iPad as laptop replacement

After seeing all the information on the iPad I started wondering whether the iPad could replace my laptop (which is slowly failing me). This is a functional, situational and practical question.

First the situational question. At the moment I use may laptop sitting in the kitchen. The laptop is on the table, I am behind the table in front of the fire place. I should use an iPad in the same location. This does not seem ideal, although I might put a reclining chair in my kitchen. I guess I would like to have a stand. In the evening I would love to use the iPad on my couch.

the iPad surely seems capable enough. The speed seems great. People start to complain already about some missing things, but these seem non-issues for me. The video camera would be a nice addition, but I can do without (as I do now). No multitasking might be an important point, but I am not sure it is a real issue. Notifications will be enough for me. No flash is OK, I hate flash. I installed ClickToFlash to get rid of it on many sites. It is amazing what people use flash for. GPS is an interesting point. I see GPS as something useful while on the street and in the wild. So the question is where would you use this thing? The no HD output seems an extremely silly remark. This is not a video server! All in all, it seems very useful for me from a hardware point of view. And I am very curious whether the Bluetooth can be used for all kinds of interesting peripherals. It seems that the iPad will be used to connect to projector, so that is covered.

I am worried about the screen size though. Ten inch is really small. I find my 14 inch laptop screen already to small. But I might be confusing usage situations here. The iPad is not really for working!

The most important thing are however the apps. So the question is: is there an app in my dock that can not be replaced with an iPad app? Well, in my dock I have: Finder, OmniWeb, Safari, NetNewsWire, Mail, AddressBook, MarsEdit, iCal, iTunes, iPhoto, SandVox, Vidalia, Nambu, Billings and EverNote. Occasionally I use Mellel, Pages, Keynote, Last.fm, Calculator, ChaChing, NoteTaker, Preview, MacGourmet and various other small stuff.

If I look at my dock apps, I seem to be well covered by iPad support. How can I manage my files however? It seems there is a solution as a wide variety of attachments possible in Mail on iPad. OmniWeb is not there, but I can do well with Safari. Sandvox not available on the iPad would be a big pain. I need this app. Vidalia is not on the iPad, but that does not matter. For my occasional apps there would be no problem either. Mellel would be a pity, but I can convert to Pages. NoteTaker (Aquaminds) will be on the iPad. So from an application point of view I seem to be covered.

Another problem is multiple users. On my laptop I have now multiple users defined, which are all used. I am afraid the iPad is a personal thing. This implies that I would need multiple iPad’s. Bit expensive, but will give an interesting household.

The question that remains is a practical one. Is the manipulation of the various files easy enough? Is the on screen keyboard good enough for inputting messages such as this one?

Unfortunately we still need Mac for docking the iPad for backup and synchronisation. So I still must have a Mac around the house.

I guess I have to get one in order to find out whether the iPad can be a replacement in practice.

 

 


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iLap day

Today Apple will reveal it’s long awaited and discussed tablet. I hope the product will live up to the incredible hype. I have no idea what will come, but let me ponder it a bit.

The first thought is situational. At what times and places do we need another product? The first place was behind a desk with the desktop. For that you had to sit down on a chair behind a table. Very useful if you needed also other stuff around you (papers, mouses, screens, etc.).

When moving around and being on the road we got the laptop, or better portable (desktop). The idea was that you put it on your lap to use the product. However I guess that most people still used in combination with a chair and table. Using it on our lap was a good possibility on an airport, in a train, etc, but it was not really optimal.

For walking about and accessing information we got the smart phones. These are also great for using while sitting in trains and busses. No longer a need for laptops in those environments. The smart phone, or handtop, is really for using while standing up.

But couldn’t we do better? Are we really happy with what we use when sitting on our couches and rocking chairs? We can use a portable here or use a handtop. But is still remains awkward. Here, on the couch, is where I see a new possibility for Apple. A real laptop. This should be very similar to a newspaper, magazine or book.

Such a product should have a very simple interface that can only be used by the hand, or maybe two hands from time to time. For me it is clear that this can not be MacOSX, but should be a variant of the iPhoneOS. It should have very view buttons (on/off, sound). A camera is not a real requirement, but a useful add on for videophone. A size of 10 inch is nice to have on your lap, but it might be larger as well. But not smaller as it would be closer to an iPod Touch/iPhone. Wireless and 3G is required in order to use it on your lap when not at home.

