• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Apple iPad 2 |OT|

Status
Not open for further replies.
Zzoram said:
Cool thanks. What comics are worth reading nowadays? I never got into them because they're way too expensive to buy issue by issue. I've read collections of events after they finished like Age of Apocalypse, House of M, and Secret Invasion though, but I borrowed those from a buddy.
Click to expand...
I hear X-Force is good, but to be honest I'm hardly reading anything recent. I've been on a tear through old Marvel stuff of the 70's, the great Marv Wolfman run on Amazing Spider-Man (introduction of Black Cat!), early issues of Marvel Two-in-One, and Man-Thing.

Also, I was wrong about Comic Glass, it also does "zoom lock." It's a bit hidden in the options, you set the zoom mode to "Don't Change" and turn off Auto Scroll. It has a lot more organizing/viewing modes/gestures than Cloudreaders so it's probably worth the $1.99. If you want to stay free, Cloudreaders is imo the best free comic reader on iOS.

Between those two apps, there's no reason to drop $7.99 on ComicZeal!
 
Just checking out GoodReader now. It seems excellent. I think I might convert over to it next semester.
 
Are there any good apps for the iPad that are capable of streaming from sites like Justin.tv or UStream. The Justin.tv app is terrible about pretty much everything.
 
This is the top Apple thread on the forum so I'm going to post here.

TUAW just had an outrageously shitty redesign. I'd use extensions to edit all the shitty visual stuff, but they actually changed the functionality a good deal in a shitty way.

So I'm looking for a new Mac/Apple site that covers general Mac/Apple news. I read daringfireball (too editorial) and Macrumors (too product-focused) and minimalmac (too small and infrequently updated). I'm looking for a site that posts, say, 20+ posts per day, covers iOS and Mac, sticks to news and maybe program reviews with no editorial, etc. Basically a competitor to TUAW :p
 
Stumpokapow said:
This is the top Apple thread on the forum so I'm going to post here.

TUAW just had an outrageously shitty redesign. I'd use extensions to edit all the shitty visual stuff, but they actually changed the functionality a good deal in a shitty way.

So I'm looking for a new Mac/Apple site that covers general Mac/Apple news. I read daringfireball (too editorial) and Macrumors (too product-focused) and minimalmac (too small and infrequently updated). I'm looking for a site that posts, say, 20+ posts per day, covers iOS and Mac, sticks to news and maybe program reviews with no editorial, etc. Basically a competitor to TUAW :p
Click to expand...
"No Editorial" (hah, you wish): iClarified.com (best followed through an RSS feed)

The occasional editorial: Macstories.net or The iPhone Blog (TiPb)

p.s. What isn't Macworld on your radar?
 
Charred Greyface said:
"No Editorial" (hah, you wish): iClarified.com (best followed through an RSS feed)

The occasional editorial: Macstories.net or The iPhone Blog (TiPb)}

p.s. What isn't Macworld on your radar?
Click to expand...

Macworld isn't on my radar because it has the exact same failings as this TUAW redesign. Tons and tons and tons of navigational options. When I use a blog, I don't want to navigate. I don't want search, I don't want tags, I don't want categories. I don't want to isolate by author or by product. I don't want to see a carousel of featured stuff. I don't want related posts. I don't want posts on sister websites. I don't want merchandise. I don't want links to cases or styli or apps. I don't care about an editorial masthead. I am not going to follow anyone on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network. I don't want "posts from this day one year ago".

I just want to see today's news, and I don't want to have to click on anything or wait for extra pageloads to do so. If the article is especially long, I don't mind having it hidden behind a jump, but I need to be able to read enough of the article before the jump so that I know the gist of the story at least.

I use adblock to block virtually all navigation options on virtually all websites, and they look vastly better for it. I do it with gaming blogs too. I just want a stream of posts. This is where people usually tell me I should just be RSSing everything.

iClarified has the same problem, TIPB seems to use the right format (once I adblock all the garbage navigational stuff) but it's limited to iOS. Macstories is much closer to what I'm looking for. It's unfortunate because I was really happy with the old TUAW :/
 
Why not just browse Tuaw through an RSS reader, Stump? The redesign doesn't really bother me like it does you, but I hadn't even noticed until you brought it up since I usually look at it via Reeder.
 
