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Posts Tagged ‘iBooks’

A Day in the Life of *MY* iPad

24 Feb

I have seen conflicting reports over the past 11 months relative to how people feel about their iPads. Ever since the release of the iPad April 2010, I have heard from people who LOVE it and people who HATE it. There are also plenty in between who bought their iPad only to realize that they never use it and it essentially became an expensive item to have hanging around the house. I myself bought an iPad from a man who bought it and no longer needed it. It was in perfect condition and even still in the box because he bought it and obviously found no place for it in his life.

This idea has often made me wonder why I can get so much use out of it and others find it so useless. I cannot help but think that many bought their iPads simply because it was the thing to do. But, as an Apple fan boy, I can always find a use for such a device so it baffles me that others cannot as well. Perhaps they regret their decision to buy it, or even resent Apple for the device, or maybe they are just looking for an excuse to hate it. No matter what the excuse, I have seen plenty of articles about why people hate their iPad and they just don’t stack up to those who LOVE their iPads. Of course that is easy to say coming from the guy on this side of the fence, but I also wasn’t one of those who jumped on the bandwagon, I waited to purchase my iPad until I could “justify” the purchase. I had to come up with a reason WHY I needed that iPad. Now, I see that it was truly one of the best purchases I made last year, not a day has gone by since I purchased it that I haven’t used my iPad. Literally, I use it day in and day out. I have many uses for it, one of which is maintaining this blog. I have found it easy to carry around with me, in a good case it stays safe and I can use it in many environments. If I am going to have a sit down meeting with someone, this makes for a great tool to show demos, write up notes or look things up on the internet. I use my iPad for news, videos, documents, communication and when I’m bored, games! I can also see the day when I am on a hunt for a new job, with all of my cover letters and resumes right on my iPad, the ability to print from my iPad, email my resume, and even show examples to potential employers.

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The Christmas App Store

26 Dec

The iTunes store, App store and now iBookstore are of course the perfect place to give or receive a gift. For the past couple of years, I have seen it every Christmas day, a high number of tweets and Facebook posts that go something along the lines of: “my first post from my new _______ “.  Although some of those new devices are undoubtedly some other substandard phone or PDA of some sort, a lot of them are posted from iDevices that were received as gifts Christmas morning. I have seen a lot of blog posts the past few days telling people about the best iPhone or iPad apps to install on your ‘new’ iDevice. Although I have a lot of suggestions, you really can find them plain and clear on my top ten lists. So this post won’t be about suggestions of what you can buy, but rather some of the things that make the best gifts for iDevice users all around.

Now, in general the apps, music or books one would buy for their iDevice is more of a personal decision. The books and music I like in particular will vary widely from that of another. Likewise my choice of apps ans games is based on my picky choices. So for me, purchasing something for my iDevice that I did not implicitly request, as a gift for me, may be a risky path to take. So one thing that works every time without fail is gift cards. Normally I am not a big fan of gift cards, but with iTunes it is certainly a good option. Apple has provided a great way of sending gift cards of any denomination, in addition to allowing you to buy iTunes gift cards from all your major stores (usually located close to checkout). These cards are great and I of course use them often to give out to people as gifts when I know they are into iDevices. The card can be used in any of the Apple stores for iDevices. The system automatically tracks a credit on your account for the amount you have remaining.

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Review: iBooks (Universal App)

08 Dec

iBooks (Apple Inc. FREE) Universal App


The concept of using a device like an iPad (or an iPhone for that matter) to read a book is not new. So it had to be a matter of time before Apple came up with a way to monetize it. As a matter of fact one of the very first apps I ever bought from the app store was a bookshelf app. It worked, but it wasn’t easy to use. It had a lot of bugs and finding books for it was a hard task. On top of that, reading the books from my iPhone was even harder to do. consequently, I all but gave up on that idea early on. However, iBooks has completely changed how I feel about reading on my iDevices. iBooks is a universal app and functions identically on both the iPhone and the iPad, although I must admit it is a lot easier to use on the iPad as it functions more like a book rather than a tiny screen.

When Brandon Sanderson released the preview to his (and Robert Jordan’s) new book in The Wheel of Time series, Towers of Midnight, I had to buy it for iBooks. It was then that I really fell in love with using this medium for reading books. It was easy and convenient to use but also worked really well as a way of reading books. I can read in the dark because the screen is lit (even if it is bad for my eyes). The app automatically saves my place for me and if I open that book on my iPhone iI can pick up reading right where I left off. I am able to highlight certain sections and leave notes which I really like. All in all it provided me a superior environment for reading. It is not surprising that I am sold on the idea and the next ebook I purchased was an instructional book.

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Posted in Apps-iPad, Apps-iPhone, iDevices, iPad, iPhone, Technology

 

*MY* Top 10 iPad Apps

14 Nov


Although there are many iPad apps that I really like and that will vary from category to category, there are several apps that I use on a very consistent basis (practically every hour of the waking day).  These are the apps that I like the most and get the most use out of.  For the sake of this post I will not be including any native apps in this top 10 list.  Obviously I use quite frequently apps like the Calendar app and the iPod app as well as apps like YouTube and Maps.  But the purpose of this list is to give you an idea of the App Store apps that I feel bring me the most value.  I will give you a short description of each and then later link to a full review of each app.  Every app that I list and/or review is an app that I have purchased.

Here they are listed in order of how much I use them, 1 being the most:

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