Recently in Computing Category

I broke down and bought an iPad last August, and as I've mentioned before, I really like it. The tipping point for me was when I learned that there's a Kindle app for iPad, so that I can read my e-books on it as well as on my (old, first generation) Kindle. Now I'm getting worried.

Some interesting news from the world of e-reading apps in the land of iOS: BeamItDown is shuttering its iFlow Reader app on May 31, saying "Apple has decided that it wants all of the e-book business in iOS for itself and it has has made mid-game rule changes that make it impossible for anyone but Apple to sell e-books at a profit on iOS." (source)

I'm not familiar with BeamItDown, but that last sentence caught my eye. By June 30th all e-readers, including Nook and Kindle, will have to (a) use an in app purchasing scheme rather than re-direction to an external website and (b) share 30% of the take with Apple. So far there's no comment from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. I sure hope that they reach an agreement. Having Apple make me buy my e-books through their bookstore is no better than having Microsoft or Google force me to use their products.

Steve, I know you don't care what I think, but if you follow through with this threat and make it impossible for me to buy books directly from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble if I want to, you're on the "evil" side of my ledger.

Related articles

• R.I.P. iFlowReader: How Apple Policy Crushed a Small Company (pcworld.com)
• Apple's In-App Purchase Policy Forces iFlowReader to Shut Down (macstories.net)
• The Apple ebook apocalypse draws nigh (theorangeview.net)

One drawback to e-books is that they're difficult to lend. That's now changed with Amazon's Kindle. Now I can lend books I've bought to a friend/colleague for 14 days. They don't even have to own a Kindle. All they need to do is to download the free Kindle app for their computer, smartphone, or iPad and read away. I won't be able to read the book for the 2 weeks while its lent out, but that's fair. If I lent someone a copy of a book on my bookshelf, I couldn't read it until it was returned.

Lending books on Barnes & Noble's Nook has been possible for awhile.

I'm glad to see Amazon.com picking up on the idea. eBooks are starting to resemble paper books more and more. No wonder sales of eBooks are growing rapidly.

Mohammed gets it exactly right. I've had my iPad a little longer than he has, I am a Mac person,¹ I use some different apps than those that Mohammed mentions, and I still like paper and pen for notes at seminars [but not at meetings], but his advice matches the advice I've given to several people when they ask me about my iPad.

I got my iPad in early October. Even though I don't use a Mac, I love it- not just as the "new techy trendy toy" (which I fully acknowledge it is that too!) but as a functional part of my work and play. Let me say upfront- I don't think iPads are for everyone. It's neither a laptop replacement nor a smartphone replacement, and yes, no one "needs" to have one- we all got by last year without them. But here's how I use mine and why I like it, primarily in the context of my job.

Bingo! No one needs it, and you shouldn't get one if you're looking for a laptop replacement. But if you're looking for an easy way to take documents to meetings, take notes, read books (I love Kindle reader),² sketch ideas, send short e-mails, and surf the web conveniently (no Adobe Flash), it's very handy. I wouldn't call it "magical" the way Steve Jobs did, but I use mine all the time. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Economist all look great on the iPad, and the NPR and PBS apps are pretty nice too.

As a Mac person, I should add Papers is great for organizing PDFs of scientific articles, and it syncs wirelessly with Papers on my iPad. Very nice!

I switched to a Mac a little over a year ago. The evangelism of Mac advocates can be offputting, but Macs are nice. I"m running VMWare Fusion on my MacBook, so I even have Windows (for a few specialized programs that are only available under Windows and don't play well with Wine) and Ubuntu sitting close by whenever I need them. I've never thought Windows was great, but I never thought it was horrible.

Charlie Brooker has a different take.

I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's grim, it's slow, everything's badly designed and nothing works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn't change it for the world, because I'm an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life.