Home > Sean's Technology and Writing Blog

What’s new in the Apple iPad 3 (or iPad HD)?

09 March 2012

Apple has unveiled the iPad 3, and perhaps the most surprising thing is that there were few surprises. There had been so much speculation before its release, some of it informed by leaked photos of parts and some of it possibly planted, that there was already some consensus on what would be introduced in the iPad 3.

There were a few predictions that didn’t come true, including a fascinating story in The Guardian about a haptic technology that makes the flat screen feel like it has texture, so you can feel the edges of keys, for example. There were rumours the Home button would be removed so that all the controls are gesture-based, although this seemed unlikely, both for usability and branding reasons.

We now know that there are two main changes: the first is that the camera quality has been improved. It still lags behind the iPhone’s camera quality or a dedicated digital camera, but it’s significantly better than the iPad 2. Until I get my hands on one, I won’t be sure what kind of shots it will be good for, but the previous camera was only really suitable for video calling or for quick grab shots. It couldn’t be used as a real camera, to make photos you’ll want to keep forever. Hopefully, the iPad’s new camera will be much closer to what we would expect from a camera phone.

The other main change is that the screen resolution has doubled, so text and images will look sharper. The device will be able to play back HD video at its full resolution, which led to some speculation that the device would be called the iPad HD, although there’s no indication of that on Apple’s website. Apple just calls the device a third-generation iPad. Apple says the higher resolution has no significant impact on battery life, which is good news.

There are a few other changes that will be less obvious. The iPad now supports 4G mobile communications, but since there isn’t much coverage for these in the UK, that’s unlikely to make much difference here. You can use your iPad’s mobile connection to create a wi-fi hotspot for other devices, although this is probably of most use if you’re getting superfast 4G speeds in your mobile connection.

The new iPad also has a new processor, called the A5X, which has double the graphics processing capability of the previous processor, so it can manage the enhanced screen effectively.

The release of the iPad 3 also came with some software enhancements. The camera app has been redesigned, most notably so that the button to take a photo is somewhere you can actually reach it without having to juggle the iPad with one hand. It’s now possible to delete photos from the Photo Stream folder on the iPad, although that delete instruction doesn’t seem to synchronise with other devices, so you’ll need to delete the photo on your other devices too. The camera is also said to have face detection built-in, so that it can optimally balance the exposure across all the faces in your photo. Apple says it’s also improved the sound quality on the iPad so that films and TV shows sound better. All these features, plus some bug fixes, are available to owners of older iPads who upgrade their iPad software to version iOS 5.1 (obviously, you still need an iPad 2 with a built-in camera to use the Camera app). If you’re not yet running iOS 5.0, see my guide to upgrading to iOS5. If you have upgraded to iOS 5.0, you can upgrade again to this latest version iOS 5.1 by going into your Settings app, tapping General, then Software Update.

There’s also a new software feature which Apple hasn’t rolled out to older iPads, which is a new dictation button on the keyboard which enables you to dictate text to the screen. At first I thought this was a simple software feature that could easily have been given to those with older iPads, but on reflection, voice recognition is quite processor-intensive, so it might need the new A5X chip to work.

Apple has also released iPhoto for the iPad (pictured, above). When Apple announces a new application like this, I feel a little conflicted. On the one hand, it’s great that they’ve invested in creating new software. On the other hand, given the device costs about £500, it wouldn’t hurt them to give away the software, rather than charging £3 for it, which almost seems petty. When you buy a new Mac, you get iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband for free, and these are all sold separately for the iPad. Apple did introduce basic photo editing capabilities in the iOS5 software upgrade for the iPad, so perhaps I shouldn’t grumble about them making enhanced features available to those who are prepared to pay a bit for them, given they have to invest resources in creating the software.

The iPad 3 will be released on Friday 16th March and Apple is taking pre-orders now if you’re interested. Amazon doesn’t have a proper listing for the iPad 3 yet, but I expect other retailers will be advertising it for sale and pre-orders over the next few days.

(Corrected, with thanks to Michael Hülskötter, to clarify that the quad-core is for graphics only).

Labels: Apple, iOS5, iPad, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad HD

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Download free Back to the Future game for your iPad

16 February 2012

For a limited period, you can download episode one of the Back to the Future iPad game for free. The game is a lovingly crafted tribute to the 1985 movie and its sequels, developed with the help of many of the team from the original movie, including co-writer and producer Bob Gale, and Christopher Lloyd, who played Doc Brown.

