Tomorrow sees the official release of Apple’s iPad.

Ever since it was announced, the iPad has gotten mixed reviews. Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.net gave a compelling argument against, not necessarily the iPad itself, but perhaps more against the ability of an established gargantuan in the industry to affect truly innovative and envelope-pushing technology.

Recently, reviewers have begun publishing their thoughts on the iPad, after getting their hands on it. As Gizmodo summarizes, most of the reviews are surprisingly positive. Reviewers seem impressed by the interface, even though it’s really nothing new, and are impressed by the keyboard. The construction is solid, the processor is fast, and the battery life is remarkable.

Of course there are the negatives. There’s the lack of Flash, which is pretty huge in a device with which surfing the web is a large part. There’s the lack of camera and USB ports. And like the iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad can’t multitask.

So the big question is, Should you buy an iPad?

I can’t answer this question for you, and neither should other bloggers.

The iPad serves its own purpose. It’s not supposed to be a laptop replacement. Nor is it an overgrown iPhone. Apple’s aim with the iPad was to fill the hole between iPhone and Macbook. Do you need a device to fill that hole? I can’t tell you that.

Personally, I think the iPad is an impressive piece of technology. When the pricing was announced, I was impressed. However, if I find myself in need of a mobile device that can do more than my iPhone, I think I’d rather have a full-blown laptop. If I want a device I can type stories or blog posts on, I want a physical keyboard. If I’m surfing the web, I want to be able to save images, documents, or songs to my hard drive. If I’m sitting in a restaurant or other public place, I’d like to be able to do other things while I check my twitter accounts once in a while; I don’t want to have to stop what I’m doing in order to check if I’d gotten any replies.

But that’s just me. I can see where an iPad could fit certain users needs.

You need to weigh the pros and cons as they apply to your own situation and needs. Go to an Apple store and play around with one. If you think you’ll get your money’s worth of use out of it, then get one. Otherwise, don’t. Don’t let bloggers tell you what not to buy; process the information on your own and make an informed decision.

The brand new iPhone 3GS has just been announced. It’s faster than the 3G iPhone, with all kinds of bells and whistles. I was a bit surprised to read that the 16GB variety will be sold for only $199, while the 32GB flavor will be $299. That’s quite a bit lower than the 3G when it came out.

But that’s just for new iPhone customers.

What about those of us that have, say, an 8GB iPhone 3G, and want to upgrade to the 16GB 3GS? Well, according to the fine print on the AT&T website, existing iPhone customers will need to shell out at least $499 to upgrade:

For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).

Wow.

So for $500, an existing iPhone customer can replace their 3G iPhone, which now only costs $99 new.

If I want to upgrade my current 8GB 3G phone to a 16GB 3GS iPhone, I’ll have to shell out six hundred dollars, and refresh my two-year service plan.

It would be cheaper to cancel my current plan, pay the $200 (or whatever it is) early termination charge, then buy a new 8GB 3GS for $199 and start a new plan.

How can AT&T get away with this?

Well, the biggest thing in the tech world lately is the iPhone OS 3.0 event Apple held yesterday (2009.03.17) I’m not going to rehash the full run-down of the features – head over to Gizmodo for that. I just want to touch on a few of the ones I’m looking forward to the most; those that I will get the most use out of.

Cut, Copy and Paste

This is the most rumored and hoped-for feature ever since the first iPhone came out. It will certainly make a lot of things easier, but to be perfectly honest, I haven’t really missed it that much. There’ve been a few times when I wished I could copy a chunk of text, but for the most part, I don’t do a lot of text entry or editing on my iPhone, so I wasn’t as adamant about this feature as others.

When you double-tap over text, you will get a "cut, copy, and paste" bubble dialog. Double-tap again and a "paste" bubble will appear if there’s anything stored in your clipboard.

I wonder: how is this going to work with the double-tap zoom feature?  While browsing a website, you can double-tap a column of text to have it fill the screen. Will Copy and Paste only work at a certain zoom level, so that the first double-tap will bring you in closer to the text, then another double-tap will initiate the Copy dialog?

Stereo Bluetooth A2DP audio

You will be able to pair your iPhone 3.0 with a stereo Bluetooth A2DP device, like headphones or speakers.