Tobor said:
Why not just browse Tuaw through an RSS reader, Stump? The redesign doesn't really bother me like it does you, but I hadn't even noticed until you brought it up since I usually look at it via Reeder.
Click to expand...

I don't really have a good answer as to why I don't use RSS. Clearly the way I use adblock to tear down sites to the point that they're nothing other than RSS feeds anyway suggests I should be.

I guess I've just never really found a workflow/application setup for using RSS that's made sense to me. One problem is that whatever I use needs to work on iPad, iPhone, Mac, and PC :/
 
Stumpokapow said:
I don't really have a good answer as to why I don't use RSS. Clearly the way I use adblock to tear down sites to the point that they're nothing other than RSS feeds anyway suggests I should be.

I guess I've just never really found a workflow/application setup for using RSS that's made sense to me. One problem is that whatever I use needs to work on iPad, iPhone, Mac, and PC :/
Click to expand...
Oldie but goodie: RSS Readers Suck...right?
 
Stumpokapow said:
I don't really have a good answer as to why I don't use RSS. Clearly the way I use adblock to tear down sites to the point that they're nothing other than RSS feeds anyway suggests I should be.

I guess I've just never really found a workflow/application setup for using RSS that's made sense to me. One problem is that whatever I use needs to work on iPad, iPhone, Mac, and PC :/
Click to expand...
TUAW looks great here.

NTUeVl.jpg


Before I got my iPad, I never used rss feeds. I hated the browser interfaces and never found a good reader for windows. Now, with a google reader account and reeder on the iPad, I can't think of other ways to read my news. Then I got Flipboard and Feedly and now I don't use the browser anymore to read any news. it's that good. But the problem is still the same, I can't find something comparable for the desktop. Mac OS at least has a Reeder version, but Windows? Gah.
 
brotkasten said:
TUAW looks great here.

http://i.imgur.com/NTUeVl.jpg

Before I got my iPad, I never used rss feeds. I hated the browser interfaces and never found a good reader for windows. Now, with a google reader account and reeder on the iPad, I can't think of other ways to read my news. Then I got Flipboard and Feedly and now I don't use the browser anymore to read any news. it's that good. But the problem is still the same, I can't find something comparable for the desktop. Mac OS at least has a Reeder version, but Windows? Gah.
Click to expand...
Feedly works on Windows too via the web browser. I prefer River of News for the iPad and, when that's not available, Helvetireader. Every RSS reader these days provides a Google Reader syncing option to it's not that hard to pick a suite of apps that works across all platforms
 
Finally managed to get hold of the iPad 2 model I wanted at my local apple store. Got it home only to find it has a dead pixel! can't get back there again for a while due to work, anyone know how good apple are with this sort of thing?
 
captain wow said:
Finally managed to get hold of the iPad 2 model I wanted at my local apple store. Got it home only to find it has a dead pixel! can't get back there again for a while due to work, anyone know how good apple are with this sort of thing?
Click to expand...
Pretty solid - you can pretty much return it for a myriad of reasons, including dead pixels.
 
Stumpokapow said:
This is the top Apple thread on the forum so I'm going to post here.

TUAW just had an outrageously shitty redesign. I'd use extensions to edit all the shitty visual stuff, but they actually changed the functionality a good deal in a shitty way.

So I'm looking for a new Mac/Apple site that covers general Mac/Apple news. I read daringfireball (too editorial) and Macrumors (too product-focused) and minimalmac (too small and infrequently updated). I'm looking for a site that posts, say, 20+ posts per day, covers iOS and Mac, sticks to news and maybe program reviews with no editorial, etc. Basically a competitor to TUAW :p
Click to expand...
This is hard and if you refuse to use an RSS reader I suppose your best bets would be a mix of theloop+macstories+macnn

Edit: 9to5mac is great also. I have way too many Apple related RSS feeds :P
 
Stumpokapow said:
This is the top Apple thread on the forum so I'm going to post here.

