Something Very Special and Very Historically Different

"Right now, if you buy a computer system and you want to solve one of your problems, we immediately throw a big problem right in the middle of you and your problem which is learning how to use the computer. A substantial problem to overcome. Once you overcome that, it's a phenomenal tool. But there is a barrier of having to overcome that problem.

What we're trying to do … is to remove that barrier so that someone can buy a computer system who knows nothing about it and directly attack their problem without learning how to program their computer.

Our whole company, our whole philosophical base, is founded on one principle. That principle is that there is something very special and very historically different that takes place when you have one computer and one person. Very different than if you have ten people and one computer."

Steve Jobs, 1980

This is why I get up in the morning. I have nothing to add.

On My iPad

I commented on Twitter recently:

You know what? There are some really, really great iOS apps out there. Every day, I need my Mac a bit less.

A few people seemed keen to hear more. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm ignoring the software development work. I know we still need Mac OS X to develop iOS apps.

This post is about the apps I use on my iPad. I'll write another about my iPhone apps someday.

Let's start with the dock:

• Safari
• Mail
• Calendar
• Evernote
• Noteshelf
• Twitterrific

I've had an Evernote account since forever but it's only since iOS 5 shipped that I really started using it in earnest. Previously, the iOS side of Evernote was quite weak - it was more or less read-only beyond basic text notes. Recently, though, the iOS clients have grown really powerful and I'm loving it. I use Evernote to capture web pages (via Instapaper), I scan all my paperwork into Evernote (via the Mac, not iOS).

Noteshelf is a new addition to the dock. I have not, historically, been a big fan of using a stylus on my iPad. In part this has been because I haven't found a good stylus and in part because I hadn't found a really good handwriting app. I don't like hand-writing things but I do like sketching and I want to sketch without paper. My current favourite stylus is the Adonit Jot Pro. Noteshelf's pen-tracking, zoomed writing and wrist protection are better than any other app I've tried.

Twitterrific is the only iOS Twitter client I've been able to live with. I use it on the iPhone, iPad and Mac. Twitter clients are personal but I like Twitterrific because it integrates all tweets, @-replies and DMs in the main timeline. I don't know any other client that does that and I can't live without it.

Page One

Here's my home screen from top left to bottom right.

Flipboard

Flipboard is another app like Evernote that I've had around for ages but it's only recently clicked. I attribute this to the recent release of the iPhone version. Now that I have it everywhere, Flipboard has replaced my regular RSS reader. I love it, which is why it's in the hallowed top-left icon spot.

Instapaper

What else is there to say about Instapaper?

iBooks

I don't buy a lot of books from Apple but, until now, iBooks has been my PDF reader of choice. I also receive a lot of hand-made eBooks from kids at school so having this handy is useful.

Kindle

I buy all my eBooks in the Kindle system - because I have a hardware Kindle too. It's a pretty decent iOS app and its capabilities are growing over time. Support for periodicals was recently added, for example. Pretty great system.

Messages

I thought I would use iMessage on the iPad more than I actually do but I keep it on page one so that I can see the notification number.

OmniFocus

I loves me some OmniFocus.

Dropbox

My life is in Dropbox. The iOS app isn't super-powerful and it's not entirely Dropbox's fault that there aren't really good round-trip workflows to other iOS apps. For the apps where that's important, I feel sure I will be migrating to iCloud as time goes by.

WeatherPro HD

It's not a pretty app: there's too much royal blue and yellow and the design is hard to use. Nevertheless, the data that WeatherPro presents is stunningly accurate by comparison to anything else I've tried. You could set your watch by the time WeatherPro said the rain was going to start.

Moodboard

This is a funny one. I come and go with Moodboard but it's occasionally useful to have up front. It's a great app but I'm not all that visual a person. I want to use it more but I find 'visual ideas' to be noisy and cluttered. I prefer a list.

iThoughts HD

iThoughts is a great mind mapping app. It has some great keyboard shortcuts, which you don't expect in an iOS app but they work really well. iThoughts syncs with all kinds of services and does a great job of export. We use this in school from 7-year-olds up to staff meetings.

iA Writer

I've recently started to get into using iA Writer. Since it acquired iCloud support, I've been using it to write most of my blog posts. My main complaint is that it doesn't have an iPhone version but the Mac version is quite lovely.

