Walkthrough: Initial iPad Setup

 

After unboxing my iPad and powering it on for the first time, I had to connect it to iTunes before actually being able to use the new toy. Did I say toy? I mean the magical and revolutionary device. That’s disappointing because people want to use their iPad right now! The process of setting up the iPad in iTunes is very straightforward, similar to setting up an iPhone, but with a few quirks and one possible, rather funny bug.

As soon as you plug the iPad into your Mac, iTunes 9.1 will open and you’ll see a welcome message. Be sure to upgrade to the latest version of iTunes before hookup.

Click through that and there’s that license. Does anyone actually read these things? If you say no, does it self-destruct?

Next up is where you tell the iPad about your iTunes account. If you are new to the world of iDevices, you also have the option to set up a new account here

Apple doesn’t miss a chance to up-sell its MobileMe service.

OK, finally we are in the final stretch here. On the next screen, you get to choose whether to set up your iPad from scratch or restore from a previous backup. The dialog allowed me to to select the backup from my iPhone, which would presumably be a big time-saver if you have an extensive collection of apps (and their settings) you want to transfer over to the iPad. I saw a cute bug here: the message says “An iPad has previously been synced with this computer” — unless your name is Steve Jobs, it is very unlikely you have synced an iPad with your Mac before today! And if you did, you probably are violating an NDA by telling us this fact.

Now it’s time to name your new baby. This year’s hot names include the always-popular “Michael” and “Clohe.” Sharing this iPad is going to be an issue I know.

Ah, finally, the main screen. It is very similar to the iPhone management screen in iTunes. You can see at a glance how much disk space is on your iPad, and what version of software it is running.

The “Info” tab is where you will see your detail sync settings for things like contacts, email, and address book entires. You can also set up MobileMe from here if you didn’t earlier.

The next set of tabs are familiar to anyone who has used another iDevice. The apps tab allows you to sync and arrange apps. Unfortunately, when I told it to sync apps, it selected every app I owned, well over 100 of them, making me manually un-select the numerous apps I didn’t want to install. The other tabs, like music, movies, iTunesU, podcasts and photos are exactly what you’d expect. If you sync photos, the software will have to optimize them for the iPad, which can take quite a while if you have a large photo library. In retrospect I would recommend avoiding this step for initial setup. Lastly, we have a brand new tab: Books. This is where you will manage books you by with the iBooks app or iTunes. I don’t have any yet — but this will soon change!

One interesting quirk I noticed while doing my initial sync is that the iPad didn’t charge while syncing. I have my iPad’s USB cable hooked to my Apple Keyboard rather than directly into my Mac, so I suspect perhaps not enough power is available for charging. When I plug it directly into the Mac via the USB cable, it charges as expected.

There you go, start to finish it was about half an hour. If I would have avoided the Photo sync it would have been less than five minutes.

 

http://theappleblog.com/2010/04/03/walkthrough-initial-ipad-setup/

iPhone vs. iPad: Do Games Really Scale That Well?

Like many of you, I’m addicted to Plants vs Zombies. When an “HD” version for the iPad was announced, I gladly ponied up the $9.99. Maybe not totally gladly as I already owned the iPhone game, but then I thought that it would be a great comparison of iPhone versus iPad games.

First, let’s stick with the original iPhone App compatible with the iPad. On my iPhone 3GS, it boots on average in about 12 to 14 seconds. On the iPad, it averaged 6 to 7 seconds. Wow. I can either play it in 1x “original” size on the screen or play it magnified via the 2x icon in the lower right hand corner. Playing a game in the 1x version is difficult. The screen seems tiny and it’s awkward to hold the iPad and click inside the virtual iPhone screen.

When in 2x mode, the game is more naturally played, but of course everything is more pixellated because of the doubling effect. Playing the game was perfectly acceptable in my opinion in 2x mode. That is until I tried … Plants vs Zombies HD

Pictures speak louder than words and here are the pictures from the game at roughly the same level (be sure to click on them to see the full-size).  You can actually see the arms falling of the zombies and other details. Play is slightly different as seed packets and other items are moved to the top of the screen to allow more detail in the house on the side. Interesting that the app loads in about the same time as the original app: 6 to 7 seconds.

Market conditions and the whim of developers will determine which apps will be worth shelling out the money for the iPad version and which will be updated at no cost. Plants vs Zombies sucked my brain and my wallet in order to get me to pay again for the same game, and it was well worth it! What about you?

 

http://theappleblog.com/2010/04/03/iphone-vs-ipad-do-games-really-scale-that-well/

The App Store Now Has Over 3,000 iPad Apps, Only 20 Percent Are Free

With iPad app frenzy in full force, the App Store is growing by the minute as iPad apps are being approved. Early this morning, Mobile ad exchange Mobclix tallied the number of apps and the breakdown between paid and free apps in the store. According to Mobclix, there are a total of 3,122 iPad apps in the store (keep in mind, these numbers could have changed slightly in the past few hours). As of Thursday evening, there were 2300 iPad apps available for download.

Currently, 80 percent of iPad apps in the store are paid apps, coming in at 2523 apps total. Only 599 of the apps are free, representing 20 percent of all apps. In terms of overall app numbers, games still rule; 942 of the 3,000 plus apps are games, with 804 of these apps being paid apps and 138 being free. Unsurprisingly, most of the 154 book apps available for the iPad are paid apps. Mobclix says the average price of apps is $4.99; and it will run you $12,572.78 to buy all the apps in the store.

While iPad apps may not be easy on your wallet, Apple’s iPhone app store’s breakdown of free vs. paid apps are similar. As of mid-February, when the App Store included 150,000 plus iPhone apps, 75 percent were paid applications.

Of course, the actual prices of paid apps should go down, if iPad apps follow the same trends as paid iPhone apps. And perhaps companies will ditch their pricey app strategy if users tend not to buy pricey paid apps. Time Magazine’s iPad app costs $4.99 per issue with the Wall Street Journal’s iPad subscription coming in at $17.29 per month.

 

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/04/the-ipad-app-store-now-has-over-3000-apps-only-20-percent-are-free/