So maybe it’s over a month, I’ve not kept count. What do I think of it? How have I ended up using it? Pros? Cons? Read on!

My mate Robbo was heading to Las Vegas about a month before the UK launch date of the iPad, and he was toying with the idea of picking one up. “Grab us one, kidda, I’ll sort you out when you’re back.” I says, and he did.

Pretty much everyone’s first question was “What on earth are you gonna use it for?” (except the wife, her’s was more along the lines of cost and current computer count in the house–5), to which I didn’t have a good answer. I have an iPhone and MacBook Pro, but being a nerd, an iPad was a prequisite.

Out of the box, it was a thing of beauty. Typical Apple packaging means you’re in love with the inanimate object before it’s dropped it’s negligé. Weighty, solid, beautiful screen, bezel of a good size for holding and intuitive controls meant it felt like you’d already known about this new thing for a while.

The screen is fantastic, the battery life astounding and the multitude of ways I’ve been using it––equally impressive.

At first I was almost reticent to try and use it whenever, and the fact that the iPhone is always in my pocket meant it was the first gadget I’d reach for. However, over the weeks, I’ve got more used to typing on the flat glass untactile keyboard, and actually quiet like it. The screen makes reading for any extended period a breeze, and I caught myself thinking it was more akin to reading a newspaper whilst on the throne.

The boy loves it. He’s familiar with the iPhone, so when he picked it up and had a go first time I didn’t have to show him *anything*. He ended up in Safari on Vimeo, watching a bunch of my videos, which was amazing as he’d never actually used a web page before that moment. As you can see in the video, it was just purely intuitive. You can hear my amazement!

The amount of games I have for him (and me) on the iPhone means we hit the ground running with loads of content on the iPad. When games are 59p, you don’t mind taking a punt on them, and we’ve got some crackers for him. Clicky Sticky is a current fav, creating his own scenes with aeroplanes and stuff. In fact, quiet often I’m relegated to the iPhone as he runs off with the iPad!

Travel
The other week I went down to London for the D&AD Awards ceremony, which was an honour, and I decided to not take a laptop, just the iPad. First time without the trusty laptop interface to the online world. Would I cope? The train ride down was great. Logged on to wifi, emailing, surfing, chatting, listening to music, watched an episode of Lost. A couple of Oriental ladies were very interested so chatted to them for a bit and let them play with it while I went to the toilet. Loads of glances, and some crap joking from the Scottish rail staff about robbing it. Err yeah, another beer please!

#protip: a banana makes an excellent iPad stand. Non-slip, tilts the iPad a great typing angle, biodegradable and provides a tasty treat when you’ve finished work!

Taking the iPad to the gym has made me a few more friends too. Since I’d had it there before the UK launch, there were a few points and stares, but one guy came over and started chatting. He turned out to be a security analysts and consultant, who loves Apple hardware. Great geeky conversation ensued!

Around the house, these last weeks the iPad has been indispensable for watching the World Cup while moving around the house! Streaming via TVCatchUp has been great. Not perfect, but to wander from room to room and have the footy in hand, supoib!

In summation, I’ve found the iPad to excel when it comes to consuming media. I sit at a desk all day, and most nights, creating stuff. The iPad is a chance to kick back and look at all the wonderful things on the internet, providing they’re not in Flash…

In the living room, when the wife is watching tele, the iPad presents less of a barrier for conversation than a laptop. If we’re sat in there and I reach for the iPad to wiki or IMDB something, it doesn’t put up the same fence as a laptop, which kinda says “I’m busy, don’t interrupt.” I feel the iPad is a lot more informal, and less intrusive.

It’s a fantastic bit of kit, and while it will have it’s detractors, I’m loving every minute with it. And so is Eloy!

There’s an uproar at the moment on the interwebs. You may have heard about it.

The iPad will not support Flash.

Just like the iPhone before it, the Flash plug-in cannot and will not run in the iPad’s browser. Apple say it’s because the Flash plug-in is the single biggest cause of Safari crashes. I can’t say I’d blame them for being pissed. The window to the internet on your default install can be crippled by a third party proprietary plug-in. Not cool.