Software would be similar to the iPhone, but with special applications for magazines, newspapers, LP’s, etc. Games would be an interesting category as well. Those can be the same as on the iPhone, but should really use the screen estate. One can image many classic board games on such a system. And naturally there is the iLapAppStore to feed all this.

So no MS Word, no Excel, no office whatever app, no terminal, etc. That is just not the purpose of the iLap. Now hoping that the pricing is reasonable.

 


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App Store Control

And again the App Store evaluation process is under heavy attack. Fact and are really mixed and it is unclear what is real.

The first thing to know is how good or bad the situation is. There is no real analysis. And there is only anecdotal evidence of bad experiences. How many false negatives and false positives are there? And how bad/good does that look on 100.000 apps approved? How many apps do we miss that we really need? Or are all bases covered? Does the user really care or is it all just a philosophical discussion?

People are also watching at alternatives, but that road is quickly discounted.

The first question one has to answer is whether there needs to be an evaluation process at all. Why can’t it be as open as a standard computing platform, such as the Mac. Apple’s take on this is that a Telephone Platform is something different than a computing platform.

I have mixed feelings about this. I really want my phone to work in ALL circumstances. In fact I got rid of my Internet phone options as provided by several ISPs, to turn back to plain old telephony, in order to get better reliability. The same will hold for my phone, so no App should interfere with it. So not multiple apps running simultaneously either. Or make an exception for the phone app.

The same is true for the quality of the network. One wants that it works. And for the moment this might require restrictions on apps (think tethering) in order to reduce the load on the network. Most mobile operators have already enough trouble meeting this new demand.

The iPhone and iPod Touch seems to be used by any age group. I have seen kids walking around with an iPhone. Some would like to limit the access their kids have to some content. That is were rating systems can help. So if you have a rating for an app, then you can automaticly restrict access to those apps. Unfortunately someone has to rate the app then. And/or someone has to check the rates provided by the developers. This requires clear guidelines. Unfortunately this is a process which is subjective and will lead to false positives and false negatives. Another point where one can complain about.

And there is the trademark issue. Is Apple protecting itself here? Why do they need to check on this? Why is that differnet for this platform?

The false negative apps are the shaking baby app, the app that nicked phone numbers, etc.

And there are the false positives, where it is unclear why they are rejected. Airfoil Speakers is one of those.

And then there is the process itself. I see two subjects here.

Turn-around time - it seems that it can take a long time before a submitted app is approved. Although I have not seen any good statistics on this. And with 10.000 apps per week submitted, it is inevitable that some apps take longer time to be evaluated. Statistics at work here. You might complain and Apple might throw more people at the process, but your are still talking a Poisson process here. It would be nice however if Apple showed some statistics though. And developers just need to take these turn around times into account.

However Apple should create a separate process for handling bug fixes. This would guarantee some quality level of apps already in the store.

Communication - there seems to be a lack of good communication once an app is rejected. Why is an app rejected? What can a developer do? And again how bad or good is it in reality. Do we see only anecdotal evidence? Are some developers treated differently? One can image that Apple automates the work for cheap apps or less well known developers in order to reduce costs. Maybe they should create a paid program for developers who want better respons.

So for the time being only the road through the appstore is an option. And I discount the jailbroken road, as this has its own problems.

In the end it is all about quality for the end-user. And Apple does quarantee some extra level of guarantee in this way. And I highly appreciate this quality.

PS All links are just gathered from my morning fedd update.

 


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Apple worries

Jason Calcanis wrote an interesting piece on Apple, which summaries many complaints I read against Apple for a while. To some things I agree, but others I don’t.

He says that the iTunes ecoSystem destroys MP3 player innovation. Apple should allow other MP3-players to link up to iTunes. I do not agree that there is a lack of innovation. The iPod Touch is a huge innovation. He says that he saw a lot of innovation on MP3 players in Japan. We see the same here in France. Apple is not the only player. So what is the worry?

He wants to get into iTunes. So software is key? Or is it the iTunes store? There are other stores, such as Amazon, which is doing pretty well it seems. So is it iTunes? So iTunes is like the Windows monopoly? Any MP3-player ships it’s own player, so what is the monopoly? iPod’s to expensive? Buy an alternative. It is not as if you are forced to buy the iTunes ecosystem.

I call this a bullshit argument. However I love to see it opened up, I guess people will continue buying Apple’s products.

Monopolistic practices in telecommunications is an interesting argument. What’s new here? This exists already for ages with other phones. So why the complaint now? Just because you are not happy with the ATT/iPhone combo? What a nonsense. This linking between network and phones made GSM popular in Europe. And I know only of France that forbid this linkage. I see this just as an opportunistic argument.