The game itself is like an interactive film. You control Marty, who can wander around the rooms and streets you travel through. You can talk to characters by tapping them and selecting one of the predetermined phrases, and you can examine objects by tapping them in the background. This interface can be a little frustrating at times. There was one puzzle where I knew what I had to do, but couldn't work out why it wasn't working and that was because I wasn't quite tapping the right place, but there is a good hints system that gives you graded hints until it reveals the answer, so you can push the story along. The graphics and characterisation are great, and the music from the original films helps to build atmosphere.

I experienced a couple of bugs playing the game, the most significant of which is that a couple of lines of Marty's dialogue were inaudible. The save game feature would benefit from being more finely grained: you can't control when the game saves, and the chapter chunks are quite large, so the game doesn't suit the kind of dip-in-drop-out play that I usually associate with iPad games. There's enough richness in the story and its presentation, though, that I was happy to be sucked in for longer periods of time.

I'm a huge fan of the Back to the Future films, so I loved being able to wander around Hill Valley myself, and appreciated the details they've added which non-fans might not notice. So far, it feels like an extension of the original films, taking the much-loved characters in new directions, while respecting their personalities and shared histories.

There are five episodes in total. For now, episode 1 is free and the others are reduced in price. For tips on downloading apps to your iPad, see my book iPad for the Older and Wiser.

(With thanks to Mark for telling me about this. We saw the original film together in the cinema 27 years ago. Great Scott!)

Labels: games, iPad, iPad 2

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Apple releases free multimedia ebook authoring tool for iBooks

26 January 2012

Last month, I wrote about The Beatles' Yellow Submarine ebook, which is like a modern pop-up book, with animated illustrations, interactive pictures, embedded videos, and text that reads itself aloud. Since that was published, there have been some educational interactive books appearing in the iBooks store. It's clearly something that Apple is putting a lot of weight behind, and it represents a new class of content that is ideal for the iPad.

Now Apple has released the software for creating these books, iBooks Author, for free on the Mac app store. It's only for the Mac (obviously), but it enables authors and self-publishers to lay out their books and embed video, images with pop-up captions, custom HTML (web page code), photo galleries, Keynote presentations and 3D objects.

This will make it much easier for anyone (with a Mac) to publish their own interactive ebooks, which has an upside and a downside. The upside is that authors can express themselves in more interesting and creative ways, and readers can benefit from a richer catalogue of original content, unfiltered by major publishers. The downside is that not everyone is brilliant at video, layout, writing, design and all the other skills that are required, so there's bound to be some rubbish content that undermines faith in the format as a whole. We've seen the same phenomenon in website publishing and print-on-demand publishing. I'd much rather that people have the opportunity to use these tools, but the best way to exploit them might be for writers to team with other creatives who can help to bring their ideas to life. For now, before the masses adopt the tool, there's clearly an advantage for authors who can move quickly to publish compelling interactive content.

You can find a short guide to iBooks in my book iPad for the Older and Wiser, and my articles for writers and publishers here.

Labels: iPad, iPad 2, journalism, webdesign, writing

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Five short pieces of book news

15 January 2012

I just wanted to write a short blog post to round up a few snippets of news about my books:

Lulu is running two special offers applicable to my novel University of Death. You can pay no shipping using the code WHOASHIPPINGUK305 or you can save 25% of the book price using the code LULUBOOKUK305. I believe these offer codes work on all books in Lulu's store. My novel takes a comical look at the music industry and has had rave reviews from magazines including Record Collector, Music Tech and Metal Hammer. Find out more and download the free sample here, but don't delay! Both offers expire 31 January 2012 and only apply to books bought through Lulu's website. The novel is also available as an ebook on iBooks, but I can't create a link for that so you'll need to search in the store (sorry!).
Web Design in Easy Steps is following in the footsteps of iPad for the Older and Wiser, and is an Amazon bestseller. It's currently #1 in the categories for website design; web graphics and animation; and books published by In Easy Steps.
Tata McGraw-Hill has published an edition of Web Design in Easy Steps for sale in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. It's wonderful to know the book is helping people in all these countries to create their websites!
Saga Magazine has published a review of iPad for the Older and Wiser. It says the book "will have you set up on your new device in no time". See a scan of the review here.
If you got iPad for the Older and Wiser recently (thank you!), you might have missed that there is a free supplement available for it here, to explain the latest software updates available for the iPad.

Labels: books, iOS5, iPad, university of death, webdesign, writing

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

The Beatles Yellow Submarine iPad ebook signals the future of iBooks publishing

09 December 2011

Apple is promoting a free ebook of The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, which shows the capabilities of the new version of its iBooks app. It's fantastic fun for younger readers, and a showcase for what the concept of a book might become for everybody.