So, because Apple have a closed platform in the iPhone and iPad they can choose who plays ball.

A lot of web folks are predicting the end of Flash. It’s on it’s way out. along with HTML5 putting the boot in and promising to handle streaming video (possibly Flash’s biggest single use online) with acceptable CPU levels on a Mac, there will be a decrease in the plug-in, whilst this may be true, I don’t see a funeral anytime soon.

If you also look at who’s screaming til they’re blue in the face, we see something interesting. It’s mostly (if not all) Mac using standards authors who’re quick to announce Flash’s passing. Mac users. A minority group who’ve been consistently bummed by Adobe and their plug-in technology for over a decade. We’ve been second-hand citizens for years with both the Flash authoring app and the web plug-ins. I know people who, years ago, turned from Mac to PC, because their core skill was Flash, and that was an utter cluster-fuck on a Mac.

Even today, watching a 2.something GHz Mac CPU tilting at 50% when running a YouTube video isn’t fucking funny. It’s obscene, and a slur to all Mac users. Adobe should not be surprised the oppressed masses are now turning.

But really, that’s just the technology, what about the software and possibilities it presents?

I have a long history with Flash, which has to some extent tailed off in the recent years. I remember being completely confused by FutureSplash, before it was acquired by Macromedia. I saw my whole world change with the introduction of ActionScript, not the clicking of option boxes, and the fear that I might not “get it”.  I was invited to the launch of Flash 5 with Subnet, in London with a handful of other companies such as Kerb and Razorfish, teams of young talent who’d been reared on video games and enjoyed creating something new. I’ve written chapters and articles, tech reviewed, demoed and taught Flash. I know it pretty well.

If Flash goes, we’ll lose important things on the web. Diversity, experimentation, inspiration and art. Flash is the single quickest way for a designer to do something quirky, with audio and animation, to tell a story or create an experience, then publish it to the internet. While I’m not Flash’s biggest fan, I still think it has it’s place, and more so now that it’s being used to create elements of a site rather than doing whole sites within Flash.

I don’t think Flash will die, and really I hope it doesn’t, because the bar for entry into web authoring for young designers and coders may be raised so high, and focussed so narrow, it will stop a lot of abstract and creative talent getting involved.

So just be careful what you wish for.

I’ve just got back from a week in Spain, and this time, I didn’t take a netbook (as such).

About two weeks ago I got hold of a 13″ Macbook Pro, the new unibody enclosure laptop from Apple. I didn’t want another 15″ laptop as I ended up never taking it anywhere as it was so big. So when Apple finally dropped the 13″, I snapped it up.

Size is important. The 12″ G4 PowerBook was one of the best laptops Apple ever made. Fairly rugged (but bloody heavy!) it fit easily into a ruck sack and on your knees in confined places. It also didn’t feel like it’d snap if I bent over with it in a rucksack, unlike the old 15″ Macbook Pro I had!

The battery life is also excellent. Something I’d really liked about the Samsung was absurdly long battery times, so I suppose it’s a must have check-box now.

But what about the smaller screen res? Not that much of an issue to be honest, as I’ve kind of gotten used to the 10″ Samsung NC10 screen, and hey, if it matters so much when doing work, buy an external monitor!

The biggest benefit is that it just works, as you’d expect. I think I’ve had enough of titting about with limitations of the Hackintosh nature, and just want something reliable and… well, just Apple-like.

For the moment, the 13″ Macbook Pro is fantastic and I don’t think I’ll be spending too much time on the other netbooks, though the EEE is pretty much set up for wardriving and is great for that, sling it in the car and off we go!

Hello again.

Since I’ve lost the use of my MacBook Pro for a week or two, I’ve had to fall back to the NC10 for every evening use. Before now, whilst having used it for an hour here or there, but usually a lot less, I’d not really built up a great picture of how good this little laptop really is.