Day One

Day One is a diary app. I've only been using it for a few days since I heard about it in Shawn Blanc's interview with Brian Stucki. A universal iOS app and a Mac app all connected through iCloud (are you sensing a pattern in what I'm into right now? iCloud.)

iTunes U

We're getting to the tail end of the page and into the realm of "apps I want to look at closely but don't absolutely depend on yet". I've already written about the new iTunes U but the iOS app is quite lovely. I'm not taking any courses right now but I've applied for access to the iTunes U publishing backend so I'm keeping the app around for testing.

PDF Expert

Recently, I've been looking into using adapted digital exam papers at school for pupils with additional needs. I've been looking for a while for an app that does a great job with PDF forms on iOS. PDF Expert works brilliantly. I tried to take this further and see if I could mark papers submitted by email but I found PDF Expert's free-form writing tool to be sluggish and inaccurate (Noteshelf remains my benchmark and PDF Expert is nowhere close to it yet).

PDFPen

PDFPen is brand new to iOS but I've been using it on the Mac for years. PDFPen is interesting because it has a Mac counterpart, it supports - you guessed it - iCloud sync. iOS-only apps like PDF Expert and iThoughtsHD don't have Mac counterparts to sync to.

PDFPen does an equally good job with PDF forms. It's a great 1.0 but I found its PDF markup tools to be sluggish - similar to those same tools in PDF Expert. I hope Smile can work on this a bit because, in the longer term, I think PDFPen might be my guy.

The thing I like most about PDF Expert and PDFPen is that they are iOS apps. They're not crazy custom UI. They're just clean, clear, easy-to-use UIKit apps. In all the experimentation that's happening on iOS, I'd like a little more of this.

Newsstand

I subscribe to Tap! magazine and I have National Geographic and Wired installed. Tap! is a great example of iPad magazine design. I hate how the Wired magazine plays sounds. I'd like more publications to get on with supporting Newsstand.

The Rest

So that's my iPad home page. Page 2 contains Settings, 1Password, Notes and App Store as well as dozens of other apps in folders. I keep a lot of apps installed because, well, I'm the iPad Guy and I often have to demonstrate a use case or an app to someone for which I have no real personal use.

There are several other great iOS apps that I'm just waiting for better iCloud support to really get into using: the other Omni apps; iWork on iOS.

Here's the categorised list of all the other 3rd party apps I have installed:

Entertainment

• YouTube
• Videos
• iPlayer
• Music
• Instacast HD
• Netflix

Nerd Tools

• Airport Utility
• iTeleport
• Prompt
• Deliveries
• Textastic
• Find iPhone
• Interface
• TouchPad
• Monitor
• Skype
• FaceTime
• TapTyping

Games

• Rise of Glory
• Drag Racing
• Stack the Countries
• SimCity
• Blueprint 3D
• Strategery
• Spacelings
• Anomaly HD
• Battlefield Bad Company 2
• Sonic Racing
• Temple Run

Kids Games

• Faces iMake
• Pottery HD
• Every Toca Boca app in existence

Art

• Brushes
• Art Authority
• ArtRage
• MadPad HD
• Fotopedia {Heritage, Paris, North Korea, Japan, National Parks}
• Moxier Collage
• Autodesk Sketchbook
• Architizer
• Skitch
• Guardian Eyewitness

Maths and Science

• Wolfram Course Assistant Calculus
• Wolfram Course Assistant Algebra
• Codea
• Seismometer

Books

• History of Jazz
• ESV Bible
• Human Body
• Qwiki
• Typography Insight
• Qi
• War in the Pacific
• Solar Walk