There have been lots of apps that modernise the concept of the pop-up book. My friend Chris Stevens created the Alice for the iPad app, which is one of my recommended iPad apps. It uses clever physics simulation for the reader's interaction with the pictures, so that the characters move as if on springs, or respond realistically to you shaking the iPad. He shared the code to do this in his book Designing for the iPad. There are lots of other people who have created apps for their books too, so that readers can interact with them in memorable and engaging ways.

The interesting development here is that the Yellow Submarine app works within the iBooks app, which further blurs the lines around what defines a book. The iBooks app is great. I was really impressed with the user experience iBooks offers with my own books (including iPad for the Older and Wiser), but so far it's been mainly about reflowing text, searching text and viewing images. It hasn't offered a huge amount of interaction. Maybe that's because I don't usually read children's books, but in any case, I haven't seen anything like the Beatles app working as iBooks content, and the fact I had to upgrade iBooks to get it to work suggests this type of interaction is new to iBooks.

The Yellow Submarine book is everything you would expect: colourful, surreal, and interactive. The animations are quite subtle: it's not a video, but small parts of the image move, such as a waving hand or a waggling tongue. You can tap pictures to make them perform other moves and can sometimes drag pictures (such as butterflies) around. The Sea of Holes is fun, with The Beatles popping up and down like a whack-a-mole game. There's an option to have the book read aloud to you, with the words lit up as each one is spoken. The app includes embedded videos you can play within the page, and short bursts of music that are played when you tap some of the characters. The only disappointment is that the music bursts are quite short. I haven't bought the Yellow Submarine album from iTunes, but I do have many of the songs from albums I've bought on CD and it might have been nice for there to be a way to integrate playback of those.

There's still some work to be done on refining the user interface. The problem is that there can be a conflict between the book's content and the iBooks controls. For example, you can often touch a character to make them sing or move. Indeed, the whole point of the book is that you touch things to see what they might do. If you touch a character that doesn't have an action assigned to it, though, iBooks is likely to interpret that as a tap on the app, and turn the page or show/hide the iBooks controls. It feels broken when you touch a character to see what they might do, and it turns the page, or when the controls keep popping in and out of view as you try to explore the book.

These new iBooks capabilities create fantastic opportunities for book authors and publishers: it's easy to think of educational content that would benefit from simple animations, embedded videos or interactive elements (such as lifting the flap to reveal an answer). It's also a nice way to add value to written content. Authors often have access to audio recordings or other research materials which would be considered bonus features on DVDs, but which don't really have an outlet in book publishing.

To get the app working, you'll need to update your iBooks app (tap the App Store icon on your iPad, then tap Updates at the bottom, then find iBooks in the list, and then tap Free). Then go into the iBooks store and download the Yellow Submarine iBook. If you put the book into the app before you upgrade the app, it won't work unless you've previously upgraded to iBooks 1.5. Here's a direct link to download the Yellow Submarine ebook. There's more information on updating apps and downloading ebooks in iPad for the Older and Wiser.

Now I have the urge to check in with Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and catch up with Henry the Horse, Lovely Rita and all the other surreal characters there. Cue the music!

Labels: Apple, books, iPad, music promotion

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Holy Zarquon! My iPad book is a bestseller

01 December 2011

My book iPad for the Older and Wiser is officially a bestseller. It's currently the #1 book on Amazon.co.uk in the Silver Surfers category, and the #1 book on Amazon.co.uk in the computer hardware category. It holds the second position in the chart for all computer science books.

You could argue that all the niche charts make it easier to get a bestseller now, but there’s still a lot of strong competition out there. It’s nice to know that my book has charted above every other book about the iPad and every other book about computing for the over 50s.

Screen grab showing the Amazon ranking

The book’s sales ranking overall is #1,655 out of all the books Amazon sells, which puts it ahead of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (#2,808), Pride and Prejudice (#1,925) and The Catcher in the Rye (#1,834). That’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek: these books have sold steadily over a generation or more, and will continue to do so for decades to come. But it’s still nice to think that for a brief period my book was more popular with Amazon’s customers than some of the most famous books in English. And this is the highest ranking I remember any of my books getting on Amazon, too.

The response to the book has been fantastic. I attended a U3A meeting recently and the members there were really enthusiastic about the book and the iPad. It’s been getting some great reviews too. Many thanks to everyone for their support with it. You can find out more about iPad for the Older and Wiser here. It's available to buy in all good bookshops, including Amazon.

Labels: books, iPad

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Choice Magazine recommends 'iPad for the Older and Wiser' as a Christmas gift

20 November 2011

The November 2011 issue of Choice Magazine includes a review of iPad for the Older and Wiser, which is the book of the month. The review concludes: "If you are wondering what to ask for next month for Christmas, then an iPad, together with this book, would keep you amused and entertained for hours, and prove a very useful resource to boot."