TUAW just had an outrageously shitty redesign. I'd use extensions to edit all the shitty visual stuff, but they actually changed the functionality a good deal in a shitty way.

So I'm looking for a new Mac/Apple site that covers general Mac/Apple news. I read daringfireball (too editorial) and Macrumors (too product-focused) and minimalmac (too small and infrequently updated). I'm looking for a site that posts, say, 20+ posts per day, covers iOS and Mac, sticks to news and maybe program reviews with no editorial, etc. Basically a competitor to TUAW :p
Click to expand...
9to5mac.com

I hate the TUAW redesign so much that I signed up just to post "Just lost a reader."

They are owned by AOL and this is undoubtedly part of the "AOL Way." Forcing readers to click through to separate pages when your blog posts usually are just 5-6 sentences long is extremely shitty.
 
cultofmac.com is pretty good too but it might lean a bit too much towards the editorial side.

As someone who lives in RSS readers, I gotta see this tuaw redesign for myself...

edit: huh, I don't mind it. It's definitely not as offensive as the gizmodo redesign was.
 
the gawker redesigns are on a whole 'nother level of shittiness.

last time i went to gizmodo on the ipad at the time of their redesign, i could not even scroll through the article list. straight up broken

and on any browser, the headlines were so short and crammed together it made it real hard for me to parse the stories from each other. good riddance.

oh, and while we're linking to blogs and such, asymco is amazing. focused mainly on mobile industry profits and analysis. well worth reading. the guy who runs it does a great job of presenting data.
 
I kind of want to turn Stump onto the John Gruber Clones Network (Shawn Blanc, Marco Arment, carpeaqua, brooksreview.net, etc) just to see how high his tolerance for smugness really goes.
 
no one is more smug than Gruber. no one.



I find AppleOutsider by Matt Drance to be a decent Apple blog but it's more of an opinion place than news and doesn't update too often.
 
Is there a cheap 3rd party adapter that will let my iPad2/iPhone4 output HDMI to a TV? Like some knockoff of the official $40 Apple one?

Also, what's the best stylus for writing notes on a PDF, and do I need to wear a bike glove to not trigger the screen with my hand? Many of these stylus options seem to be metal or thin rubber over metal. Won't that scratch the iPad glass?
 
Charred Greyface said:
Best Apple blog is without a doubt John Siracusa's infrequently updated Fatbits (and his weekly podcast, Hypercritical). "A weekly talk show ruminating on exactly what is wrong in the world of Apple" *swoons*
Click to expand...
If you and Marty ever record a podcast together I would be a faithful subscriber. Make it happen!
 
Stumpokapow said:
I don't really have a good answer as to why I don't use RSS. Clearly the way I use adblock to tear down sites to the point that they're nothing other than RSS feeds anyway suggests I should be.

I guess I've just never really found a workflow/application setup for using RSS that's made sense to me. One problem is that whatever I use needs to work on iPad, iPhone, Mac, and PC :/
Click to expand...
I'm assuming if the RSS app just syncs to your Google Reader account it should work fine. Or just use Google Reader but that's ugly :P Reeder on iPad, iPhone, and Mac and maybe someone has a good PC client?

Reeder iPhone and iPad
Reeder Mac
 
I just use google reader on Windows.

Is the Mac version of Reeder as good as it should be considering how great the iOS version is? I use Gruml on my Mac mostly because I didn't even know there was an OS X version of Reeder.
 
One particularly useful RSS thing: http://fulltextrssfeed.com/
It takes truncated feeds and gets (or tries to get) the full article. I've run into sites here and there that don't work, but for the most part I've had good luck with it.

And if just just want Google Reader to look better in your browser (as in purely cosmetic), Pure Reader is nice and basically copies Reeder's style. There's also a bunch of other decent ones out there but I've stuck with this one for a while.
 
What's the best video player? I can't find vlc like I have on my iPhone. Preferably free. I'll have to bite if the paying app was SO much better than free alternative...
 
kr2t0s said:
I find it best for writing text but i don't see how it could be bad for drawing diagrams. It's the only stylus that I find writing with to be acceptable.

I also use it for drawing in sketchbook
Click to expand...

