Apple’s new legalize in their latest SDK seems to not only kill Flash, but hint at the possible removal of many frameworks like Unity3d. I can’t say for sure how true that is, but that would be a huge blow to developers. It seems Apple wants you to do it all the hard way. Using only XCode and Objective-C. I guess some folks think that this will result in better quality programs, because it’s written in their native language. Being a programmer myself that is the most stupidest excuse I’ve ever heard. There’s plenty of CRAP apps in their App Store written entirely without frameworks in Objective-C. So, the excuse of better because it’s in their native tongue holds little weight in my opinion. It’s disappointing to think that I could have jumped onto Flash Actionscript and built an app or game for the iPhone, doing so would have been so much faster for me. Especially considering that I’m not very well versed in OpenGL-ES, nor do I really want to be. I don’t dream about writing 3d game engines, and having seen the amount of Objective-C code that’s required to put a 2D box on the screen at the Big Nerd Ranch was enough to make me run for the door. I want to be able to make what I envision into a reality without having to outsource my development or hire highly skilled specialized programmers. The other point raised by folks is that Apple doesn’t want you to cross-platform develop, which I can see too, but it’s not very fair to force developers to choose like that. Yes, there are lots of iPhones and iPads, but to say you can only choose one isn’t right. It’s like asking a child you can only choose your mom or your dad.

In the end, so far Apple has managed to make enemies of Google and Adobe, and alienated some developers. It saddens me to see this happen, because I see so much potential in the platform, when you consider what things people have done with jail broken iPhones, it’s a missed opportunity. I’ve been witnessing for some time a change in how Apple’s attitude. They’ve become quite the opposite of it’s roots, when they were gunning for the corporate giants like Microsoft and IBM. Now that they themselves have become this bloated beast of a corporation, much like their old enemies, they don’t need to embrace customers or developers. “Just suck it up or go elsewhere”, seems to be their stance, and I guess there’s enough people out there keeping Apple afloat that they can maintain that stance. It’s times like this that reinforces why I would like to love Apple, but I can’t because they keep pulling stupid shit like this.

There are better articles written on Ars Technica, TheFlashBlog, and TUAW.

My wife stopped into Best Buy today to pick up a neoprene case for my iPad, and she was surprised to find out that some of the accessories showed up today, among them was the Apple iPad Case and the Zagg Screen Protector. She was thoughtful enough to pick them up for me along with an Incase netbook sleeve.

To sum things up quick, the Apple case, for those that don’t know, is a folio style case, which means the iPad sits on one side and the other side is a flap, making the iPad like a book. Although expensive, it fits snuggly and quite accurately. It also looks good with the device and has the nice touch of flipping around into a stand. The Zagg Screen Protector is expensive and a pain to put on. This is my first Zagg, and watching people put on the iPhone one never looked fun. Well, just magnify that up to the iPad size, and you can imagine the fun it was putting it on. I got it on eventually, but it looks a bit scuffed up; the instructions say that these minors scuffs are supposed to go away in a few days, so, we’ll see how it looks then. The last iPad related thing I did tonight was look around the App Store. Looking at the top sellers. I saw that many people bought GoodReader, which for $.99, I tried out. It’s another file reader, but supports a few more formats, and has the option to communicate with a remote server via wifi, which is more attractive than myPDF. Putting it to the test, GoodReader did NOT crash on Girls of Gaming 6. The UI is a bit better too, since you can see a list of filenames of the files you are able to view, unlike myPDF, which only shows you a preview image. I’ve not had the time to try out the wifi function yet, so I’ll write back later when I’ve tried it.

Lastly, I noticed PopCap games ported Plants vs Zombies to iPad, which is a very good fit. But I’m hesitant to dish out $10 for it.

First off, iTunes doesn’t really distinguish between apps for the iPad and iPhone, so if you’re like me I have upwards of 300+ applications in iTunes. Partly because I’m lazy and haven’t widdled down my apps list. So, I definitely didn’t let iTunes automatically sync my apps. So, I had to manually plow through all my apps one at a time, since iTunes was nice enough to check every one of them, and unselect the ones I wanted… a UNCHECK ALL would have been nice to have here…

Once my selected apps were loaded, I tried a few out. I was disappointed to learn a few didn’t work. Most did though, and after an App Store update on a few of them, I noticed some that updated themselves to iPad versions!

Here’s a list of what I tried today:

1. Navigon
2. Metal Gear Solid
3. Shrek Kart
4. Kids vs Zombies
5. Spore Origins
6. Sketchbook Mobile
7. Tetris
8. Mocha VNC
9. Time Crisis
10. Pocket Informant

So how did things go? Well, Navigon started up fine, but once I pressed “Show Map” I was tossed back to the desktop. Metal Gear Solid was updated to a real iPad app, which was very nice! All the other apps on the list worked fine with the exception of Spore Origins, it did a quick dump to the desktop right after the startup screen… Mocha VNC, which is a remote desktop application, worked real nice; having the larger view made it easier to read things on my remote computers. Time Crisis was almost a bit unfair, because the screen was bigger, so my accuracy was actually better. I also discovered that the speakers on the iPad are pretty loud too.