You can see the full review below, and read more about the book (including more excerpts from that review in text so they're easier to read) at my webpage for iPad for the Older and Wiser.

iPad for the Older and Wiser, Microsoft for the Older and Wiser, Social Networking for the Older and Wiser, and Web Design in Easy Steps are all out now and available on the shelf or to order from any bookshop. You can also find easy links to buy online in my shop.

Scan of review from Choice Magazine of iPad for the Older and Wiser

Review reproduced by kind permission of www.choicemag.co.uk

Labels: books, Christmas, iPad

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Publication day: iPad for the Older and Wiser

09 September 2011

iPad for the Older and Wiser has now been published, and I've just received my box of author copies. Even though I've seen the laid-out pages for the whole book, it doesn't really look like a proper book until you've got the lavishly printed copy in your hand, so it's a good feeling to see all the months of work solidified in the finished product. The screenshots and photos have come out great, and Stephen Long has created some colourful cartoons to introduce each part.

The book is also available in a range of digital formats for reading on ebooks, including Kindle and iBooks. In due course, I'll add links to those in my shop, but if you prefer digital, you can probably find the book by searching for it in your preferred store.

Today I've also published the list of the top 20 best iPad apps (no longer online) which appears in the book. With my books, I try to provide links and other resources on this website to save readers having to search for things I can more easily just give them on this website. The online version has been enhanced with some videos demonstrating three of the apps, and links to all the apps so you can go straight to them in iTunes. Did I include your favourite iPad app? If you've got another to suggest, feel free to leave a comment or email me.

Labels: books, iPad, iPad 2

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

How to customise your blog for the iPad

08 September 2011

Although I use Blogger myself for managing this blog, I typically recommend Wordpress as being more fully featured. I use it for some other blogs I write, and it’s a bit more flexible and more powerful than Blogger, especially for newcomers. I wrote a section outlining the basics of getting started with Wordpress in my book Web Design in Easy Steps.

When I was looking around one of my Wordpress-hosted blogs recently, I discovered a new section in the Appearance section of the settings. If you log into your Wordpress dashboard, and scroll down, you should see ‘iPad’ in the Appearance section, on the left. These settings give you the option to upload an image that will be shown when someone launches your blog from an icon on the iPad’s home screen, and to upload a cover logo. These help to give a visit to your blog a more native app-like feel on the iPad. By default, the option to display a special theme for iPad users is ticked, and you can confidently leave it ticked.

Although I’ve been using the iPad a lot, especially while writing my book iPad for the Older and Wiser, I hadn’t visited any Wordpress blogs with it, so I was intrigued to see what this was all about. Basically, with the theme selected, Wordpress presents your blog in a format that is optimised for the touch screen and that will be familiar to iPad users when they view it. On the iPad, you see boxes containing headlines and a short summary of your story. When you tap one, a window opens to show the story in full which can be dragged up and down. To move between the pages of summaries, you swipe sideways to turn the pages. The whole experience is similar to the superb Flipboard app, which turns updates from social networks and your favourite websites into a magazine-like experience.

This is a great innovation from Wordpress: it feels like a native app on the iPad, and doesn’t require any additional work from the content creator, nor does it interfere with the experience for those using desktop computers. If you want to see an example of it, try visiting Finepixtrix, a photography blog I picked from Wordpress’s homepage, with your iPad. It features some great photography by Grahame Hall, who lives in South Africa. On a desktop computer, his blog looks much like this blog: the blog posts are stacked on top of each other and you scroll down the screen to read them. On the iPad, it’s more like a magazine, with headlines and images laid out neatly on the screen, so you can quickly find what you want to read. This screenshot shows the blog’s iPad theme:

If you have a Wordpress blog and want to offer iPad visitors a similar experience, the good news is that Wordpress is already doing it for you. However, you can make the experience even slicker by uploading a splash image and logo in your Wordpress settings. If you customise your blog for the iPad, leave me a comment and I'll check it out.

Labels: blogging, blogs, books, iPad, iPad 2, webdesign

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Is it worth buying a 3G iPad?

01 September 2011

If you’re wondering whether you should get the 3G iPad or just get the Wi-Fi one, there’s a new tool from the BBC that might help you to decide. The BBC invited volunteers to download an app for their Android mobile phones, and the app tracked where mobile signals were available. In total, 44,600 people submitted 1.7 million hours of data across the UK.

What it means for you is that you can enter a postcode on the BBC’s UK mobile coverage map, to see whether there is 3G coverage in that area. If the map is green where you live, it means there is coverage. If it’s purple, it means there is 2G coverage, which is slower but will still work on your iPad. The white areas have no data, which means nobody participated in the survey there. (It doesn’t matter that the data was collected using Android phones, because the iPad uses the same network).