Draconian appstore policies is also strange. How many apps are there? About how many apps are there complaints? Some apps had to be rejected over age limits (know your FCC stand on infringements). Now they can open up some more with the age settings for apps. This is one of the first (relatively) open mobile platforms. Never before a phone provider created this. So what are you complaining about? It will only get more open.

The argument about other browsers seems valid. However the iPhone is not a standard platform. You should not be running anything from a performance point of view. By the way remember this is still a niche product. There is no monopoly!

The same goes for Google Voice. My guess is that it is all about revenues. With Google Voice Apple does not get its share. What is new in the telco-business.

The problem is more that people want Apple to be different, open, like Unix. And see where that got us.

 


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Site: what do I want?

The first step is to decide what kind of content that I want to publish and whether it is dynamic or static content. Naturally I continue my previous things as much as possible.


  1. Blog - the first thing is this blog. This is naturally dynamic content, which implies a Weblog Collection in Sandvox;

  2. MicroContent - my blog specific to MicroContent. I do not post much lately, but will likely continue it. This is naturally dynamic content, which implies a Weblog Collection in Sandvox;

  3. Software - where I discuss things related to Software on my platform. This is naturally dynamic content, which implies a Weblog Collection in Sandvox;

  4. Sundials - this is a collection of items related to sundials that I saw. This is not a blog and there are more ways to sort this collection. As the image is an important part, I used the Sandvox Photo Album collection;

  5. Media - is a collection of reviews of books, movies, dvd's, games, etc. I will use the Sandvox weblog collection for this;

  6. Recipes - some recipes that we made;

  7. Walks - a description of some walks. For the moment a weblog collection is Ok. It is however a much more complex type of information;

  8. Français - a started this weblog in french;

  9. Links - a list of bookmarks. I use the static Link List page in Sandvox for this;

  10. About Me - this is a static page. The Sandvox Rich Text page will do here;


So you see there are many collections, which I can turn into 'weblogs' in Expression Engine.


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Sandvox, Espresso and Expression Engine

Time for a redesign of this site. As I am not very good into creating nice sites, nor in CSS, I decided to use an existing design. However as I do want to twiddle around a bit with design, I do need a wysiwyg editor. And I must be able to integrate into my CMS, Expression Engine. So this implies three stages: visual layout selection, site structure design and logic design. In order to do this I will use Sandvox, Espresso and Expression Engine.

I will use this blog to report my experiences doing this.

 


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Application duds

There are several applications that I bought, but no longer use. Let’s go over them a bit.

Audiofile by Spinfree - this application could be used to create a library for your audio CD’s. It was a MacOS8-9 application. I did use it a bit at first, but with the advance of iTunes I forgot this app. It is no longer supported.

Ultimate Label Printer Pro by Digital RIver Commerce is an application to create labels for CD’s, etc. I think I used it only for a few times. It looks as if the application is taken over by Pay&Play Software. Unfortunately I do not see an upgrade path. And my old registration number no longer works.

Starry Night Backyard by Siennasoft - a very nice application to view the sky. I was a happy user, but with the demise of MacOS 9 I lost this application. It was a bit to expensive to upgrade, maybe later.

Quicktime 3 Pro by Apple. I hardly used this and never did by the new releases.

CDFinder was bought to keep track of the CD’s I burned for backups, etc. I practice however I stopped bothering to do this, it was just to much hassle. So really no need for this application anymore.

OmniOutliner by OmniGroup - an application to create todo-list, etc. Very nice. I used it some time, but nowadays I do not seem to need it anymore. Anyway, the version I have does not run under Leopard.

pmPost an application like MarsEdit to ulpad blog items to a pMachine weblog. This got obsolete with the demise of pMachine.

Enigmo 1 by Pangea - a nice game. I basically finished it.

Reckless Drivin by Jonas Echterhoff - we finished this game.

Snood - stopped playing this.

Transmit by Panic, I used this FTP application a lot. I got now ForkLift through MacHeist, so I stopped upgrading Transmit.

Retrospect - I never got this application really nicely working under MacOS9. A bit to complex for my needs. And now I no longer need it.

CopyPaste Lite by Script Software is no longer used. I moved to iClip.

SiteStudio for creating sites was no longer supported and discontinued. I moved to Sandvox.

SoundConverter - I forgot about this application. It does not seem to work anymore. Have to check it out. Anyway I do not need it very much.

 


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MacHeist 3 evaluation

Is it worthwhile to buy the MacHeist 3 bundle. This will only be worthwhile if there is at least one application I actually need.

