Tag Archives: Apple

iPad 2 : First impressions…

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(Do they still qualify as “first impressions” after owning the device for more than 24 hours?)

Yesterday I managed to get my hands on an iPad 2. Bear in mind that I had always thought of the original iPad as a good idea, but a bit of a waste of time and money – I mean, 400 quid for an overgrown iPhone that doesn’t let you call anyone? That, though, was before I saw the GarageBand demo. I saw one video on YouTube and it changed the game for me. As some of you know, I am often called on the be away from home, so having a very capable 8 track studio in my laptop bag is a big draw.

Anyway, I patiently waited my opportunity to pick up one of the new generation, albeit the bottom of the range 16GB wifi model. They first thing that struck me was how well it sits in my hands. That Mr. Ive is a talented designer, and his stuff always looks the part but I hadn’t realised how natural these devices feel in use.

The bundled apps on the device are pretty good too. Safari has always been a great browser and the iOS version is no exception. The mail client took seconds to configure with my main email account, and the app store experience is a joy after using the Windows Phone 7 marketplace for a few months.

So now came the big moment – installing GarageBand. I was expecting it to be more difficult than it actually was, for some reason. In the end, I just found the app in the app store, clicked on the buy button, and a couple of minutes later I was up and running with my new (almost) pocket sized studio. Having used the full version on my MacBook I was familiar with most if the functions, and it took me literally 10 minutes to get a half way decent recording down using just e out of the box instruments. Adding in the iRig guitar adapter that I bought, I was recording guitar parts that sounded like they had been recorded for a lot more money than I had just shelled out (apart from the dodgy playing, obviously).

So, all in all I’m extremely happy with the iPad 2. If you are a friend on Facebook you may well have noticed a few posts to that effect. ;)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go explore the app store some more to find a good Facebook client…

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iLife ’09 – a quick first look

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Yesterday evening I picked up a copy of iLife ’09 from my local Apple store.  I’d been waiting for it to be released since the keynote earlier in January, and now it was finally in my hands.

Installation was as simple as you’d expect from an Apple product, but it does completely blow away any previous versions of iLife.  If you want to downgrade, make sure you have the original media in order to do so.

I only really use iPhoto and GarageBand, and as a result, these are the only two components I looked at last night.

iPhoto: The latest version of iPhoto supports a couple of nice new features – locations and faces.  When you first start up the app, it converts your old iPhoto library into the new format, and then scans each picture for faces.  It actually does a pretty good job of detecting and grouping faces – I was particularly impressed that it managed to keep track of the growth of my nephew from a few month old up to his current age of around 20 months.  Tag one photo of the person, and all others with the same face are also tagged.

The mapping feature is also pretty cool.  If your camera supports GPS data, iPhoto will read this data and associate the photos with locations on a (Google-provided) map within the application.  If it doesn’t support GPS, you can add the location data manually.  Searching for a location is very easy, just type in a city and it will suggest all the possible matches.  Even better, you can specify more specific locations (e.g. “Sea World, Orlando”) and these will (mostly) appear along with the correct location on a map.

Garageband: I didn’t have much time last night to delve into all the new features here, but I had a quick poke around with the new tutorial elements.  The much-vaunted celebrity lessons are available from launch day, with UK pricing for this premium content initially set at £3.99 per lesson.  Pretty good value if you want to learn one of the ten songs available from the original musicians involved.  Also available are quite a few more general guitar and piano lessons.  These are free of charge.

Tonight, I hope to play with some of the new guitar amp and stompbox effects that come with the product, so I’ll hopefully be able to post about them in the next day or two.

Overall, my first impression of the upgrade is very favourable.  The interface is familiar enough to not cause concern while also giving access to the new features.  As you’d expect from Apple, it’s very intuitive and gives a helping hand where it thinks you may need it.

Initial score : 10/10, but what do I know?  I’m just a user. :)