If you have somewhere you might want to use your iPad regularly and won’t have access to free Wi-Fi, it’s worth checking it to see what the 3G coverage is like there using the BBC’s map. Technology news site The Register warns that you should take the data with a pinch of salt: if there’s one square showing superior coverage to all the squares around it, that’s probably a blip in the data. But the data should be broadly accurate and is based on actual coverage experienced by people using mobile phones.

As my book iPad for the Older and Wiser explains, Wi-Fi is usually free to use at places like cafes and in your own home. 3G requires a payment, typically a subscription that allows you to access a certain amount of data in a certain timeframe (such as 1GB in a month, which would be enough for about 200 songs or 10,000 web pages, according to O2’s estimates). Generally, I’ve found it helpful to have a 3G iPad for when I don’t have Wi-Fi coverage, including when in the car or when my home Wi-Fi network goes down.

UPDATE: My Friend Mark who lives in Shropshire says: "Don't believe the map 100%... says I get 3g when in fact very occasionally I get an unusable 3g signal and most of the time I hardly get a 2g one!"

Labels: books, iPad, iPad 2

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

iPads to replace flight manuals for pilots on major US airlines

26 August 2011

When I was writing iPad for the Older and Wiser, I was surprised to see that Alaska Airlines was replacing its flight manuals with the iPad. Now, the Guardian reports that United and Continental are also going paperless thanks to the iPad, and American and Delta airlines are testing the technology.

There’s a lot of money at stake. The Guardian reports that switching from 38lbs of paper to adopt the 1.5lb iPad will save 326,000 gallons of jet fuel each year, and 16 million sheets of paper. There’s no announcement as to how many back injuries it will prevent, by avoiding the need to lug around all that paper. The investment should pay for itself in five years, with $5 million being invested in iPads and $1 million being saved each year, which is an admirably long term investment in an uncertain economy.

To make sure there’s a failsafe, the pilot and copilot will each have iPads, so that if one fails, the other should still be available. If both fail, then information can be radioed to the cockpit. Unless the radio fails, I guess.

I’m not sure how I feel about this move. Given the amount of documentation that accompanies a flight, I imagine an iPad could make it much easier to find important information quickly, and the backlight might make it easier to read in difficult circumstances. But there’s something reassuring about the fact that a book never crashes or runs out of juice. I’m a fan of the iPad, obviously, but you can’t beat paper for accessibility. That said, the Federal Aviation Administration in the US insists that extensive safety testing is carried out before the iPad is introduced in the cockpit, and I’m sure they are used to dealing with much more sensitive systems than the iPad.

Unless the iPads are locked down to prevent new apps being installed, pilots will need to resist the temptation to install games. Here’s hoping that the only angry birds the pilots see while flying the plane are through the cockpit window.

(The picture is a press photo from Alaska Airlines, showing a pilot using an iPad in the cockpit. This photo was issued in May 2011 when Alaska Airlines became the first airline to use adopt the iPad for flight documentation.)

Labels: iPad, technology

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

How will Steve Jobs resignation affect Apple?

25 August 2011

Steve Jobs (pictured right in 2010) has stepped down as CEO of Apple, but will continue to be chairman. While Apple argues it will make little difference to the company’s operations, the stock market disagrees. The BBC reports that Apple shares fell 5% in after-market trading on the Nasdaq, and fell 4.1% in the secondary listing on Frankfurt’s stock exchange. The BBC also implies that a 4.1% rise in the share price of HTC and 3.2% rise in Samsung’s share price are also related to Jobs stepping down.

Apple has a talented team, including British designer Jonathan Ive who led the design of the iPod and the iPad, so the company remains in a strong position to innovate and grow. But many people, including many shareholders, perhaps, believe that a lot of Apple’s vision has come from Jobs.

'Revolutionary' is a word that's overused in technology PR and journalism, but Apple really has transformed entire industries under Jobs' leadership. The company has completely transformed the music industry, to the extent that Apple is arguably the most powerful company in the business, making huge amounts of money from the hardware and being one of the leading retailers for downloadable music.

Apple ignored the conventional wisdom on how the mobile phone market worked, and changed the game there too. Before the iPhone, handsets were free and operators got most of the money. Now, many people are willing to pay for an iPhone, and a huge chunk of the money in the industry goes to Apple, for both the hardware and the apps on the phone.

Apple has also dramatically reinvented the software industry. The app store model has changed the way that people discover and buy software, and has also made them much more likely to do so. People who wouldn’t enter a software or games shop are happy to buy apps, and a whole industry of amateur app developers has grown up to create those apps, some of whom have become fantastically wealthy.

