me” feature that recommends videos based on category and the amount of time you have.
• Flipboard. Displays all your social media feeds in a magazine-style format. Looks gorgeous and it’s fun to look through, but I still like going through the original source, especially for Google Reader, so I can mark them as read and know where I left off.

Missed the mark:

• Tweetdeck. I use it for twitter on my laptop, but on iPad it crashes all the time and has a weird bug where some tweets seem “sticky” so they’re always at the top even though they were from days ago.
• Twitter for iPad. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t handle multiple twitter accounts unless you want to sign in and out. And I have 5 accounts…
• Friendly. Facebook for iPad. It’s ok, but it’s missing some functionality, so half the time I prefer just viewing the desktop version of Facebook in Safari.
• Yelp. Looks nice, but its filters for the search results are very limited, so again, I like going to the yelp site on Safari.

Wish it had…

• A twitter app that could handle multiple accounts, as I mentioned above.
• Grooveshark, but sadly, that’s a flash-based player.
• Magazines that didn’t cost as much as real magazines. They would be so pretty…
• A camera. Facetime. Alas, not quite a giant iPhone.
• USB port, but we know that’s not going to happen.
• Louder speakers. They are quite meek.

I bet there are many more things that it can do that I haven’t even figured out yet! Let me know if you have any suggestions.