Yesterday was the keynote for WWDC 2020, the yearly Apple developer conference. While nothing in the keynote was that surprising, there were some interesting tidbits which signal solid direction in the way Apple is advancing. One of the most interesting “experiments” will be the long awaited convergence of mobile, tablet, & computing platforms.

Pencil By FiftyThree Recently I’ve been on a “go paperless” kick. I want to move as much of my life into Evernote as possible. While I’ve been using Evernote for quite some time, I got the bug to expand that usage and see what else I could do easily. Part of that is the desire to be able to take handwritten notes, digitally. In the past I’ve used Paper by FiftyThree and quite enjoyed it, so I figured I’d see how Pencil by FiftyThree (their custom stylus) worked out.

Before I even talk about this device, I have to say something about its name. I know many journalists were bitching about model names being reduced to something like “GT-I9500” or “SM-P600” as being very confusing. That might be true, but “Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition” does not exactly roll off the tongue either. While I might have some issue with the name, I generally can’t find any issues with the device itself — except for the battery. As far as tablets I’ve used recently (including the new barrage of iPads), it’s probably my favorite large tablet.

Snowulf.com with Jetpack Mobile theme on iPhone 5 This past week or so has been pleasantly quiet for me at work, so I’ve actually had some time to myself. Additionally, I managed to spend a fair amount of time on the blog this weekend, both writing and doing miscellaneous site maintenance. One of the site maintenance related items was the discovery that the mobile site was horribly, horribly broken. Currently the site’s traffic is roughly 13% mobile, up from 7% mobile this time 2012. I’d hate to disappoint all those loyal (albeit mobile) readers so I set about to fix it.

I have all my music uploaded into Amazon Cloudplayer because I buy my music predominately from Amazon. On my computer, Cloudplayer works just fine, except at work where my docking station messes with my laptop’s sound. On my Droid 3 the Cloudplayer app works fantastically (other than my headphone port being broken). So when I wanted to get some work done in peace, I figured I’d give Cloudplayer on the iPad a shot. Major mistake.

This post is a direct response to a comment posted on my article about the 4th Gen Macbook Air. In short, Eddie (the commenter/questioner) is looking for a little information about remote system management. Some have suggested the iPad, some say a MacBook Air, I’ve mentioned Chromebooks… So what do you use? Well, I can actually understand every perspective he mentioned. There are 3 things I take into consideration when talking about traveling sysadmins. First is: what do you need? The second is: what will work on the device? Lastly, what is actually the smallest/least amount of crap?

We’re trying to standardize onto Ubuntu at work and we need hardware that works really, really well. One thing that I thought might be nice to have in the office was the Dell XT2 tablets. Not that I expect everyone to have one, but I thought there might be at least a handful of users that would appreciate them. Especially those at the office that use iPads (albeit there are only a couple). Yesterday, we got in the XT2 for evaluation and I excitedly started carrying it around with me (I’ve always, always, always wanted a tablet). I’ve not had time to put Ubuntu on the machine, but I thought that the comparison to the iPad might be interesting.

I’ve said some nasty things about the iPad in the past and I’ve also said some nicer things more recently. As with the iPhone, the “make or break” boils down to what apps are available. Of course, I didn’t have much in the way of iPad specific apps, basically just blown up iPhone apps (which are okay… but don’t really take advantage of the screen). So I went on an iPad app spree! Most of what I downloaded was free applications. In that was a number of games, some free and some I actually paid for. The first that I’ve spent time playing is GodFinger.

Last night, I randomly decided that I should see what kind of manga readers I could find for the iPad. It’s got the screen quality that the Kindle lacks, and it is plenty spacious. My one requirement for the app is native support for CBR and CBZ formats (which is what i keep all my manga in). After just a few minutes on the iTunes Store Application Marketplace (aka the iApp store) I found two promising candidates: Stanza and CloudReaders. I installed both, and then transferred the same 3 volumes of manga to each.

Recently, I decided to challenge myself and actually use OSX (for a daily machine) and an iPad (because it was there). Part of this was to increase my familiarity with the devices and partially because my workplace runs basically all Mac. I was going to have to get used to them sooner or later, and sooner made sense since I had to support them. Anyways, at the same time I picked up one of the spare iPads to play with. The first time I had the iPad I futzed with it for a day or two then returned it. I borrowed it again and this time I’m trying to seriously use it.

Last night I saw the news about Canonical developing a multi-touch stack for Ubuntu. While there isn’t a ton of details, I did read their UI Guideline and was suitably impressed. If they can develop a “standard” for multi-touch for all Linux-kind, I think it would majorly solidify Linux’s market going forward.

If you haven’t heard about the iPad yet, you live under a rock on Venus. Even my mother heard about it. That being said, I think this product is one of the biggest flops in recent history. Sure, there have been massive flops in the past, but I can’t think of anything this made of fail in the last year or two. If you read the news or twitter, you’ll see a number of articles for the iPad and (I feel) even more against the iPad. My vote is, of course, against. Gizmodo’s “8 Things That Suck About the iPad” has the right idea but sort of whines, picking on it just to pick on it. Mashable has a very well written article “The Anti-Hype: Why Apple’s iPad Disappoints” which illustrates a few key points on why the iPad isn’t “magical”.