Apple has also led the way with tablets, inspiring lots of other companies to try to emulate the success of the iPad. Now it’s a huge success, it’s easy to forget that a lot of people didn’t understand the point of the iPad when it first came out. It was a big iPod, or a computer without a keyboard: it seemed to be neither one thing nor the other. I didn’t get it until I tried one, but when you try one, you see how easy it makes it to do the things you usually do with a computer, and how enchanting the whole experience is. I’m a huge fan of the device, so much so that I’ve written a book about the iPad.

Apple hasn’t always been first to market with its ideas. There were MP3 stores and software downloads before Apple, for example, and there were portable music players before the iPod (including the Rio, which I reviewed for Making Music in 1999, and which could store an amazing 30 minutes of music by default). But being first to market isn’t always the most important thing. Apple shows that you can take existing ideas and improve them, design elegant products, and customers will follow.

Jobs will stay on as chairman of the company, so it can continue to benefit from his vision and ideas. Freed up from the day to day responsibility for running the company, Jobs will be free to focus his energies purely on generating ideas and helping to direct strategy. For a company led by sometimes daring ideas, this could make Apple even stronger.

(Photo of Steve Jobs courtesy of Matt Yohe, via Wikimedia Commons).

Labels: iPad, iPad 2, iPod, music, software, technology

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

iPad for the Older and Wiser: book trailer

09 August 2011

Here's a short film my publisher has made to promote our book iPad for the Older and Wiser, which is coming out in September. The video starts with an introduction to the book, and then covers my five top tips for getting the most out of the iPad, especially picked for the Older and Wiser audience.

The video was made by the marketing and media team at the book's publisher, John Wiley & Sons, and they've done a fantastic job of creating this film. Hope you enjoy it! I didn't write a script for it, so I was improvising, which probably made it harder to edit. Next time, I'll definitely write a script.

Meanwhile, the book is going through the last stages of production. I've finished proofreading the pages and checking the index, so the next time I see it, it will be as a real printed edition. Exciting times!

You can order your copy now (it's an ideal Christmas gift for relatives with an iPad too!) to benefit from Amazon's pre-order price guarantee, which ensures you'll pay the lowest price Amazon offers from your order until the publication day. The book will also be available in all good bookshops.

Labels: books, iPad, iPad 2, video

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

A sneak preview of the new iOS 5 for the iPad?

05 June 2011

German magician Simon Pierro claims to have a sneak preview of the update to the iPad's operating system (iOS 5), which Apple CEO Steve Jobs will be announcing at Apple's developer conference tomorrow. He shows how you will be able to play tennis with your iPad, share drinks remotely and make instant print-outs from the screen.

Labels: iPad, iPad 2

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

News on three book projects

14 April 2011

It's been a while since I updated the blog, so I've got three bits of news about books I've written to share with you.

Firstly, Web Design in Easy Steps has now been published. It's a full colour 240-page book in the popular In Easy Steps series. It starts by looking at the web design challenge, and then discusses what makes an effective website (with chapters dedicated to content, navigation and layout), before going into more depth on how websites are built. There are chapters dedicated to HTML, CSS and Javascript, and there are tips on using tools such as Flash, Dreamweaver and Wordpress. There is also advice on plugging in to social networking sites and adding a shopping cart. The book concludes with a look at how you can promote your website and measure what your visitors do on the site.

I have written extensively about website design in the past, for magazines including Internet Magazine, Business 2.0 and Internet Works, as well writing and editing a monthly newsletter about usability for a couple of years. I've also managed a few commercial website design projects in the past and am now working on updating my own website to reflect more of the good ideas in the book. Find out more about Web Design in Easy Steps, including how to order your copy, here.

The second bit of news is that Microsoft Office for the Older and Wiser is now available for the Amazon Kindle. You can get a free sample sent to your Kindle device from that link. For more information on the book, see the website for Microsoft Office for the Older and Wiser. I was really pleased with the structure and content of this book. It takes readers from no knowledge of the Office suite up to being quite sophisticated users through a series of projects. The book covers Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. There's also a bonus chapter on email using Windows Live.

The third piece of book news is that iPad for the Older and Wiser is now available for pre-order. I've written over half of it now and it will include coverage of both the original iPad and the features that are exclusive to the new iPad 2. The book will be published in September 2011. Wish me luck with drafting the last chunk of it and let me know if you have any favourite apps to recommend for the book!

