Is it magical? Is it revolutionary? well..no. but it IS a very nice device to have around the house.

It makes for an awesome sofa browsing experience, makes checking the newspapers on a Sunday a delight…and is even usable in the bath!

iOS 4.0 should add a much needed multitasking experience for audio, background uploads/downloads and Voip. 

Magazines work well on the device…I am currently trying to replace my magazine habit with electronic versions, but the current selection is poor to be honest.

In the UK , the ebook selection is equally poor. iBooks has relatively nothing, and the amazon kindle store seems equally sparse….

Plus points

• unbelievable battery life
• truly portable
• wow factor
• makes a great kitchen TV

Negative points

• app selection isn't great so far
• it really attracts finger prints

I don't think we have seen the best from the iPad yet. like the iPhone…its all down to the apps.

Gordon Brown playing up the 'i'm a senior statesmen' vibe, Nick Clegg stating that you don't want to believe the other two..and David Cameron banging on about National Insurance and immigration.

Did the format work? yes, I think it did. None of the three are fools, none of the three are unable to think on their feet..but then, did we think any different? They didn't get where they are in British Politics without being good debaters. master debaters, one might say, if one was so inclined. This isn't America , after all.

I think they all came across quite well, until Cameron's closing statment…which felt a little too rehearsed for my liking. ( Clearly, they were all rehearsed..but you know what I mean! )

looking forward to the professional analysis and the next 2 'debates'

Popped the disc in…selected clean install ( as I have done with every single Microsoft OS install in the past ).

Operating system installed. Applications now installed, documents trasnferred over.

All good so far.

Now for the 'activation'. pop the key in..it doesn't work. Apparently its an 'upgrade only' key. yes, but it was an upgrade…? so why doesn't it work? why does it allow me to select clean install on installation? why doesn't it ask me for my old key or installation disc like every other MS operating system in the past? 

not to worry, ill call up support and sort it out.

Ah..its the weekend..so I can't ( apparently one of the biggest companies in the world , assumes all its customers only install stuff monday to friday, 9 to 5 ). fine..so Ill try the phone activation. no, that didn't work either. Please stay on the line to be connected to a 'Customer' representative. 6 minutes later, call drops.

One has to wonder how this improves Microsoft's image? If its actually less hassle to get a pirated/cracked on your machine, how does this help anyone in the software industry?

Windows 7.. good operating system, incompetent and frustrating licensing model.. ( thank god, im typing this on my macbook pro! )

I love my iphone, and my iphone touch. They do their jobs very well ( well, apart from answer calls ). The availability of the app store, the amazing UI, the great browsing experience. If only it was bigger....

..and now it is. A bigger , faster, ipod touch..? what on earth is not to like? Surely it fits the niche of a sofa/coffee/table device much better than a netbook or an iphone/ipod ever could..

Sure..it doesn't have a whizzy new gesture based interface, it doesn't have a camera, and it doesn't make phone calls..but then why should it do any of those things?

for me..if its an excellent browsing experience, can display PDFs and ebooks well, and play the odd movie or two..i'm sold.

I also think the availability of the app store makes it a killer device. Im sure there will be some amazing apps in due course.

Downsides? no multi tasking ( to be confirmed )...and while I understand Apple's reasoning for that..no IM in the background would seem like a bit of a downer in 2010.

A 4:3 aspect ratio? This initially seemed bizarre, as surely most movies are 16:9? but an article on macworld makes a good case for a 4:3 ratio. It isn't primarily a movie playing device...its a web browsing/book reading device, and a 4:3 ratio makes more sense.

So, The big question is how many are you going to buy?

:)

Initial impressions are somewhat mixed.

With high bit rate stuff ( 256K, 320 or losssless ) it sounds excellent. wonderfully open sound stage, tight bass and good sense of timing. The Novo is a good with percussion and vocals, as are my Grado SR60s..so it all seems to work well.

However, with anything less than that ( I still have 192 and below hanging around from when I started digitising music for low capacity Mp3 players ) then it sounds terrible...worse than the native output of the mac. It really sounds like the music is underwater...I'm guessing the gaps in the sound are just too much and the upsampling really messes up.

More investigation required...

My current settings are 41Khz 24bit out from the macbook pro over Toslink. ( USB option only supports 16 bit audio )

I haven't tried it with my Marantz 6003 as a CD transport yet..I'll guess that will be a better test of the quality of the DAC itself.

This seems to be the product of the fact the default unit of currency in salary seems to 'the nurse'. How often have you heard journalists or commentators say 'that would pay for 10 nurses' or that's '3 times what a nurse earns!' if a nurse is expected to live on a nurses salary, shouldn't the prime minister?

Well, no. No he shouldn't. Our MPs should be well rewarded for the job they do. This is for a number of reasons.

1. Our best people should be attracted to the job
2. I don't want the representatives of our democracy worried about paying the mortgage
3. If they are well rewarded perhaps they wouldn't feel the need to fiddle their expenses/allowances
4. In all honesty ther really arent that many of them.