Yes, it’s been a bit of a wait for drivers to be written to support the NC10 specifics, but that really is the last 2%. I’ve been doing some web design front end work, running TextMate, Espresso, CSSEdit, Safari, Transmi, Firefox, iTunes (natch) and even Photoshop in the mix with great success.

Yes, the little laptop would be sweating it’s nuts off at times, having only 2GB and all those apps open. And yes, the screen is a little short (for a stormtrooper) but it wasn’t enough to *not* do any work. I’ve not even tried the virtual desktops of Spaces yet, as I like my workspace cluttered. If you could see my real desk right now you’d understand…

Since the drivers for the audio hardware and the new trackpad drivers have come out, the Samsung NC10 has become a very usable pretender to the Apple throne. For £300, I have a system I can work on if needed, listen to music, watch movies, wardrive with, email, socialise and surf with very few drawbacks.

No. No I won’t be using this for an extended period of time. I’ll get my MacBook Pro back and enjoy the screen real estate, as it usually sits on the desk and doesn’t move too far. But the NC10 has done brilliantly to step up to the plate. I’ll be taking it to Canada with me next week.

The long battery life means I can watch at least 2 films on the plane if the inflight ones are crap, plus I can wardrive from the airport to Guelph, then have a small laptop on hand should I need to do more while there. It’s turning into an essential little piece of kit!

For quite a while, I’ve had a Mac Mini hooked up the TV, streaming DVDs and xvids to the TV, and all my music on for streaming to an Airport Express.

The Mini is on 24/7, also acting as a dev web server for nerding, and running ftp and a few other protocols, allowing me to grab an album from wherever, whenever.

As good as Front Row has been, it’s just not… geeky enough for me. The wife uses it without issue, and my son yells when the selector is on a few of the menu options he wants. But I want more geek.

I tried the XBMC, but it stank of PC design asthetics, like a chavved up Corsa, Plex wasn’t bad, but Boxee so far, has been great.

It wasn’t immediately great, it did take a few months to grow on me, but once it did, I now actually like browsing through videos, and music and finding things I’d missed or forgotten.

So how does Boxee make this an interesting process again?

While Boxee and Plex are built on the XBMC framework, the big difference is the social and online aspects of Boxee.

For example, all your films are scanned, and cover art, reviews, and a link to a trailer are downloaded from online databases.The reviews are brilliant for jogging your memory about the plot, or convincing the other half that it’s not a horror movie and she will like it.

You can also rate the films at any point while watching them, and these rating show up in your online profile. Online profiles? Yeah, the social interaction side of Boxee allows you to search for friends, add them and see their stream of activity. In fact, the first screen of the Boxee interface has four of the 16 boxes dedicated to recent activity from your online mates.

As a side note, I truly believe there’s only about 100 people actually online, as I have the same friends on Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, all the others… and Boxee. Everyone else on the internet must be a NPC.

Boxee also features some great web integration. You can add Flickr profiles to view photos, scrobble all your music to Last.fm, and watch BBC TV through the iPlayer plug-in. iPlayer’s not the only TV content, Joost, YouTube, Hulu, CNN and more, the integration of all the plug-ins is very good, and feels like a coherent whole package. I’ve found myself spending time browsing, reading reviews and rediscovering media I forgot I had.

Another thing that’s made the switch from Front Row to Boxee easier is a plug-in for Front Row that adds Boxee as a menu item, meaning the wife can use Front Row but I can jump from that to Boxee, no keyboard or messing about required. There’s also a free, official iPhone Boxee app due to hit the Apple Store any day now too!

All this through the little white Apple Remote…

ps. Add a comment if you want an invite to the Boxee Alpha!

After Christmas, I spent two and a half weeks in Spain with my wife’s family. Having done this many a time, and having taken many different laptops with me, I generally know what I need from a laptop to keep me semi-sane.