Labels: books, iPad, iPad 2, Microsoft Office, webdesign

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Photos from the iPad 2 launch today

25 March 2011

As you've probably read, today was the launch of Apple's iPad 2. I went along to a PC World shop in a sleepy town near me to check it out and was surprised to see a queue of 30 or 40 people there. I can't imagine how long the queues must have been at Apple's own stores, especially in central London. The shop sold out of about 30-40 units fairly quickly, which was surprising for a run-of-the-mill PC store. Don't forget that represents at least £16,000 worth of sales in half an hour. I expect that scene has been repeated across the country, too. Here are some pictures I took...

The marketing materials, waiting to be unveiled

You can look, but don't touch. The shiny new cases were defended by shop staff until 5pm, and then only available to those who bought the iPad.

The queue. I got there at about 4.30, which is half an hour before the official on-sale time, and they had nearly allocated all the units they had. Congratulations to the idiot near the front who changed his mind when it came time to buy later, and so messed up the allocations for those behind him in the queue. When they say 'think different', they don't mean that.

And there it is, on display at last. Those who were buying one couldn't leave the queue to try it out first, which was sort-of funny. Everyone was relieved when they were finally put on display and plugged in, if only because it stopped the table's security alarm whining.

And here it is! Ta-da! I didn't think the physical dimensions would make much difference, but it felt quite a bit lighter than my 3G iPad 1, although that might be partly because I was holding a Wi-Fi demo unit. I don't think the unit's noticeably heavier than my SLR camera, so it might be okay for shooting HD video, although it's still a bit clumsy to point. Still waiting for that tripod!

Here's the Photo Booth software, which enables you to shoot photos with weird effects applied. It's interesting, but feels more like something for a Nintendo handheld than the iPad. I expect we'll tire of seeing photos featuring that Dr Who title sequence tunnel effect, but it's a nice way to have a bit of fun with the camera, even in a PC shop, which isn't the most photogenic place to shoot.

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the iPad 2 for a proper play with it. The main difference is the camera and video conferencing app FaceTime, plus a couple of minor things in the apps.

By the way, I passed the half-way point in writing the first draft of my book iPad for the Older and Wiser today. Cheers!

Labels: iPad, iPad 2, writing

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Some thoughts on Apple's iPad 2

04 March 2011

Apple yesterday announced the iPad 2, an enhanced version of its iPad tablet computer. This is of particular interest to me because I'm now writing a book about the iPad, called iPad for the Older and Wiser. I'll add more details to this site in due course, but you can already pre-order iPad for the Older and Wiser at Amazon.

So what's new with the iPad 2? Firstly, there are two cameras. One is on the same side as the screen, so it can film you while you're using the iPad. This is useful for video calling, something for which the iPad is a natural fit. The other camera faces away from the device, so that you can take pictures using it, and see what you're photographing on the iPad's screen. That will be a helpful addition, although probably not as useful as it is on the iPhone because the iPad is a bit big to hold up in the air as you try to frame the perfect picture. Perhaps we'll see specialist iPad tripods emerge though, which will make it easier to use this camera, especially for shooting HD video.

two iPads running Facetime to show video conferencing

Two iPads showing the Facetime video conferencing app. Photo courtesy of Apple.

Apple's proud that the new iPad is thinner. While it is remarkable how much computing power they've squeezed into a device that thin, I don't think this really matters to most people. The original iPad was remarkably thin, and there comes a point at which it doesn't really matter how much thinner it gets. We probably don't want the iPad to get too thin, anyway, otherwise it'll start to feel insubstantial and fragile.

The new iPad can also process faster than what we will now start calling iPad 1. It has a multicore chip, which means its processor can do two things at once. That doesn't necessarily mean it will do, though. Depending on the apps you use, they might need to be rewritten (by their creators) to take advantage of the extra processing capability. Combined with the reported improvement in graphics speed on iPad 2, we might start to see richer and more immersive games as a result of this. We should also expect to see operations like search, bulk calculations (if you use it for work) and PDF processing speed up over time as the apps we use catch up with the technology.

Although Apple has often had a gap of several months between a press announcement and its product release, the iPad 2 will be in the shops in the US next week and is scheduled to follow in the UK shortly afterwards. The iPad 1 will continue to be sold, and its price has been reduced. This seems like a smart move: the iPad 1 remains a great device, and will satisfy many people who don't want to pay the extra for the video cameras.

The iPad 2, though, opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. The video filming could work well, if a tripod becomes available, and the video conferencing will, I'm sure be a hit. The Nintendo DSi never really made the most of its built-in cameras, but with Apple's open ecosystem of thousands of developers, I'm sure we'll see some innovative and fun apps taking full advantage of them before too long.

What do you think about the iPad and iPad 2? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Labels: books, iPad, iPad 2, writing

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

How to make ebook apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

23 June 2010

I've just published an article about how you can make ebook apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It's based on interviews with about 20 industry insiders, including bestselling app creators, authors and publishers.

