A Google developer, formerly on the Android team, provides a detailed, fair, and clear explanation of how iPhone OS 4 multitasking will work. Robert Love explains the difference between true background application multitasking and Apple's limited set of APIs that let certain processes continue to operate in the background. He also differentiates serialization (quitting an app while preserving its state precisely) and true background operations.
In what was perhaps the largest podcast we've ever participated in, nearly the entire TidBITS staff joined MacJury host Chuck Joiner to talk about the iPad. Topics ranged widely, including how it will be shared, the need for a guest mode, how we'll interact with it as an object, and where it will fit into our digital lives. But the real reason to listen is to hear Tonya compare using the iPad to "eating pudding with your fingers," an image that left many of us briefly speechless.
Our friend Jason Snell of Macworld has a must-read piece on how Apple used the iPhone OS 4 announcement to take aim at a variety of competitors: Google's Android operating system, App Store critics, Adobe, and (again) Google. Jason is, as usual, spot on, and his conclusion should be required reading for anyone complaining about Apple's behavior.
It's been an iPad- and iPhone-intensive week, and Adam took some time out in the middle to talk with Tech Night Owl host Gene Steinberg about the first few days of iPad hands-on, along with a run-down of the most interesting bits of Apple's iPhone OS 4 announcement.
Few writers put the kind of thought into user interface that John Gruber of Daring Fireball does, and that shows in his lengthy review of the iPad. It's very much worth reading for his detailed impressions in support of why the iPad is Apple's reconception of personal computing.
Hoping to capture her initial reactions, Todd Lapin had his camera ready when he first showed his iPad to his 2.5-year-old daughter. Aside from being cute, the footage is interesting for what it shows us about which aspects of the iPad interface are intuitive and which are less so. The clip also hammers home just how standard and ubiquitous this technology will become for the next generation.
On a recent MacVoices podcast, Jeff Carlson joined Chuck Joiner to talk about the making of Jeff's (almost ridiculously long-titled) book "Canon PowerShot G10/G11: From Snapshots to Great Shots." What's great about this episode is that they were joined by photographers Jeff Lynch and Justin Van Leeuwen, who contributed photos for the book through an experimental crowd-sourcing process using Flickr.
If you've done any air traveling in the last several years, you know part of the process is handing over your laptop, phone, and any other gadgets for security screening. The Transportation Security Administration, responsible for air travel security measures in the U.S., offers tips in a new blog post on traveling with small gadgets such as e-readers, netbooks, and, yes, the iPad.
Adam's favorite weather app for the iPhone, WeatherBug Elite, has been expanded for the iPad, and for a limited time, it's available for free. We haven't spent much time with it yet, but it appears to use the iPad's larger screen to good effect, devoting most of the display to the map, and providing four zoomable panels for conditions, cameras, forecast and hourly forecast. The main missing feature appears to be pin dropping and display, but WeatherBug's developers tell me they just couldn't get it in for the iPad launch, and plan to add it to an update, due in the next month or so.
The madness continues as Matt Neuburg and other sleep-deprived zombies rattle on with Chuck Joiner about the first-day iPad experience.
Did you receive one of the 300,000 new iPads purchased on the first day? Jeff Carlson and Peachpit Press have posted a 21-page excerpt from Jeff's book "The iPad Pocket Guide" as a free PDF download. It covers setting up the iPad and essential features, and offers a taste of what the rest of the book is like when it ships. (Peachpit is offering it for $8.99 with free shipping. To access the PDF file, click the Sample Content tab on the book's product page.)
Matt Neuburg joins Chuck Joiner and a roundtable of other new iPad owners for a wide range of initial perspectives on the first-day iPad experience.
Adam joins O'Reilly Media's Mac Slocum and other O'Reilly authors in this live webcast at 1 PM Pacific on 5 April 2010 to talk about what it was like to use the iPad in the first few days. Don't fret if you missed it, since O'Reilly makes the video of the webcast available for viewing afterward.
Stephen Colbert, host of the Comedy Central show "The Colbert Report," recently took a hands-on look at the iPad before it was available to the general public. In addition to examining this week's Newsweek cover featuring the iPad and one unfortunate similarity to the iPhone, Colbert demonstrates some of its lesser known features - including those pertaining to the culinary arts!
Apple has announced that the MobileMe features Find My iPhone, Remote Wipe, and content syncing are now available for both the iPad with Wi-Fi and the upcoming model that includes 3G. Forgetful road warriors would do well to consider purchasing a $99 MobileMe membership, as the location-finding and data-clearing features would be worth the cost alone should your iPad go missing. Also, iPad owners who have an iPhone will be pleased to know both devices can work with a single MobileMe account.