One of the best laptops I’d taken in the past was the 12″ PowerBook, and believe me, if Apple made an Intel netbook approaching this small footprint form factor, I’d have one. But alas, that’s a different blog post waiting to happen. However, the 15″ MacBook Pro was a pain in the ass. No desk space to keep it on, unwieldly in size (even fearing warping it when bending over with it in a rucksack) and a battery boasting about 2 hrs, it was a little too much.

In the summer of 2008 I took my Asus EEE 701, running Linux Mint. The little machine was great. Durable, good battery etc, but after a week or so of it being my only computer, the small 7″ screen and cramped keyboard were starting to tell.

This Christmas, I took the Samsung NC10 with OSX installed. I did have a Linux Mint install on a 20GB partition, as a fall back in case I found some weirdness with the OSX86 install, but I’m really happy to report the NC10 was near perfect.

Battery life is incredible. When the battery menu bar indicator turned red, it meant I had over an hour left…whu!? The screen was big enough to play games and watch movies on, and the keyboard, while having one or two keys in odd positions, was really good, no cramping or anything.

Being a long time user of OSX, since the public beta, I know a mac inside out, and feel more at ease than using Linux of any flavour, despite how good Ubuntu/Linux Mint have become. OS X ran sweetly on the NC10, starting up in about 40 seconds and shutting down in less than 5, quicker than my MacBook Pro can wake and sleep, made power management a non-issue.

The only thing still missing is the ability to switch audio output to headphones, but that is very close to being completed apparently… which will make the little NC10 an absolute must for any OSX fans after a netbook.

So I’m due to go on holiday again soon, and while the Asus was excellent for my last trips to Spain, the cramped keyboard and small screen made it a bit painful as an only computer.

Looking to upgrade to something with a bigger screen, I started doing my hacker homework and searching for a netbook that’d run OSX pretty well. A lot of googling later, and the Samsung NC10 was a prime candidate.

Thanks to the hard work and patient instructions from a poster called Mysticus C* over on the InsanelyMac forums, he’s provided instructions, tools and ongoing updates to shoe-horn OSX on the NC10. And it’s bloody brilliant!

Installation isn’t too difficult, I use a £14 Xbox HD-DVD as a USB drive, which makes installing this and Ubuntu/Linux Mint a breeze, then using the supplied tools you can patch OSX up to 10.5.5 (Apparently the 10.5.6 update works too, if you re-run the patcher app from Bike Town). The system boots up *very* quickly, miles quicker than my MacBook Pro. The drivers for the screen are correct, running at 1024×600, USB devices work ok, the webcam is fine, swapping the Mini PCI-e card for a Dell 1390 makes the Airport work a treat.

There are a few problems at the moment. The headphone socket and microphones (internal and socket) aren’t recognised, but there’s a hack to switch outputs, and a lot of work is being done on these at the moment by the guys on the forums.

Sleep with a power lead attached doesn’t work yet, works ok on battery power though. This isn’t really a massive problem, as the system boots and shuts down sooo quickly, sleeping isn’t a big loss, but it’ll be nice to have it fixed.

At the moment the machine is partition to dual boot OSX and Linux Mint and I’m pleased to report that at no point did this netbook boot into Windows ;)

The Samsung NC10 is a great little laptop, nice big keyboard and screen and only an inch or so wider than the Asus 701. The battery life is excellent, 160GB drive, and of course it’s running OSX. Having Front Row while on an airplane to keep Eloy happy will be brilliant!

Apple, I’d much rather give you my money for a small form-factor netbook, but for the moment this’ll do, and do well.

One of the lads on my regular video gaming forum, NTSC-uk, is getting a Mac, and was asking what apps and widgets people use on Mac. No specifics, just chuck some ideas at him. Here’s what I said;

Quicksilver (keyboard app/file launcher)
Once you’ve tried it, you really can’t be without it.

Perian (xvid/divx/x264 codec)
Plug-in to play divx and many other formats in all apps that use the Quicktime architecture. That means watching x264 .mkv files in Front Row

VLC (movie media viewer)
Better movie player than Quicktime, handles everything, does interlacing and subtitles etc.

