My Latest Apple Gadget....

Is not an iPhone 4. I walked down George Street yesterday, and there were literally hundreds of people queuing outside the Apple store, and more large crowds outside each of the various telco outlets between my car park and my office. Some of those people must have spent most of the day queuing. Good lord, some of them had set up camp on Thursday, with sleeping bags and chairs! Don't they have jobs? How on earth does someone with nothing better to do with their time than wait in the street to buy a mobile phone afford a mobile phone in the first place?

Any way, I have already have mobile phone, an iPhone 3G, which is running iOS 4.0.1 perfectly well (perhaps the display of SMS messages is a shade slower since the upgrade, but I have had no other issues/crashes/complaints, and I completely fail to understand all the gum flapping in the press about "iOS 4 rendering iPhone 3G's unusable". Poppycock, etc.). I'm sticking with my existing iPhone until (a) the furor dies down, and I can just walk into a store a get an iPhone 4 without having to queue; and (b) I have enough time to deal with changing phones and telcos (note to Optus: you're dumped). Yes, I know that iTunes will sync all my data and apps from the old phone to the new phone, but I'll still have to negotiating getting off Optus and onto Telstra (my current employer's preferred supplier) without losing my existing mobile number, and then I have to get the new phone re-paired with my car and blue tooth headset, and established as a sync client for various apps. No, it is not going to be a five minute job, and I have a proof of concept kicking off next week, and several other streams of activity that need my attention for at least two weeks. So later for the iPhone upgrade.

The new gadget is one that I bought on Thursday (when it was still safe to go into the Apple store): the new Apple Magic Trackpad.

First, I hate the name. Someone in Apple's marketing department has "magic" on the brain at the moment. Perchance too much exposure to Disney children's classics has induced some sort of overload in the fairy dust department? Whatever, the device itself is really working for me. I've hardly touched a mouse since I got it (well, them actually, there's one in my office as well), which is good, because I still have this wretched tendonitis in my right arm, and using a mouse isn't good for tendonitis. The action of using the Trackpad is quite different, because you don't have to "hold" anything. Just holding a mouse causes the muscles in your arm to tense slightly, and moving the mouse works both muscles and tendons quite a lot. Using the Trackpad requires much less movement, and it's a different movement to mouse movement. Yesterday was a completely mouse-free day, and my arm was better for it.

The Trackpad (I refuse to using the 'M' word) does take a little getting used to, but I've adjusted quite quickly. The only thing that I've had trouble with it is using the Marquee tool in Photoshop for large selections; a Wacom tablet will still be better in Photoshop, no question. Everything else - scrolling, clicking, right clicking, dragging - works perfectly. I do have to be careful not to rest my fingers against the pad by accident, because it does interpret a very light touch as a direct order, and does it's level best to act on that order. The result is usually annoying.

Right now, and until I can get the tendonitis fixed, this Trackpad is the perfect pointing device for me. I think I may find it difficult to go back to a mouse in the long run.

What can I do with my iPad?

Sydney finally got the iPad on Friday May 28th. I will omit here any description of media beat ups, long queues of people standing in the rain, etc. Suffice it to say that I am surprised that neither Apple's website nor their chosen courier company's website melted down under the onslaught of frenzied geeks repeatedly refreshing their screens in an effort to work out when they would receive their iPads. I got mine just on 10AM, and after a check to see that it was OK, and a chance for my co-workers to have a look at it too, I stuck in my brief case and got on with my work.

I've spent most of my free time on the weekend installing apps, setting things up to suit my proposed work flow and syncing data. Apps that I have installed are:

• CSV Touch
• Do androids dream of electric sheep: Dust to Dust #1
• Dropbox
• Evernote
• Goodreader for iPad
• iBooks
• Instapaper Pro
• 1Password Pro
• Numbers
• OmniFocus
• OmniGraffle
• Pages
• Penultimate
• Sudoku HD for iPad
• The elements for iPad
• Weatherzone
• WIRED Magazine

And I have configured Contacts, Mail and Maps, loaded some music and photos and arranged things to suit myself.

From the iPad I can now access my email and contacts (built in apps) and my to do list (OmniFocus). I can use Pages for word processing, and OmniGraffle for diagrams, so:

Which is perfectly satisfactory for capturing something that a customer is describing to me, and will be even better when I take the time to read the OmniGraffle manual.