So is this 39 dollar worth for me? It seems there is only one application that I will use: WireTap Studio. There is a chance I might use iSale. I will play World of Goo. Espresso might be interesting. But the rest?


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MacHeist evaluation

The newest iteration of MacHeist is in town. I did participate in the previous two version and probably will in this one. But is it my worthwhile?

So a good moment to look back and check which applications I actually started using and why I do not use the others.

So from MacHeist2, I only use Cha-Ching and AppZapper. That is not much. So I did pay what I would pay for buying this applications directly for the developers.

For the MacHeist 1 bundle, the results are even worse. But I have now a better than when I would buy TextMate directly.


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Searching for a Cha Ching replacement

Today I downloaded the latest beta for Cha Ching. And I had mixed feelings. I did not start on my PowerPC Mac. I did start on an Intel one and I was able to import my old data. However the import did miss some parts. The beta still crashes from time to time or hangs. It seems to have a scaling problem.

The new system misses the possibility to focus easily on a date range

The information within Cha Ching can not be nicely exported. It does support an export function, but that contains to few information.

The most important thing a new application must be able to do, is to import my old data from ChaChing.

CheckbookPro has a bit old fashioned interface, so I did not investigate any further.

EasyMoney is to easy.

Flowing Pennies is much to simple.

Fortera Fresh Finance - forget it. It does not even have a standard Mac interface.

iBank managed to import my csv after some fiddling. However ... crash.

iCash looks to OS9’ish. And has no csv import option.

iCompta can not import my (adapted) csv.

Money looks Ok, but I am not able to import properly. It seems that withdrawals and deposits must be in separate columns. I do not feel like changing the csv-file. I guess I could if I knew regular expressions.

Moneydance forget it. It is from the MacOS8 age.

MoneyWell looks interesting. I was able to import my data after changing the number formats in the System Preferences. I played a bit with it, but its workings were not obvious to me.

Squirrel can not handle my csv-file. However after fiddling with my csv, it did handle it well. I find the application a bit to limited for my needs though.

This list does not make me very happy, so I will stay with ChaChing for a while. I do like this app much better.

 


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GrandTotal thoughts

I have been using GrandTotal for a few days and reached my conclusions: it is not for me. Let me explain.

My main gripe is around the interface, it reconfigures itself to much. The meaning of each pane switches very often. There are seven views: overview, clients, invoices, catalog, estimates, layouts and help/buy.

The overview has a pane on the left, which shows Invoices (and Reminders) in various categories. What happens in the right pane however depends on the category. Thus Recent (invoices) shows images of invoices.

The Invoices category shows a right hand side that is split into three parts: a table view with all the invoices (the table columns can be changed, deleted and moved), a view with an image of the invoice and a ‘totals’ view with bars and pie chart. I do like the totals view, but why here?

The Reminders category allows the user to send reminders for invoices. The right part consists a table view with contracts and an empty view (shouldn’t here be an image of the Reminder PDF).

The Reporting category allows me to see information (not just invoices) for multiple months. Thus one can see the payments, item groups, clients and a summary. I miss the totals here. And this would eb a great place to the bars and pie charts.

The Smartlists category can be used to select invoices based on certain criteria. It has three parts: a table view with invoices, an image of the invoice and a totals section with bars and pie chart. I do like this possibility.

The Client View shows a pane on the left with clients, number of invoices and estimate, outstanding balance. The right part shows either the Client Information or two panes with either invoices or drafts/estimates for a selected client. Each pane has its own columns.

The Invoices View shows three panes. The left pane shows the invoices, the other panes depend on the tab one selects: info shows the info of the invoice and and the right pane a client selector; the Items pane allows to build the invoice with the portfolio catalog on the right; the Preview tab shows an image of the PDF and a related thumbnail on the right; The documents tab shows related documents (Reminders).

Finally the Catalog View allows the user to edit and define his portfolio. It has two panes:L the left pane shows a list with portfolio items and has the possibility to search and filter the items. The right pane shows the content of a selected item.

All in all the interface is just weird and confuses me often. I get the feeling that this application is some port. It does not have the right feel. The menu is strange, the buttons are nothing more than view switchers, it is just not right.

If you finalise an Invoice or a Reminder you have to print or email it. Why? I do not want to do that. For me that is a separate process. So now I do a Preview of the Print and stop there.

I miss the possibility to create projects for clients. One can define a project related to an invoice. We however can have multiple projects for a single client and multiple invoices for a single project. There is no way to manage this well in GrandTotal.