Adium (instant messaging)
Like the PC/Linux Pigeon, but better. Handles all forms of IM like MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Jabber and Facebook.

Opera (Browser)
I’m a big Opera fan, and the latest versions are great. They don’t suffer slow down and bloat like Firefox and Safari do. If you use a lot of multiple tabs when browsing, try Opera.

Transmisson (Bittorrent client)
Best BT client on the mac

If you do any design, get FontExplorerX for font handling. Free, and looks like iTunes for your fonts.

This was a top-of-my-head list, so if you’ve got something you use and feel other’s would benefit, lemme know!

Pixelmator‘s been making in-roads into designers/programmers toolboxes on the mac for a year or so now. You may have read or heard about it on the various Mac news sites, it’s a light-weight image editor, built on Cocoa, passing graphics tasks off to your graphics chip, challenging Photoshop etc.

Some of it’s hype, some of it hyperbole, but what can’t be ignored is that Pixelmator’s a great app that’s turning heads. And it’s $59. No, that’s not a typo.

I grabbed a beta of Pixelmator when it first launched and was mildly impressed. On a recent MacHeist bundle, Pixelmator was one of the apps, to which I thought, bonus, I’ll try it out more.

One to watch, I thought, a feeling echoed by long time friend and graphics man, Mark Coleran. He felt that while Photoshop was such a bohemoth, and with a prohibitive cost as a major entry barrier for casual users or coders needing a solid graphcis app, there was a market area for someone to sneak in, steal a user base and make in-roads, all for about 40quid.

So as a long time Photoshop user and beta tester, where would Pixelmator fit in my workflow?

I usually have Photoshop open at any given time of the day, so when I’m working away coding/debugging HTML and CSS I might not use an image editor much, but if the need arises, and I see Photoshop isn’t open for any reason (as I look in my dock, the icon’s there and lit alright) I’m almost frustrated as I know it’ll take a set amount of time to open, and if I’ve got Parallels, 4 browsers, Transmit, Coda, Textmate, CSSEdit, Adium and iTunes (natch) then opening Photoshop can start the old disk swap shuffle.

Enter Pixelmator. It opens in a flash, provides pretty much everything I’ll need at hand in an image editor, and looks very tidy. Small memory footprint and great handling of many varied graphic formats is a big plus, so you can see where, in a pinch if I’m mid-code/task/mental thread and don’t want to lose a thought, why I might pitch for Pixelmator over Photoshop.

Pixelmator also integrates into the Mac OS very well, providing access to the iSight camera, iPhoto libraries and hooking into Automator. This means it’s excellent for streamlining repetitive tasks and going one further with file manipulations or other Automator related cleverness.

In the last week, I received an email from the Pixelmator team inviting me to try the 1.3 beta, better known as Tempo. The new beta boasts massive improvements when handling big images, which is great, as I deal with a lot of images from print designers, plus some very powerful tools like the Instant Alpha selector and colour wheel tools. Pixelmator is bringing back the enjoyment of exploration in a graphics package, something I’ve not had since Photoshop 3 introduced layers…

So, there’s gotta be something bad, yeah?

Yes, there most definitely is. Pixelmator is crying out for some “Save for web…” options.

There are none. You can save as a JPEG or GIF, with very little control over either. The omission in today’s software world of such obvious feature sets leaves me scratching my head. Pixelmator is a beautiful app. It ticks boxes for the “delicious generation” of mac users, and would nestle nicely in a coders tool set. The Tempo beta I tried may not be feature complete yet, and these things may be on the way, but as it stands, it’s a glaring omission.

But would I recommend Pixelmator?

Of course! If you’re a student or begrudge spending a lot on a tool you’ll use seldomly, try Pixelmator (free 30 day demo!) and see if you like it. If you like the sound of some of the benefits I’ve listed here, give it a go. In fact, give it a go simply to challenge the dominance of Photoshop.

The more I use Pixelmator (and the more they update it), the more I like it.

But please lads, sort out the save for web options!