New iPad

A few months ago I bought a new iPad, 3rd generation, and I must say I'm liking it for a variety of tasks, and a little disappointed in a few areas that I thought it might be better.

First, it is a lovely gadget, and for any sort of consumption of media, looking at Facebook or reading my RSS feeds, it's a joy. Netflix, ebooks, so many things, it's very enjoyable to use. But I bought it for professional use. So I'm looking at it with a few aims in mind:

Notes: B

There are a slew of note-taking apps, but as a visual person, I really want something I can draw ideas out with, and as a practical matter I want to be able to record meetings as well. I've used Notebook, Soundnote, and Evernote. Each one has advantages over the others, but none has emerged as a clear winner.

Notebook has a 'real notebook' visual metaphor, which is slightly annoying. I wasn't fond of Apple's decision to go with faux realism in its Calendar and Address Book apps, either. It feels a little cheesy to me, like I'm supposed to forget I'm working with software on a glass screen. However, it is a nice app to use, and includes a sketching tool which doesn't suck. For involved drawing I'll stick with one of the dedicated apps and bring it in. It also has voice annotation and Dropbox syncing, which is very nice.

Evernote primarily has the advantage of being aggressively synced across devices (or even through the website if I'm away from my tech). But my primary use for it is to gather web clips that I want to use as references for later.

 

Presentation: B

I need to be able to show images and 3D data. Keynote works well for normal images and text, with some built in charts. It lacks a 'runtime' navigation system: you can't make a link to one slide from an onscreen button, so there is no way to have a branching presentation. There is an app called Picture Link that says it can do this, but I haven't had many opportunities yet to use it. Also, neither has a 'markup' tool. I might start saving things out as a PDF and opening in PDF Pen for just that reason.

3D is a bit of a problem. Ideally, I want to be able to provide a 'walkthrough' of an exhibit or store layout, and it would be great if I could make simple changes to both the structure and textures of the model right on the iPad. So far no dice. There are 'augmented reality' apps that should be able to provide the walk through, but as far as I can tell, there's no way to do any sort of markup on the model. I'm thinking about how 3D implements in Adobe PDF, but that is very difficult to implement without expensive software, and still doesn't do what I really want–not to mention it doesn't work on the iPad.

Communication: A

So far it's worked pretty well. Most of my main problems were alleviated by switching my main email over to imap from smtp. I also have Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ apps for social networking. And I'm writing this post on my iPad using Blogsy. I've even used Skype and Teamviewer on my iPad.

Data entry: B

I've had a lot of experience with FileMaker Go and Bento, and I must say they continue to impress. The addition of design on the iPad in Bento is wonderful, and even without the capabilities of Filemaker it can be very usable. And of course, having the power of FileMaker in a (free) mobile app is a great boon.

The main problem I have with FMG is a lack of desktop sync built in. It's something you have to code for yourself. Not insurmountable, but a big omission. It would have been fine if you could use ODBC connections like you can in FileMaker on the desktop. That way you could have FMG serve as a back end to a readily available and cheap MySQL database hosted anywhere. Getting a FM database served over the internet is a bit of an investment, and truly integrating it into an existing website is still far from trivial.

Still, this makes for an excellent use-case, as long as you don't have to do too much typing, like I am right now. The dictation feature will hopefully alleviate that to some extent, but that has it's own limitations.

 

 

Drawing: A

I recently acquired a pressure sensitive stylus from Adonit, the Jot Touch. I does change the whole idea of making sketches on the iPad from "meh" to "not bad". I have yet to actually finish a drawing on the iPad, but it does make for some good sketching.

There are a bazillion drawing apps, but primarily use Sketchbook Pro, ArtStudio, Procreate, TouchDraw and iDraw. They are all pretty good in their own way, and I imagine I'm going to be moving back and forth between them the same way I move back and forth between brush pens, crowquills, and technical pens. I'm not sure if they are really ready for prime time, but it is fun watching the curve.

I don't know if a serious artist would be satisfied with the capabilities of an iPad; certainly it is less mature and capable than a cheap computer with a Cintiq, but for someone who just wants to sketch on a portable device, and maybe develop and finish on the computer, it is compelling.

But if we're talking about sketching, my current favorite is Paper, which is very bare bones but intuitive. It follows a visual metaphor of the Moleskine notebooks, but the metaphor doesn't extend where it isn't useful. It lacks any 'pinch to zoom' features, or layers, and it only has five tools plus an eraser, and only nine colors, but what it does do very well is get out of your way. There are some nice sharing.

For sketches, it is literally a joy to use.

 

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Funerals

This year I've had to attend two funerals, one for my grandmother and one for my mother-in-law. Neither was a surprise, and both were painful. They say these things come in threes; if so I can wait.

Both of the funerals were bittersweet. They were celebrations of lives lived with courage and grace, attended by family and friends. Strangers whose stories you have heard but never had a face to match to. An underlying sadness that the vital connector for our disparate lives is no more.

My wife and her sisters are now having to sift through the boxes of paperwork that even a normal, too short life accumulates. Their mother was a very organized person, and a lover of writing, journals, correspondence, short stories and two published novels, so there is more than might be usual. It is a form of closure, I suppose.

I feel useless now, same as I did for my grandmother. All I can do is stand ready in case heavy lifting is required, or a pickle jar needs opening. I can be a source of calm for my wife, a shoulder, a maker of coffee and burner of meals that she doesn't feel like making.

She says she's grateful, so I try to be more calm and shoulder-y. I can't help but think that this is dreadful practice for later in life, when these things become more common, but I don't want to think about it. They say the stages in your life can be marked by what formal occasions you attend, the gateways of our lives. Children go to Confirmation or Bar Mitzvah, young men and women graduate, then start going to all the weddings of their friends, then the showers for their kids, then the funerals. All of my friends who are likely to get married and have kids have done so. After that it's mainly funerals. It feels like I've reached the funeral stage, and I can't wait for the next generation to start up the graduations and weddings so I can vicariously feel more hopeful.

Even a celebration of a life well spent is a reminder that life is meant to be spent, and to be careful how you spend this one life.

 

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