Apple Ipad Feedback Please

[nedb]

(02-28-2013 14:18)Endless Summer Wrote:  I have a cell signal enabled iPad and use it as a GPS - sometimes native, sometimes with a Bad Elf dongle. I have it mounted in the bus with a RAM mount setup

I've been using a 64 Gb AWS-cellular iPad for a year, and I love having it when away from home. It doesn't even have the Retina display, but the display seems exquisite to me anyway. No scratches, even after a year, on the display--very hard glass!

Apple proprietary connector held me back for a while--you can get an adapter to make the apple connector a USB connector, but the iPad might tell you that the device you've connected draws too much power to use it. It wouldn't use my Garmin GPS, but apparently the Bad Elf gps dongle is the way to go for GPS functionality. Anyway, I started carrying a lightweight Air laptop now to do the things the iPad won't. Ironically, I got the iPad in hopes of ditching the whole netbook/notebook/portable PC thing. But now I'm in love with iPads and laptops again--they're agreeable to me when I relate to them for the things they do well.

Having a cellular chip enabled iPad is worth the drag on monthly budgets caused by getting mixed up with AWS or Verizon contracts, which I generally deplore but in this case have found to be generally very useful. A note later (below) about AWS contracts.

iPads are heavier than a simple book reader, like a wifi or cellular Kindle. An iPad is heavy like a Kindle Fire, which is too heavy to be a book reader as far as I'm concern. I don't much like the iPad (or Fire) for reading books. If you squeeze the iPad case too hard (like you will if you're reading 'til your thumb starts to fatigue from the weight of holding it up) my iPad somehow thinks that have swiped across the screen to turn the page. The longer I read, the more this happens. Aggravating after a while.

I have a map app called "You Need a Map" -- it has consistently blown away my Garmin automobile GPSes and their NAVTEQ map data. This software on the iPad has my back when Garmin doesn't, showing BLM dirt tracks in the desert, for example. It is really great for exploring off-road (in the Samurai dinghy, not the 'bird). I'd be lost without it

A few other apps that make iPad so amusing are StarWalk, Tilt Meter, Theodolite, Exit (iExit, Next Exit, I forget what it is called but it has been mentioned for its info about locating services along the highway).

Starwalk is great, evocative of Apple's design philosophy and the many unimagined things a hand-help computer ought to be able to do when it has chips for compass, tilt, etc. You run the Starwalk app, select the layers of info you want to see in the display, hold it up so the camera can see the sky, and it orients its nighttime sky map on the display to the heavenly bodies you're pointing the camera at. Virtually everything in the night sky (and below the horizon, if you point it at the ground) is identified and labeled on screen--planets, constellations, nebulae, comets, stars, ..., and it tracks as you swing it around. It knows where all the satellites are at any given latitude/time of day and displays their tracks and directions.... I get a big kick out it.

Theodlite adds geodetic info to pictures you take (lat/long etc). Tilt Meter tells you how far, in degrees, the ipad is tilted from the axis of gravity--I use it to level the coach

BTW, AWS has lightened up on its cellular contracts. It seems they now cancel (not suspend) your contract it if you don't use it for 30 days. I went to make a skype call on my iPad the other day, and got a message to please start a new AWS contract in order to use cellular service. THIS is the contract I've always hoped for--pay for it when you want it, let it lapse if you are off the road and don't need it. I don't know if this deal is in my market only or anything else about it. Please don't take my word for it -- check with AWS before signing up if you are expecting to get this deal.

Having fun with my iPad,

--Ned