Notes on my first iPad experiences in a blog post | Hacker News Reader

Notes on my first iPad experiences in a blog post

scripting.com

7 pointsglower17 comments

I'm writing this post on an iPad.

It's a very nice device. Noticeably heavier than a kindle 2. Typing on this is a breeze, but not as accurate as with a keyboard. Write now I'm typing about as fast as I can on a normal keyboard (landscape mode). Making several typos here and there, but it's nice to do short messages with. I won't correct typos in the next paragraph.

No PDF support but ere are some programs that support is. Noticablt GoodReader which has drop box support.

"the above should have read" No PDF support but there are some programs that support it. Noticeably GoodReader which has drop box support.

If you type slower on it, it's more accurate. Think in the 20-30 WPM range.

Netflix on it, wow. Really cool. The screen on it is gorgeous. Everything looks really good, except upscaled iPhone apps. Most of those are muddy looking. For example, Fieldrunners for iPad looks a zillion times crisper than the iPhone version upscaled.

Some media (an iTunes movie I bought, some games) don't have very good volume. Other things are loud and clear, so there's some rough edges here and there.

Scrolling in this hacker news text entry box is annoying. Similar to using it with an iPhone. It needs a scroll bar (likely Safaris fault).

Overall it's about as intuitive as an iPhone with a few new things here and there to learn. It's really fun to consume content on it, particularly books and websites. Im not sure I would want to create much on it. Creative apps will have to have very intuitive, easy, automated UI's to make creation easy. Part of me wants to see TextMate ported to it, but another part of me thinks that's a horrible idea. Maybe with an external keyboard...

I can see a lot of people buying one of these and using it more than their laptop/desktop. Really, if you didn't have to sync the iPad with iTunes, you could forgo using a desktop entirely. Not an option for techies or hackers, but few people fall into that category.

It has gotten easier to type on since starting this post. Definitely try one out. This is some very cool tech.

BTW, I thought I should mention that my netbook has no trouble with AVI files. It runs VLC, an open source app that plays anything as long as it isn't DRM'd (and some stuff that is DRM'd).

I really hate this. It seems to me like people really don't understand audio/video encoding and compression. After putting in patches to ffmpeg I found an appreciation for the capabilities and limitations of the software. For example, the reason why his netbook probably isn't able to play 720p H.264 is probably because it doesn't have an integrated hardware decoder chip. The iPad does. After seeing the kind of nasty things that people do with video formats I don't really blame Apple for limiting the video decoder. FFmpeg, for example, is perfectly willing to package AVC/H.264 video and AAC audio into an avi container in complete violation of the specification.

It's not like Apple leaves the user no choice, either. Quicktime 7 is capable of transcoding almost everything I've found to AVC/H.264 in an MPEG4 container.

I'm not claiming I'm an expert on signal processing, but it always seems like the people who know the least are screaming the loudest.

People don't care. If they have an AVI file then they want to watch it. If their netbook plays it, but their iPad doesn't then they're going to blame the iPad for not managing to do something that open source software can manage.

And what is the problem with that?

Boy, just when I thought Dave Winer's ramblings can't get any less coherent he does this. This stream of consciousness stuff is certainly not working for him.

What are you talking about it? It made perfect sense to me. Bathtub monkey sausage.

To convert any video source (including AVI and--don't tell anyone!--DVD's) to MPEG4/H.264 to play on the iPad or some other device, you can use HandBrake: http://handbrake.fr/

My first big surprise of the iPad is how good the keyboard is in landscape mode. Without doing a proper typing test I feel like I'm probably at 50+ wpm already.

Really? This is the first review I've seen that claims the iPad is difficult to use. It's really not very hard to buy the Big Lebowski from the iTunes store for 9.99, rent it for 2.99, or to stream it from Netflix. I'd much rather do these things than load biglebowski.avi from a disk.

You'd rather pay again than watch existing content you already bought? Is this just video or is it not worth your time to rip CDs or import live FLACs either?

His point about .avis is interesting. At first I thought he was playing dumb, but on second thoughts why should people understand that file A is part of Apple's blessed ecosystem and file B isn't.

It's basically the same reason I don't have an Apple TV (though my friends with them have "hacked" them in some manner to allow this). And I've never figured out why I can't even find a good step-by-step guide for getting mpeg-4 part 2 video plus mp3 audio in an .avi container onto my iPod. It can play the video and audio if presented in the right manner and I understand that remuxing might be required but it appears everyone just gives up and re-encodes.

You'd rather pay again than watch existing content you already bought?

Where did anybody buy movies in AVI format?

It's trivial to rip a DVD into a high quality mp4 with Handbreak or similar tools. At this point AVI containers are actually not as well supported as mp4/h264. I can't think of any good reason to encode to AVI.

You could also just open the damn movie in QuickTime and export from there. Apple supports a limited range of video formats in their mobile devices (and Apple TV) – which is a problem, but a fairly well known one.

or you could watch it on a netbook

Sure. Either way, you don’t have to buy the movie again.

Gimme your credit card so I can do that. Since you don't think my money is worth anything I don't think yours is either.

I swear, I'll only use it for media I stream to my iPad

I already have a lot of movie files. Why do you want me to pay for them again when they're on my hard drive?

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