A much shorter version of the feature appeared in the June 2010 issue of Writers' Forum magazine, but I've extended it online with lots of content there wasn't room for in the magazine.

It was an interesting time to be writing the article, because I think it captured a moment in time when it was easy for authors to build apps. It's already become much more difficult, even in the few months since I wrote the story. Firstly, the companies that enabled people to make apps based on RSS feeds have massively increased prices. The entry price used to be $25 and now it's many hundreds of dollars. That probably reflects the demand they've seen from big brands, and might not be a price that the market can sustain in the longer term, at least not without some consolidation in the companies offering those services. For now, with prices that high, you might as well commission a bespoke design (which the article also covers). Secondly, Apple has responded to the number of apps being created by setting much higher standards for approval.

For this project, I did try to create an iPhone app using RSS feeds, but it was unfortunately rejected by Apple for reasons unknown. It might have been a victim of a crackdown on the service I was using, or they might have visited on a day when I hadn't updated the blog for a week or two. With Apple, who knows? The process of making and submitting the app was easy from a technical point of view, but every support query took a week to get a response, and the admin was hard to navigate.

The new iPhone OS and the iPad support the iBook store, so this might create new opportunities for authors to get their content into Apple's handhelds, if they're happy to publish static ebooks. It will be interesting to see what kinds of content Apple decides to approve and reject, and how this changes over time. I suspect that once the catalogue of books is looking reasonably healthy, we'll see a lot of self-published content get deleted and new rules come into play.

To read some success stories from authors who have created apps and find out how you can create your own, see my article. (If you make audiobooks, check out my tutorial on how to get your music into iTunes and Amazon MP3 too. The same concepts apply for audiobooks).

Labels: apps, ebooks, iPad, iPhone, iPod, publishing, writing

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

London Book Fair: Guinness Book of Records launches iPad app

22 April 2010

Photo of Guinness Book of Records running on iPad

The Guinness Book of Records used the London Book Fair to launch its new iPad app. It's a lite app, with a handful of records in eight different categories and was discussed as being a way to test the market and gauge the response to it.

The user experience is great. You drag two fingers across the screen to move to different sections. The animation is much more sophisticated than a simple page turn: the different elements of the design scroll into view at different speeds with objects closer to the horizon moving more slowly (parallax scrolling, to use the technical term). This creates a nice feeling of depth in the user interface. The menu options are well labelled, so there's no confusion about where to tap. The screen feels roughly A4 sized and the resolution is good, so the illustration can include striking photographs.

Photo of the craziest records screen

When you drill down to the content, there's a mixture of text, video, photos and audio (depending on the record you're viewing).

The device itself feels lightweight and comfortable, although I'm not sure how I would hold it if I really wanted to have a book-like experience with it. A laptop is hinged so the screen can be propped up at the right angle, and a paperback book feels easier to hold in one hand at the right angle. I only had a few minutes to play with it, though. And it's worth saying that the print book of the Guinness Book of Records is too big to hold comfortably for too long anyway. It's not the kind of book you'd take on the tube.

For the launch, the Guinness stand was attended by record holders including the world's tallest married couple and new record breaker Ben Lee who played Flight of the Bumblebee on the violin, showing the skill that helped him shave a second off the world record earlier this month. For many people, though, the real star of the show was the iPad. I wonder whether Guinness will be able to repeat its print sales record in this new digital format?

Labels: ebooks, iPad, publishing

Permanent link for this post | Blog Home | Website Home | Email feedback

Dip into the blog archive

Credits

Visit www.sean.co.uk for free chapters from Sean's coding books (including Mission Python, Scratch Programming in Easy Steps and Coder Academy) and more!

Discover my latest books

100 Top Tips: Microsoft Excel

Power up your Microsoft Excel skills with this powerful pocket-sized book of tips that will save you time and help you learn more from your spreadsheets.

Scratch Programming IES

This book, now fully updated for Scratch 3, will take you from the basics of the Scratch language into the depths of its more advanced features. A great way to start programming.

Mission Python

Code a space adventure game in this Python programming book published by No Starch Press.

Cool Scratch Projects in Easy Steps

Discover how to make 3D games, create mazes, build a drum machine, make a game with cartoon animals and more!

Raspberry Pi For Dummies

Set up your Raspberry Pi, then learn how to use the Linux command line, Scratch, Python, Sonic Pi, Minecraft and electronics projects with it.

Earworm

In this entertaining techno-thriller, Sean McManus takes a slice through the music industry: from the boardroom to the stage; from the studio to the record fair.