My wife, later in the day, was able to go to a Hong Kong newspaper web site (http://www.mingpao.com) and was able to easily and comfortably read the Chinese web site with no difficulties. So she’s enjoying the larger screen size for web browsing.

My last test of the evening was to see if I can get the iPad to display my library of PDF’s, since this form factor SCREAMS to be able to do this. I heard about a file sharing option the iPad would have, but it turns out that this option must be purchased through an application which supports it. So you’ll need to dish out $10 for any of the iWork applications, but even then the file sharing is application specific. So there’s still no easy way without buying someone’s application to get files you want, but alas, Pages doesn’t support PDF’s, but after digging through the App Store I decided to try myPDF for $.99. Once Pages and myPDF were installed, iTunes gave me a spot in my Apps tab of my iPad labeled File Sharing. In this section I was able to choose the app I want to share files with and add files to its storage location, and in this case, myPDF worked very nicely! I was able to drop a bunch of my PDF’s in and I was able to read them on my iPad… Nice!

So to sum up day 1. Spore Origins, and Navigon didn’t work. Reading online newspapers in Chinese was impressive on the bigger screen and Reading PDF’s was successful with myPDF.

Unboxing and Initial Impressions

I won’t bore you all with how cool the box is, because well, it’s a box, and true to Apple, it’s minimalistic, and the iPad fit in almost completely edge to edge in the box. It’s interesting to note that the box is padded to make it taller, which I guess is to make it more store shelf friendly, otherwise it would be a pretty thin box.

Holding the device for the first time, I was treated to the usual Apple quality I’ve come accustomed to. The iPad is well made. The back is the same type of metal used in their laptops, so durability shouldn’t be and issue. When I first saw images of the iPad, I thought the bezel around the device looked ugly, and an unnecessary design option, but upon holding the device, it turns out it does have a purpose, which is to be a place to put your thumb, something that didn’t need considering for the iPhone due to it’s smaller size. In general, to no one’s surprise, it looks like a big iPod Touch, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Apps and Impressions on Using the iPad

Upon turning it on, I was surprised to see that the battery was fully charged, and was pretty much ready to use, well almost, you still need to hook it up to iTunes first, but after that, it was ready to go. I hooked it up to my wireless network with ease, and synced some of my apps to the phone. I hit Safari and surfed around to some sites and typed out a few messages. I am very impressed with the new form factor, the size of the iPad makes a very big difference in it’s usability. Compared to the cramped quarters of my iPhone, the iPad is a pleasure to use. Typing on the larger on screen keyboard feels more like typing on a real keyboard, I can actually use more than one finger to type! I always suspected that the new form factor would really make this device successful, and so far, it’s proving true, everything feels so much better to use!

I loaded a bunch of my iPhone apps on, just to see how they would work. Navigon, Metal Gear Solid, Time Crisis, Tetris, Facebook and a few others. My son put the iPad to the test with Kid’s vs Zombies, and it works quite well, although he complained about the screen shrinking back down to 1x size from the 2x size option. But I think that’s because he unknowingly hits the little button on the lower right that enlarges the iPhone app. Navigon threw me back to the desktop when I touched the Show Map button, so I guess the iPad doesn’t have a full fledge GPS in it (someone correct me if I’m wrong, I didn’t bother looking that spec up). Facebook worked like a charm, and Tetris played pretty nice.

Overall, the iPad is a pretty impressive device, but honestly, I can’t call it the magical and revolutionary device Apple’s marketing touts it is. Will this device fail? No, honestly, I can’t see that. Mainly because, even though Apple didn’t make me the tablet I wanted, they were smart in leveraging the large developer community fostered by the iPhone, because honestly, it was the developers that helped make the iPhone the monster it is today, and these same developers will do the same for the iPad.

Next thing for me to do now is update my SDK, and see if I can start making some apps for this new platform, and see what other things I can make this thing do.

I got back from Voices That Matter, and I was so inspired by Erica Sudan’s Dell Mini 9 Hacintosh project I had to try it. I’m happy to say that I’m a proud owner of a HP Mini 110 Mac! I’m going to write about my experiences doing it, and using it soon! I’ve also made my Dell 17″ E1705 laptop into a nice 17″ Macbook – Bwahahaha!

I’ve also been checking out Windows 7, now that I have it. I’ve installed it a couple of times now, and the short of it is… I like it! It is so much better than Vista… If Microsoft brought this out as Vista, Apple wouldn’t have so much trash to talk about. I’ve not delved too deep into it, but from what I’ve experienced so far from installation to initial usage it’s been awesome. Kudos to Microsoft!

In gaming, my buddy James got me Borderlands… Damn him! I’ve been playing that more than I should, and in reality, not as much as I want to… Damn real life job!

So, between those three big things, and the impending launch of Motorola’s Droid on Verizon tomorrow, I’ve got no shortage of things to type about… I just need more hours in the day…