If we paid each mp 200,000 a year that would cost the tax payer 145 million, which is nothing in the scheme of things...

Actually hold on a minute....that's 5300 nurses!

I can only say 'wow'. After an initial running in period, the Grados now have a new lease of life. Stereo separation is amazing...with a very tightly controlled ( can I use the word 'taught' here ?) bass. Vocals are particularly impressive, as is percussion.

There is basically no distortion even at max volume, which is nice.

Standout tracks so far.

• Alanis Morissette 'Bonus' from Jagged Little Pill - Female Vocals are very nice indeed, spacious.
• Rush 'Far Cry' from Snakes and Arrows - Intro is just amazing.
• Rush 'Malignant Naricissism / De Slagwerker ' from Snakes and Arrows Live Blu-Ray Disc. - Well...the best instrumentalists in Rock...doing what they do best :)
• Pink Floyd 'One of these Days' from Echoes ( best of Pink Floyd ) - Awesome stero production
• Damien Rice - 'Cold Water' from O - Stunning Vocals and crescendo
• Mike Oldfield - The Bell(remix) from best of Mike oldfield - 'and once again, tubular bells' 
• Mozart - 'Requiem - Dies irae' - London Philarmonic - music to die to
• Nina Simone - 'Mr Bojangles' - forget the other versions...
• Jeff Buckley - 'Hallelujah' excellent vocal performance
• Radiohead - 'Exit Music ( for a film )' from OK Computer - last 30 seconds are probably the toughest test of any amp/sound system. feedback can sometimes overwhelm..but this sounds fab :)

Apparently the amp takes 300 hours to properly 'run in'..so here is hoping it gets better!

After a little investigation, I reset the SMC controller using the instructions at Apple KB HT1411. Now the machine is happy again...with average temps in the high 40s/early 50s. 

Much better.

One of the big rumours was that Snow Leopard would require a leopard install. This was not in fact the case.

I inserted the new HDD, which was incredibly easy to replace by laptop standards. And booted using the 'C' option. Snow leopard then installed with no issues in about 45 minutes no prompting for leopard DVD etc, giving me a nice clean macbook pro.

I also purchased a external USB SATA dock, which meant I could just pop my old disk in that and copy the files I wanted to my new disk..which was nice.

So, Snow leopard? Very little appreciable differences to be honest. It certainly feels snappier, seems to run cooler and has some nice enhancements.

What was odd, that it automatically paired with my apple wireless keyboard and MS 5000 bluetooth mouse..im not quite sure how that happened.

New Stuff

• Expose now shows minimised windows below a line. This is long overdue and makes the use of expose much more natural. I have mapped this to my middle mouse button click and I find this very intuitive.
• Expose now has a show windows for the current app mode, which again is excellent. I have mapped this to my side mouse button.
• You can show the date in the menu bar using a simple menu option! Now, you could do this before with a custom date format, but just having a checkbox is a much better idea!
• New QuickTime player is nice..looks just like VLC! :)
• New Services. I never really used the old Services menu...as it seems a little messy and half finished. The new imagining of that makes much more sense. ( see here )

Applications installed so far with no issues are:

• Photoshop CS4
• skype
• Adium
• ilfe'09
• caffeine
• Textwrangler
• Omnigraffle 5.2
• VMWare fusion 2.05

Mistakes made when upgrading? I simply copied by music etc from the old disk, instead of my itunes library...which meant my iphone and ipod complained that they had been synched with another library and I had to wipe and restore!

Anyway, so far...so good.

Firstly I see this as a media consumer device, not a media producer device. What do I mean by that? well, I can see it being used to read books, watch movies, listen to music, browse the web, perhaps even play the odd game. However, I can't see it replacing a macbook ( or macbook pro ) or PC as a means for creating these things. The odd email or blog post maybe....

Ok, its a given it would be an awesome web tablet ( think bigger iphone )

So what are the features I would like to see?

A low power PDF reader mode

Apple have some of the best PDF rendering out there, so PDF makes sense as the default book format. PDF would allow for full-colour, decent formatting, and the ability to read technical books and magazines in the format the publisher intended. That would be cool. But what would be really cool would be a low power 'reader' mode, whereby the other features of the tablet would be less available to improve battery life. Ideally this would be an instant switch from reader to multimedia device mode.

HDMI out.

HDMI out to play HD content on an HDTV. more of a pipe dream really..but imagine a dock for the tablet that allows it to be a replacement for the apple TV...but you can take it with you...finish that movie on the train, on holiday, at the inlaws etc. If the Zune HD can do it...

Airtunes client support

Ability to act as a media extender and itunes speaker target ( possibly combined with the HDMI dock ) much like the airport express.

MobileMe support

Probably a given, but the ability to browse my documents/media on mobileme, or on my airport extreme connected disk would be great.

Flash Support

Unlike the iphone...things thing needs flash support, obviously.

Well, lets see what the product announcement, does or doesn't bring..