iPad Apps

While I'm figuring out the home wifi connection issue, I'm downloading (uploading?) apps when I'm on a strong WiFi network. Interacting with the iPad's the way to move forward. iPhone apps will work on the iPad, but it's goofy -- just a little iPhone app in the middle of the larger iPad screen.

Step 1: Delete the iPhone apps that got loaded on to the iPad when I synched through iTunes. Resolve to (try to) not synch through desktop-iTunes anymore.

Result : (a) I've got about one screen full of iPhone apps that I'm going to keep around to see if I use them on the iPad. (b) I've got a screen (not full) of what I'm considering either reference or 'reserve' iPad apps: these are things like Settings, Contacts, iTunes, App Store, Maps, as well as Epicurious and Adobe Ideas and Connect (apps I haven't used yet so don't know if I'll keep them or if they'll be useful enough to move to page one). and (c) Padma's Home Screen (first one) has 20 apps that I think I'll tend to use most frequently: calendar, notes, NYT Editor's Choice, This Day, BBC News, Weather Channel, NPR, YouTube, MaxJournal, Words HD, Virtuouso, Bible, Dictionary, USA Today, Netflix, ABC Player, iMajJohng, IBooks, TweetDeck, and Brushes.

The bottom row of the screens all hold Safari, Mail, Photos, and iPod.

Step 2: Add apps. (See list above for the first round.) Reaction/quick review of apps will be posted in the comments on this post.

BIG FAIL: OK, to my mind, there's a big obvious gap here. Did you notice it? No Facebook app for iPad. I can get TweetDeck and access Twitter, but not Facebook. WTF? Colleges are making iPads the default technology for their students and Apple doesn't have a Facebook app? Is that an Apple fail or a Facebook fail?

Step 3: Add books. (See comments on this post for more on that.)

Step 4: Play.

Apps: Here is the Love?

Most of my iPhone apps (I have too many) transferred over to the iPad when I synched the iPad through iTunes.

Most of my iPhone apps (I have too many to say this as a blanket statement) are usable on the iPad, but they're simply little apps on a bigger screen. That is, rather than a story from the New York Times filling the iPhone screen, the story is iPhone size on the iPad screen, with lots of black screen around it. Not attractive. I can zoom out that image so that it fills the iPad screen (there's a sizer in the lower right corner of the iPad screen), but then it's like reading something with drugstore reading glasses of the wrong magnification.

So playing with iPhone apps on the iPad is not the way to iPad love. Time to download iPad-specific apps.

First question: can I get rid of the iPhone apps on my iPad without getting rid of these apps altogether? That is, how do I keep them synched from iTunes:iPhone but not iTunes:iPad?

I'll delete some from the iPad and see what happens. (Side note: love the instructions that came up on the iPad screen initially re how to arrange icons: "To rearrange icons, touch and hold any icon until it starts to wiggle"! Love the 'wiggle.'

Second question: what apps are worth having on the iPad?

I got iBooks yesterday, and Winnie the Pooh is already on the shelf, and it's beautiful. I was tickled to read Winnie the Pooh to myself on the iPad. I heart Winnie the Pooh. (But am I going to read WtP from my iPad to a child snugged in bed or on my lap? Probably not -- though I can see where if I could get said child situated in bed then it would be easier to read this in the darkened room than reading a traditional book in a darkened room. But the iPad is heavier and harder than a book, and if you put your finger in the wrong spot the page turns willynilly!)

I've downloaded Middlemarch for meatier reading, and a free sample of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day to see how recipes look on this screen. It is rreealllly smart of the Apple folks to show all the empty library shelves in the iBooks app: I want to fill them all!

I'll get the NYTimes Editors Choice app and NPR and a few others and try them out. And I'll shop the iPad app store to see if something jumps out as particularly fun for this size of a gadget.

I suspect some of my iPhone attachment and its related fun factor is based on the kick of having so much power/potential within the little framework of the iPhone.

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LATER: OK, this is a very difficult relationship.

I wanted to include a photo here of me holding Padma, with Pooh on the screen. Took the photo with my iPhone and emailed it to myself, opened that email on the iPad, saved the image to the iPad (there's a little loopy arrow in the right corner of the Exchange mail message that lets you choose reply/forward/save image: I selected 'save image' and it saved to the Photos 'app,' which, yes, took me a few tries to figure out where it was going).

OK, so now I have a photo on my iPad, I've got Blogger open on my iPad (through Safari), and I try to add this image. But the "Add an image from your computer" instruction doesn't give me the open dialogue box to select an image from the iPad. There's a 'Choose File' button, but pushing that (since there is no open box to find the files through) just leads to creating more "Choose File" button. They're procreating like rabbits. I have to stop pushing that button; it's getting me nowhere.

So no fun yet, no love yet, still working on this.