Music

• GarageBand
• Animoog
• Guitar Toolkit
• forScore
• VoiceThread

Note Taking

• Penultimate
• Paperport Notes
• CourseNotes
• Notability

Apps

• Keynote
• Pages
• Numbers
• OmniOutliner
• OmniGraphSketcher
• OmniGraffle
• Book Creator
• Soulver
• Explain Everything
• Keynote Remote
• Bento
• ReaddleDocs
• Squarespace
• GoodReader

Imaging

• Camera
• Photos
• Luminance
• Snapseed
• Collabracam
• iMovie

Travel

• Maps
• Find My Friends
• Virgin Trains
• London A-Z
• Travelodge
• TubeMap
• Hotels.com
• Train Times
• Google Earth

Thoughts on iBooks

Jason Snell at Macworld asked me for my take on Apple's announcements at their recent education event in New York City. Here are a few excerpts.

On the state of ebook use in schools:

The ownership model for ebooks is out of step with the way schools buy and use most books. Unfortunately, Apple’s announcement didn’t change that much. I had hoped that on Thursday we would see a mechanism for checking books out and back into some kind of “school library” through iBooks. Instead we got a modest price cut on textbooks alone.

On iBooks Author:

It’s almost like Pages and Keynote got together and produced a child. ... iBooks Author can do for books what Keynote did for presentations: an accessible way to create very high-quality results with little effort.

On the new iTunes U app:

If you’ve ever tried to “take” a course from iTunes U, you may have found it a bit frustrating. It was never really a full course, just some lecture materials and a reading list. Where are the books? Where are the exercises? It was difficult for course authors to communicate the intended progression of learning.

With iTunes U, Apple has solved the problem of communicating the learning journey. It’s no longer “read this PDF, then watch these videos.” Courses can now contain audio, video, documents, links to iOS apps and iBooks. There’s deep integration between iBooks and iTunes U through which notes and highlights from a book can be reviewed in the iTunes U app.

Commercial iBooks textbooks are a marketing head fake. They're the equivalent of carbon fibre buggy whips. iTunes U is the game changer. Put iBooks Author and iTunes U into the hands of great teachers, put iPads in their students hands, put them all in a room together then step back and see what happens. That's the ballgame.

The full piece is over at Macworld.

Hire Me?

As it's the start of the year, I thought I'd mention that you can hire me to help your school or organisation with iOS deployment. There are more details on fraserspeirs.com but, in brief, I can help you with:

• Planning the change management process
• All technical aspects of iOS deployment
• Mobile Device Management
• How to deal with App Store accounts and volume purchase

For schools in particular, I can also help with:

• Staff development around 1:1 teaching and iOS
• Helping teachers and parents understand the school's educational goals with 1:1/iOS
• Setting educational goals around mobile devices in the classroom
• Integration of iOS into existing systems
• Deploying Mac OS X Server Profile Manager (or other MDM systems)
• Developing acceptable use policies to cover 1:1 deployments
• Evaluating lease vs. buy arrangements
• Planning and deploying Wi-Fi and broadband upgrades to support 1:1

I'm happy to travel worldwide and I'm happy to work with you remotely. Whatever fits your needs and budget.

If you're interested in working with me before the summer, please get in touch as soon as possible. The diary is filling up!

iOS Multitasking in Detail

I received a lot of feedback on my recent post on iOS multitasking. I'm sorry I can't respond to everyone who emailed - there were dozens. I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the process in more detail. I used Instruments (part of the Xcode package) to inspect the free memory on the iPad as I ran and suspended various apps.

There are five sections to this video demonstrating:

• An app going from active to background to suspended
• Instacast HD requesting extra background time to finish a podcast download
• TomTom running indefinitely in the background
• Batman Arkham City Lockdown and Real Racing 2 HD competing for big chunks of device memory
• Batman Arkham City Lockdown forcing several smaller apps out of memory

The iPad in this video is an original iPad running iOS 5.0.1. All the apps used are the current versions at the time of posting this video.

iOS Multitasking from Fraser Speirs on Vimeo.

If I can summarise my point: killing apps manually is fine as a troubleshooting step but it shouldn't be part of your daily routine.