What is the tip made of? How does it glide on the iPad glass? Do you need to apply pressure for it to register?

I'm worried because many of the styluses on sale seem to be metal or have metal under thin rubber, and if they also require pressure, there is a potential for scratching the glass.
 
Zzoram said:
Is there a cheap 3rd party adapter that will let my iPad2/iPhone4 output HDMI to a TV? Like some knockoff of the official $40 Apple one?

Also, what's the best stylus for writing notes on a PDF, and do I need to wear a bike glove to not trigger the screen with my hand? Many of these stylus options seem to be metal or thin rubber over metal. Won't that scratch the iPad glass?
Click to expand...
I have the rooCase stylus from amazon, which is $9 or something and works great. The tip is soft so it doesn't scratch or anything. You don really need to apply pressure, either- it's very smooth and I'm pretty sure it's the same as the Boxwave stylus.
 
besiktas1 said:
What's the best video player? I can't find vlc like I have on my iPhone. Preferably free. I'll have to bite if the paying app was SO much better than free alternative...
Click to expand...

VLC got removed from the app store ages ago. Only VLC streamer is left. The actual VLC app, if you got it during the day or two it was up, will continue to work though, just back up that .ipa so you never lose it since you won't be able to download it again.
 
Ken said:
Are there any good apps for the iPad that are capable of streaming from sites like Justin.tv or UStream. The Justin.tv app is terrible about pretty much everything.
Click to expand...

This was asked earlier, reiterating. I tried to watch the NSB stream from a few days ago, and iPad Gen 2, seems to have issues with viewing content on those sites (I was using atomic, don't have icab).

And Justin.tv app costs money :(
 
Spiderjericho said:
This was asked earlier, reiterating. I tried to watch the NSB stream from a few days ago, and iPad Gen 2, seems to have issues with viewing content on those sites (I was using atomic, don't have icab).

And Justin.tv app costs money :(
Click to expand...

Justin.tv app isn't even Universal, you get the tiny iPhone size resolution on iPad which you can stretch to make really ugly.
 
any news on any jailbreak? once its jailbroken, im getting an ipad as my graduation gift
 
DR3AM said:
any news on any jailbreak? once its jailbroken, im getting an ipad as my graduation gift
Click to expand...

Still a long time away, but then iOS 5 will come out with tons of enticing features and you won't want to jailbreak 4.3.3
 
...Wow. Just beside myself with how much worse the Pages interface is after the update to add iPhone support. Is there any way to revert the UI, or maybe even customize it a little? I mean, wtf is font selection there by default? You're pretty much failing out of the gate if you need to switch fonts in a document more often than setting headings/styles.

EDIT: Ugh...it doesn't even remember your place on the style pulldown. Fantastic. I'm guessing nobody tested this on iPads.
 
Zzoram said:
Justin.tv app isn't even Universal, you get the tiny iPhone size resolution on iPad which you can stretch to make really ugly.
Click to expand...

That's not the worst thing. Even after paying for it, ads pop up at every opportunity (switching streams, exiting a stream to search for another, going back to the Home Screen and reentering the app greets you with another ad), and now they have an in-app paid subscription for no ads and HD streams for only about a month or so.

And yeah, it's not universal but I couldn't find any other alternative at the time so I just bought it. I wouldn't recommend its current version at all.
 
Zzoram said:
Is there a cheap 3rd party adapter that will let my iPad2/iPhone4 output HDMI to a TV? Like some knockoff of the official $40 Apple one?

Also, what's the best stylus for writing notes on a PDF, and do I need to wear a bike glove to not trigger the screen with my hand? Many of these stylus options seem to be metal or thin rubber over metal. Won't that scratch the iPad glass?
Click to expand...
I've taken an extensive amount of notes on this thing since my recent purchase. I still get funny looks from my employees but haters gonna hate :p

I haven't tried pdf notes, but for general notes I bought the box wave stylus and it's been working great. Feels good in the hand and my writing is definitely recognizable. Again, don't know about PDF annotation, but general note apps tend to have a wrist guard that protects against unwanted scribbles. You still get a few though unless you really make an effort to not put your hand on it. For basic things like highlighting or circling notes this is not a problem. Also, I noticed that my handwriting tends to look like ass unless the app has a zoomed in mode for writing (basically shrinks down your writing to something smaller, since the stylus pens are fat). Zoomed in mode let's you write really big on screen, and as said, allows it to capture my handwriting nicely