This is cool; I have a pair of BT headphones that I would love to use, but currently I’d have to have the bulky receiver/transmitter dangling off the iPhone.

Push Notification

This was another big feature that’s been rumored for a while. Basically, this will allow applications to receive messages, data, information from the web automatically, even if the app isn’t running. This will open up a wide avenue of possibilities for third-party developers; I’m eager to see what some of them come up with.

What I would love to see come out of the new Push feature would be to have a weather app that can display the current temperature and conditions on the icon, the same way the Calendar app shows the current date.  That way, I wouldn’t have to wait for the app to load just to see if I need a jacket or not.

Apps Running in Background – Not This Time

Probably the biggest thing missing from the 3.0 update is the ability of applications to continue running in the background. For example, if you tap a link in an email, the iPhone will launch Safari and take you to the site. With background apps, the Mail application would still be running. So to get back to your mail message, you would just flip back to Mail instead of having to exit Safari and relaunch Mail.

I think they mentioned this in the presentation yesterday, and cited battery and processing power as the main hurdles for this feature. Having applications running in the background chews through processing power, which translates into massive battery drain.

I would love to have background apps, but I fully understand Apple’s reasons for its absence.

All in all, I think 3.0 is a very robust update. I came into the whole iPhone game with the release of the 3G, which coincided with the release of 2.0, so this will be my first major OS upgrade. Too bad we have to wait for summer to get it.

Apple makes it very easy to sync your music from your computer to your iPod.  Just plug it in and away it goes.  But what if you want to pull the music from your iPod onto your computer?  By default, Apple doesn’t want you doing this.  The obvious reason is illegal file sharing.

There are perfectly legal reason for wanting to do this, however. What if your hard drive crashes? The music might be gone from the computer, but it still exists on your iPod. Grabbing it off the iPod would be a simple solution, and would save a lot of time and money, but Apple won’t let you do it.

There are dozens of third party solutions that will copy the music off your iPod. Some are free, but most cost ten or twenty bucks, maybe more. 

I’m sure the third party software works fine and does the job wonderfully.  But if you don’t want to spend the money, or even bother trying to find a free alternative, there’s a way to get the music off your iPod with no extra software.  All you need is Windows, iTunes, and your iPod.

Note: I’ll work on a Mac version of this tutorial soon.

1. First of all, you want to make sure your iPod is set to be used in Disk Mode. This can be set in iTunes on the iPod Info page.  If you’re doing this in a fresh installation of iTunes (as would be the case if recovering from a failed hard drive) make sure you click “Cancel” when it asks you want to sync the iPod to the library and replace everything on the iPod. This will erase the music off your iPod, which is the opposite of what you want to do.



2. Once this is set, open My Computer (Windows Explorer) and go to the Tools menu, Folder Options. On the “View” tab, make sure “Show Hidden Files and Folders” is selected; click OK.
3. Still in Windows Explorer, find your iPod. It should be listed with a drive letter. Since we enabled disk use, it’s basically treated like any other USB external hard drive. In fact, you can use your iPod to store anything you want. But what we’re looking for is the iPod_Control folder. In this folder will be a Music folder. Drag this to your hard drive; the iTunes folder would be ideal, but ultimately it doesn’t matter.  If you look inside the Music folder, you’ll see a bunch of oddly named folders and files; this is your music collection.  But don’t worry, we’ll get this all sorted out.
4. Once the Music folder is copied to your hard drive, go into iTunes and from the File menu, choose “Add Folder to Library…” In the new dialog window, find the folder you copied over from your iPod; click OK. iTunes should now populate your library with all of your music.
5. In the Preferences window, on the Advanced tab, make sure “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” is checked. Now iTunes will automatically move and rename all those oddly named folders and files that were stored on the iPod.

That should do it.  You won’t have your Play Counts or Ratings, but that’s a small price to pay, isn’t it?  If you have a general idea of what some of your play counts were, you can use the Adjust Play Count script I blogged about a couple weeks ago.

Once I finally decided that I wanted to switch to Mac, the next step was deciding which Mac to buy.