I like the approach to the portfolio items and groups. This application is not geared around a time-based services portfolio. A big change from many other applications.

Another main gripe is around the speed of the application. Often it hangs a bit, because it has ‘to render PDF’s’. I never have seen an application where one has to ‘render’. There is just to much rendering at many places.

I did not discuss the possibility to layout your own templates. This works pretty good, but is not great. It did work for my invoices.

 


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Searching an Invoicing Application

Our business is getting more complicated, so I am in need of an application to create invoices, to keep track of the items bought and the payments received.

Luckily there is a suite of applications to chose from: GrandTotal, Billings, iBiz, Invoice3, Billable, Invoicer, Involer. And probably I am missing some. So there is a good selection, but which to chose?

Involer is just to simple for me.

iBiz seems an application mainly for time-based projects. And I only have quantity based items. The offered templates do not seem very advanced. I seem to get this application working for. I however get a MacOS 9 feeling, so I moved on.

Invoice3 is mainly geared towards the sale of products with large catalogs, etc. I did not find the interface very intuitive. I had a difficult time imagining that this app could work for me.

Invoicer is a doubtful application. I did not find their website serious enough. And I do need an application that I can rely on. A very simple application. Unfortunately I was not able to get it going for me and I got stuck quickly.

Billable is a bit to simple. I especially miss the possibility to create a catalog of possible services. And I do not see an easy way to adapt the invoices.

GrandTotal seems a great application to do what I want. It has a large range of templates to chose from and you can adapt them easily. It has been adapted to other languages as well, which is important for me. I have to dive into this application a bit more to see whether I can adapt it to my workflow. And I have to work on the templates to see if I can make something nice.

Billings is at the moment my favorite application. There is a large selection of possible templates and you adapt them to suit you. I have been working to create my own invoice, which works out. It is an extremely complex system with many possibilities. The documentation is very lacking here.

 


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Harddisk replaced

So finally my harddisk really died. The clicking sound was indicative of this. So I bought a new harddisk (twice as large) at MacWay, which came two days later.

Replacing the harddisk in my iBook was one of the most difficult things I ever did on a computer. It turns out that there are many different designs of this iBoo. So I started with a manual, but then got stuck, because things turned out to be different.

But all in all two hours later, I could start restoring things. Again TimeMachine came to my rescue. By now the backup is a week old, but I did very few things in-between.

There are still troubles with TimeMachine, as not everything gets restored nicely:

(2)No such file or directory: httpd: could not open error log file /private/var/log/apache2/error_log.
implies that I have to create the directory apache2 by hand.

(org.postfix.master): Failed to count the number of files in "/var/spool/postfix/maildrop": No such file or directory
created directory postfix and maildrop.


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TimeMachine stupidity

After my restore from TimeMachine, I am naturally

eager to start backup again. However this turns out to be not so easy. There is a problem with TimeMachine’s algorithm.

I the console log one sees: 

20-01-09 09:26:08 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[9542] Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: harddisk 
20-01-09 09:26:08 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[9542] Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs| 
20-01-09 10:04:08 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[9542] Starting pre-backup thinning: 66.23 GB requested (including padding), 55.41 GB available

It tries to backup some 66.23 GB, where there is only 55.41 GB space. So it has to delete the oldest backup. So far so good. However when it has deleted the oldest backup and there still is no space, the whole process has to restart. And this takes a lot of time. I am now well into my second day of pruning and trying.

I guess there is room for improvement here. And why does this have to happen anyway? If things are well restored, the copy on my computer is the same as the last backup. So where do all the changes come from?


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Hard-disk troubles

A few days back my hard-disk started to make strange clicking sounds, And at the same time the computer was slowing down. So I started the Disk Utility application and verified the hard-disk. It turned out there was a problem in the Catalogue file (the error message eludes me).

I looked around internet for an easy solution. I started in single user mode and did a fsck on the hard-disk, but that did not help. So no other solution than a reinstall. Thank god I have TimeMachine.

So I started from the Leopard Install disk and did a restore from TimeMachine. Unfortunately this did not work. Should I have done a format disk before reinstalling? I do not know.

So I first installed Leopard. I guess this was not a clean install either. And then I tried to use the Migration Assistent. Unfortunately this application did not see the right backup. I backup over WiFi to a hard-disk connected to another computer. So I started Leopard again from the DVD and did a restore. This time it did see the right backup-file.

And after several hours thing are working again. Thank god for TimeMachine.


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