Hearing that this developer has been hijacked (hired) by Apple. This is one app that I use and the sole reason that I’ve jailbroken my iPhone. Mobilenotifier. This was how iOS notifications should have been already. 

http://www.peterhajas.com/

Expecting better UI presenation and class implementation on the above concept from Apple. 

After a long wait, got my hands on one of the coolest devices going around. The screen is gorgeous. The apps are the best.

The animations are so magical. App switching is neat, but Apple really need to work on a way to close the applications in one go. Maybe a multitouch gesture or something. But right now, you have to minimise it, double tap the home screen, hold the icon for while and then click on the minus symbol. Phew tiring to even type about it

The photos app is awesome. The screen resolution and brightness is gorgeous. The moment someone pinches to zoom, they’d be blown away. I’m using this device to demo my photoshoots and artworks to clients and they’re just knocked off their feet with the quality of viewing and interacting. Though the HP touchpad is not yet released, I think their photos app offering with synergy built-in should be better, in theory at least. Synergy type feature is something Apple has to work on in their tablet. Particularly since they’re prepping the device for cloud connectivity rather than in-device storage (read avoiding laptop sales cannibalisation).

Typing on screen is not as bad as I thought. Smart cover is a great addition and a must buy. I’m typing this on the on-screen keyboard and after the first 5 mins, I can speed away with my typing. Autocorrect definitely helps, but the key thing here is the smart cover. It’s smart, effective and gives more revenues for apple.

Mail client does it’s job very well. Again, access to disk is major drawback.

Browser on iPad 2, is probably the best update in the software front. Was working on converting a flash website of one of my clients to html5 and whenever I tested it in the previous iOS version in the original iPad, it was very sluggish. But things have become snappier and it’s a pleasure to see the improvement. Maybe Apple can also work on the animation involved in switching a tab, pretty disturbing and maybe even the option of opening in the background. Or maybe the visual tab style of Opera is a better implementation.

iPad 2 feels so much better to hold and operate in general because of the slimness and lighter weight. I could hold the device for about an hour (of course off and on) and still not feel the pinch. It’s the lightest, sexiest and coolest looking (read Apple) tablet device out there.

Notes syncing is a good option. But for doing anything more than just taking a few points down, it’s useless. It almost feels like that Pages is the feature rich note taking app, but then it’s $10 app.. But then the amazing thing with iPad is that there is an app for everything in the app store.

I need to give special mention for Flipboard here. This app is magnificently designed, coded and thought out that Apple would want to buy them and put it on every device they sell. Try it and you won’t leave it. There’s nothing like it out there and right now is a clear differentiator (killer app only available on app store) for the other tablets. Kudos to the entire Flipboard team.

Calendar app is pretty cool and does everything an event management app should do..

FaceTime is straight from the “it just works” garden of apple. But the fact that google talk video chat is available in android, makes it pale.. Add to it the pretty downtrodden camera of iPad, this one goes to Android.

Camera is just basic and is predominantly for video chat. Period.

Some major apps need to take a dip into iPad, like Skype and Facebook. Pixel doubling is an adequate fill in, but not enough after the device has been selling like hot cakes for over a year.

The pages, numbers and keynote apps are quite basic in their features, but do a credible job.

Twitter app for iPad is awesome. Exactly how you wanted the Twitter experience to be. Remove the clutter. Cut the to and fro between links and present a simple enough interface to cut the learning curve.

The iPod app is very Apple. Neat, useful and classy, but why on earth did they leave cover flow presentation from the iPod experience. It must have been great to see it on this kind of a device.

YouTube app is gorgeous. Even the desktop experience pales in comparison to the iPad. Searching for videos, scrolling through them, viewing them.. Everything is Awesome.

Video playback is just unbelievable. This is the first medium after Theaters that gives you such an immersive experience. In that sense, the White iPad diminishes in experience.

My 5 year old can’t get enough time for games really. The bigger screen plus the accelerometer and gyroscope and other sensors, make it a truly awesome gaming experience. And throw in the Game Center as well.

Did some travelling with my iPad 2 and it doubled up very well. Battery life is awesome. Maps is good. If you have a smartphone with wifi-hotspot feature, you can actually save a few grande on the 3G device and the monthly charges for that connection.

Lack of access to disk is a definite disadvantage. workaround is cloud. But it’s at this point a workaround.

Any which way I look at it, apple is championing this device to take up cloud computing to the next level and also not to cannibalise their laptop sales. The browser is being prepped up for that. Access to disk is not allowed, forcing users to look at other ways of dealing with their files and work. After all, they are the same company that removed the arrow keys from the original Mac to make users use the mouse more, since the graphical UI was introduced newly with the Mac in 1984.

Overall great device for content consumption and I don’t see why people should chose another device ahead of this one. Only feature I can think of is expandable storage, but you have to wait and see how the cloud integration saga pans out in the next couple of months. Because these are devices with an always-on data connection. I’m currently using Dropbox and it solves most of my portability issues.

At this point, I’d say look at all the other devices and then still buy an iPad 2 with a smart cover.

It baffles me why Apple would leave the cover flow presentation of the albums on the iPad. And no apparent explanation from Apple as to why they would remove an existing feature from the other devices and iOS.

A very creative ad for Durex condoms! takes a few seconds to discern really!

From Letters of Note! Mr. Kubrick’s proposal to MGM.. 

                   “It’s impossible to tell you what I’m going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.”

Read the transcript and original letter here

Lovely fusion music and the usual Jai Ho performance. Liked the Fusion part!

He who looks at the clouds takes his eyes off the plough.

Never take credit when you can give it. That’s how you get more of it.

Had this suspicion over the size of the chicken pieces available at KFC, Started looking around, and certainly not going to look back. I’m definitely a non-vegetarian. but this is deplorable!

Watch more videos at KentuckyFriedCruelty.com. and here.

And in general search for the source of KFC chicken, PETA and the response from KFC (which is next to nothing). Sad!!