Penultimate looks OK, but I think I am going to need to investigate a stylus to get good results with it. And it will never compensate for the simple fact that I can't draw (sigh). I think I am likely to use Pages for taking meeting notes - I don't find the on-screen keyboard a problem, probably because (a) I'm a girl, my hands are a bit smaller; and (b) I've spent years typing on various portable Palm Pilot keyboards, until my last Palm (LifeDrive) refused to hold a charge any longer.

Dropbox, Evernote and 1Password Pro I use constantly, and I'm pleased to see that they work well on the iPad. Goodreader promises to be a real boon: I've already synced half a dozen large manuals in PDF format.

iBooks will probably be more useful when the local iBooks store launches properly. Instapaper Pro is even nicer on the iPad than it is on the iPhone (if you haven't tried this app, I do recommend it).

"The Elements" is just amazing, and I'm sure I shall read all of it, which may fill some gaps in my rather patchy education.

Sudoku HD works well, but could use an option to clear a game and start over.

"Do androids dream" and WIRED are exactly what I hoped to see: the future of publishing, slick, attractive and clever. Other publications, please take note.

CSV Touch is a little flaky, and the dev is looking into the problem.

So tomorrow the iPad goes to work with me, and I find out if if can replace a paper notebook. I rather think it can, and it is going to save me many hours (and the world many trees). The iPad is lighter than my Eee PC, and does more.

Verdict: A++

Objects of desire

Unless you live in cave, you are probably at least vaguely aware that speculation is rife that Apple is about to release, or at least announce, some sort of tablet device. Such a device has been rumoured for many years, but this time the rumours appear to have more substance. The wonderful folks at MacLife have gone so far as to do a detailed workup, with quite drool-worth graphics, of what such a device might look like, and what functions it might offer.

Now let me be quite open about this: I don't care if they call it an iTablet, an iPad (seems unlikely, too much like iPod) or an iBiscuit (iLibris, anyone?). I want it. But only if it will do the following:

Allow me to write, squiggle, doodle and otherwise draw upon the screen, and save my scratchings in some convenient format (JPG will do just fine). As someone who constantly jots things down, my life is absolutely littered with note pads of various descriptions: I can see 4 from where I sit, without turning around to check the shelves behind me. My chances of finding the one that contains the notes I need approach zero. Every conference or vendor event seems to give me another block of dead tree slices to write upon, and create notes that I can't find: there must be a better way.

Read newspapers, specifically the Sydney Morning Herald and the Weekend Australian. I do read newspapers online now, but I like to read a newspaper while eating my breakfast. I eat my breakfast in the family room (large room at the south end of the house, with no computers). Eating breakfast in my study is impractical because a). there isn't space on my desk to put down a bowl of muesli; and b). my white cat Percy expects to be able to sit on my lap while I'm in my study, but he knows that he can’t sit on me while I'm sitting at the table in the family room. It's about the only thing that the little idiot has ever managed to learn, and I'd hate to waste it.

Having access to newspapers on a tablet style device would have numerous advantages, for me and for the environment. Right now, when a newspaper arrives in my house, half of it immediately gets tossed into the recycling basket: I do not read the sports section or the real estate section, and I rarely read the enclosed advertising material (Dell, please note: sending me a flyer every day will not make me any more likely to purchase your products).

This is always assuming that my newsagent manages to deliver the paper: my local newsagent is a half wit, and I have the agency on speed dial, because they screw up so often. Any technology that would spare me having to deal with this particular business would be welcomed with open arms.

Then, when I've finished with the paper and my husband has done the suduko, the whole thing gets tossed into the recycling. Kilos of used newprint leave this house every week, much of it unread. We subscribe to the Sydney Morning Herald, so on Sundays the Sun Herald is delivered to us. The SMH is a OK as a newspaper, but the Sun Herald is the type of rag that you wouldn't used to line a hamster cage, for fear of upsetting the hamster. Shoddy journalism, verging on gutter press, it usually goes straight to recycling.

All this could be stopped, which would reduce the burden on the local council's recycling activities, and keep my house tidier.

If the new device would also allow me to read ebooks, and watch the occasional DVD, so much the better. But for me, note taking and newspapers are the big, must have features.