Tech Talk at ShieldsGroup

Well, I broke down and bought an iPad. I’m having some trouble with it, though. If you can help with any of these issues, please do so by commenting below.

1. I’ve been trying to do some video chatting on Skype with it like my wife can on her netbook, but I can’t get the webcam to work in the iPad. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?
2. Additionally, when I am looking at some web sites — not many, just the good ones — I can’t see anything because I can’t get flash working. Is there an app for that?
3. I wanted to put some of my pictures in it, so I went to hook up my camera to it, but when I tried to plug it in, I couldn’t find the USB port. Where is that? Behind the screen, maybe?
4. I moved some tunes and home videos to it from my network, but that halted because of the 64 GB limit on the internal memory. Should I tether it tomy wife’s netbook so I can have adequate storage when I am on-the-go?
5. One thing I like about it is that it doesn’t multi-task, so I can focus on just one thing at a time. It’s a lot like DOS in that regard. Why did we leave DOS?
6. The screen is nice, but when I wanted to stream something to my HD TV from the iPad, I found no HDMI port on the device. I did find some duct tape that I could use to tape the iPad to the wall, right next to my 72 inch HD TV. That should work. Can I get my remote control working with the iPad?
7. The keyboard on the screen is a good idea. Does Apple make a hard-keyboard that folds out — like a netbook or something?
8. I am kind of excited to use the cellphone dataplan. Now, if Verizon just buys AT&T, I’ll actually have coverage for my iPad. Can you hear me now?

Oh — just kidding.  Just as the iPad doesn’t have a webcam, flash, a USB port, adequate storage, multitasking, HDMI out, a keyboard, or good data coverage, so I don’t have an iPad.

~Steve

It looks like a big iPod Touch (no phone) the big iPhone version will be out later.

I was surprised at some of the choices Apple made:

• No camera so no video chat.
• No flash, it is suppose to be an easy way to access the internet and it doesn’t support flash?
• No USB port, it has no camera and then no way to get photos from a camera, oh wait a minute there is an adapter to give it a USB port. That is almost as bad, it takes an adapter to connect USB devices?
• Only 64GB, and no way to add memory cards, even basic netbooks come with 160GB
• No user swapable battery.
• All applications have to come from the Apple App store.
• It doesn’t multitask, it has a big powerfull CPU and it can’t multitask?
• No HDMI out, you get a cool video on it (that doesn’t require flash) and you can’t show it on your TV?
• The version which supports cellular access will be unlocked, but it will only have a GSM radio which in this country is used by AT&T and T-Mobile. The only thing is that their 3G data networks are on different frequencies.  The iPad only supports AT&T’s 3G frequency. If you use it on T-Mobile you will be stuck at 2G speeds.

The market has been telling everyone that smaller is better, you don’t need a desktop, a laptop is better. You don’t need a laptop, a netbook is better. You don’t need a netbook, a smart phone like the iPhone is better.  Now Apple says we were wrong, you don’t want a iPhone, the iPad is better?

~alacy