At the time I made the decision, I was big on laptops. I’d gotten my first laptop not long before and I was still a little drunk on the portability of it. So when I started looking at the online Apple store, I went straight to the Macbooks. Since World of Warcraft is one of my most-used applications at home, I wanted a Macbook that would be able to run it at more than 13 frames per second. Naturally, I began to drool over the 17″ Macbook Pro.

A number of factors kept me from getting a Macbook Pro (MBP) for a long time: the price, and it being long overdue for an update. I didn’t want to shell out $3000+ for a laptop and have Apple announce a brand new design a week later. So I kept putting it off.

Time slipped by, and at some point I became curious about the iMacs. I was immediately impressed with the higher bang:buck ratio as far as hardware is concerned. I could get a stronger machine for less money if I went with the iMac. But, the portability of the MBP was still weighing heavily.

I was going to have to weigh the Pros and Cons of each system, and try to decide which one would benefit me the most.

The main draw of the MBP was its portability. Because our daughters’ bedroom is right next to the living room, my wife and I watch movies and TV shows on my laptop, with headphones, so as not to disturb the sleeping angels. The 17″ screen is fine for this; with the laptop sitting on a chair before us, it’s big enough for our needs. Other than this specific use, other general portability uses apply. With an iMac, portability is severely limited. However, since the machine fully contained in one housing, the iMac could still be moved with relative ease.

A big benefit to getting an iMac – specifically the 24-inch model – is that it could replace our 25-inch television. We don’t watch TV; we watch all of our shows online now, thanks to Hulu.com. Our daughters watch their movies on the TV, but most of those could be watched just as easily on an iMac. The only drawback to this is that we still have some VHS movies that the girls still watch. I’m trying to get all of them onto the computer, but some of the tapes are pretty old or obscure, so I guess I’ll have to get whatever I can find.

I spent quite a long time mulling this over in my mind, going back and forth between a 17″ MBP and a 24″ iMac. Eventually it was the size of the screen and the allure of having my own desk that tipped the scales in favor of the iMac.

I’m pretty sure it was during a reinstallation of Windows that I decided I wanted a Mac; either after being told for the sixth time that I needed to restart the computer in order for the changes to take effect, or while trying to remember what other drivers I need to download.

Let’s face it: installing Windows is a pain in the neck. And that’s even if you were given a restore/reinstall disc from the computer manufacturer. With my HP laptop, I was prompted to create my own restore discs – 3 DVDs, to be exact. The last I heard of Best Buy on the matter was that they didn’t provide any restore discs, but would gladly charge you $30 to make one for you.

The driver issue with Windows is actually the result of an advantage. With such a plethora of hardware choices open to the PC user, Windows has to be able to accommodate them all. It’s for the same reason why the operating system can’t be shipped with all of them included. Granted, Windows has basic hardware drivers that can get some stuff running out of the gate (keyboard, mouse, monitor) but for anything more than bare-bones, you need to get them yourself. There are tools available, such as DriverScanner that will scan your system and automatically download and install the latest drivers, but it’s still another step in the already tedious task of installing your operating system.

It got to a point where I wanted an operating system that just worked. I know it’s cliche, but it’s so very true. My computing time at home is very limited, so I want to make it count.

I started using the Apple IIe in elementary school, and then the new Macintoshes in junior high and high school. I don’t remember what version of the OS it was, but it was well before OS-X. The first Windows machine – Windows 3.1 I think it was – I used in a school setting was in my typing class because “out in the business world, that’s all you’ll find.” We bought our first personal computer at home when Windows 95 just came out, and I’ve used Windows ever since then.

For some time, I hated the Mac operating system; mostly because of naivete, I’ll freely admit. As time went on, though, and I began to learn more and more about the Mac operating system and the kernel behind it, I became more curious.

I think what appealed to me most in those early stages of conversion was the fact that everything in and on the Mac is self-contained, so to speak. The operating system is designed specifically for the hardware, so you don’t have the driver issues that Windows does. And conversely, the hardware is designed for the software. The whole Mac computing experience is – dare I say? – a work of art in which every aspect compliments and supports every other aspect.

So, once I decided that I was willing to open myself to experiencing OS-X, it was time to choose how I was going to experience it.