The stylus is completely soft at the tip and I haven't worried about scratching. You dont have to press hard on the screen or anything so I doubt it will cause scratches. I do have an unfounded fear that the constant rubbing might wear out parts of the screen some how, but I doubt that even makes sense :p. Just overly paranoid probably
 
Future said:
I've taken an extensive amount of notes on this thing since my recent purchase. I still get funny looks from my employees but haters gonna hate :p

I haven't tried pdf notes, but for general notes I bought the box wave stylus and it's been working great. Feels good in the hand and my writing is definitely recognizable. Again, don't know about PDF annotation, but general note apps tend to have a wrist guard that protects against unwanted scribbles. You still get a few though unless you really make an effort to not put your hand on it. For basic things like highlighting or circling notes this is not a problem. Also, I noticed that my handwriting tends to look like ass unless the app has a zoomed in mode for writing (basically shrinks down your writing to something smaller, since the stylus pens are fat). Zoomed in mode let's you write really big on screen, and as said, allows it to capture my handwriting nicely

The stylus is completely soft at the tip and I haven't worried about scratching. You dont have to press hard on the screen or anything so I doubt it will cause scratches. I do have an unfounded fear that the constant rubbing might wear out parts of the screen some how, but I doubt that even makes sense :p. Just overly paranoid probably
Click to expand...

What app are you using? Don't some apps have the option of reducing the thickness of lines drawn? It just draws a thin line in the center of the pressure zone of your finger/stylus strokes.
 
Zzoram said:
What app are you using? Don't some apps have the option of reducing the thickness of lines drawn? It just draws a thin line in the center of the pressure zone of your finger/stylus strokes.
Click to expand...
Even if you adjust the thickness, It is difficult because you naturally don't write that way. Crossing an t or dotting an I is hard because it's hard to read where the line is gonna draw from if it is significantly smaller than the tip of the stylus. Zoomed in writing allows you to write big which is natural for the oversized stylus options, and makes the writing look very close to your natural handwriting. But this has been my experience, it could be different for others. Everyone at work doesn't even bother writing with their iPads, and just type notes and draw with a stylus if necessary.
 
dream said:
I just use google reader on Windows.

Is the Mac version of Reeder as good as it should be considering how great the iOS version is? I use Gruml on my Mac mostly because I didn't even know there was an OS X version of Reeder.
Click to expand...
It's pretty awesome.

GW6J1.png
 
krypt0nian said:
Considering it's half the price and only missing tabbed pdfs? Pretty damned excellent.

I honestly have no clue how iAnnotate PDF gets $10 out of people.
Click to expand...
the lack of tabbed PDFs is a little bit annoying, and some of the annotation options and customisability SEEMS a little bit more robust in iAnnotate, but for the most part I don't think I'll be going back after discovering GoodReader.

if I do go back to iAnnotate, it will be because I miss having the tabbed PDF browsing option.
 
Firestorm said:
It's pretty awesome.

http://i.imgur.com/GW6J1.png[/MG][/QUOTE]

the latest update for Reeder finally added feed management abilities and an Aqua native color palette. I really like it.

But the big thing about Reeder that's different from other Mac RSS clients (and why people should try it) is the gesture integration. if someone has a laptop or a magic trackpad, you can use gestures to navigate every aspect of the UI and send links to instapaper/ safari/ RIL, etc.

very nice.
Click to expand...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Should I get Android tablet vs iPad?
14
263
Meicyn replied
Movies You’ve Watched Lately | OT | - 2026
|OT| Social  2
51
316
ForAcademicPurposes replied
Mortal Kombat 2 trailer new
|OT| 
12
707
Doom85 replied
Any recommendations on a portable monitor? The ones that look like an iPad.
2
194
IDKFA replied
iPadOS 26 turns your iPad into a Mac (almost)
2
88
5K
RetroGamingUK replied
Top Bottom