Ok, so this weekend was mental. I took the chance to visit my parents after spending most of Friday contemplating wether or not to get an iPad. I decided against it on that day and took a moment to think, ask a few friends in America who’ve had it for a few weeks what they thought and make my judgment.

On Saturday I watched the guided tours, looking at the books app after just buying the o’reilly ebook for my iPhone. Then looking at the safari app, and tried to put myself in to the situation of using it. This was the perfect moment as I was away from my flat in Glasgow and had just lugged my 13″ MacBook with charger through the airports and security. If anyone travels a lot they know hoe much of a pain in the arse it is to get your laptop out of your bag whilst people behind you are tutting.

I also looked at the models available, my original thoughts were that I refused to pay another monthly fee to a mobile operator when I already pay for my iPhone, it would be wonderful if O2 or Orange did something where if you were on a certain iPhone tariff you received the lowest iPad tariff for niching extra a month, but that’s a total different argument about operators in the UK. O2 are offering something that neither Orange or 3 are where they offer the ability to buy 500mb of data for £2 a day, that data is only available for 24 hours, if you don’t use it then you lose it. This shifted my view from the wifi only model to the wifi+3G, and added another £100 to my purchase. I knew for a fact though that if I didn’t spend the extra I would’ve regretted it and this is not a small amount of money I was going to sound on something I didn’t really know how I was going to take.

I ventured to the PC World store in Derby, and was greeted by people who were guarding these things with their life, it was crazy. I purchased the 32GB wifi+3G, the dock and a Belkin case. The guy was so amazed at how calm I was about spending the money and was asking what I did for a living, “I’m a Flash Designer” I replied, I have never seen anyone react the way he did, like I’d just said I was a serial killer or something. I laughed and just wanted to get out of their before he mentioned some mad thing and I lost the plot.

So, I was sucked in by Steve plucked up the money and was on my merry way with a new toy and this niggling feeling that I’d just bought something that I am never ever going to use, possibly running back with my tail between my legs the next week in Glasgow trying to get a refund.

This is where I start to talk about my experiences with it, and you get the usual thing of yeah its a weighty piece of kit and you feel like you’re going to scratch the back or something every time you pick it up, my Belkin case is perfect for travelling and if you don’t care about a case while using it. This is where my problems come in, if you don’t have a case it slides like mad on your lap, trying to move your knees and get it at a decent angle to type, it’s weird. The official Apple case solves this really well, but then unit is a bit stiff to get in and out the fist couple of times you use it.

The other thing is that it feels unnatural is they way that it’s portrait, it feels much more natural to hold the device in landscape mode, portrait makes it feel really top heavy and I would not feel comfortable holding it for long periods of time in this position whilst using maps, reading a book or trying to type a document.

Like the iPhone the screen becomes dirty really fast, so a micro fibre cloth is necessary on your travels, you also start to get sweat patches on the back if you hold it for a long period of time, which is pretty nasty.

Now on to the positives, this thing is a beautiful piece of kit, Apple have really shone with this things beauty, the screen is sharp unlike anything I’ve seen on a mobile device it’s made me want the new iPhone more so they both look gorgeous together.

The touch is ultra responsive, keyboard, apps and everything it just works like a natural keyboard except for the delete key in a different place to the iPhone which freaked me out at first but now I’ve gotten use to it it’s fine. The other thing is setting it up is just like getting a Mac, it’s ready near enough as soon as you take it out of the box.

I’ve got a few apps so far, I’m waiting for an official Twitter iPad app to come out but Twitterific is very nice in the mean time. The Aim for iPad app is really nicely done it feels so smooth and seamless and the inclusion of the browser makes using it as an IM really nice. The Wired app is something special, the content is a little naff but it’s a really step forward in terms of digital magazines so I’m looking forward to seeing more of these, it would be nice to have some type if integration with books where you can have magazines on your shelf as well, maybe it’s something that will come in time? Notes, contacts, calendar and safari do have a little bit more than the iPhone versions making the device feel like it’s an all in one solution, coupled with MobileMe it’s very slick. I am however disappointed that the iDisk, MobileMe Gallery and the Remote apps aren’t yet converted to the iPad, until then I’ll stick to the versions on my iPhone.

I had owned for just over 24 hours and used it to write this post on the plane back to Glasgow, and I don’t have any regret on splashing out the £600 I paid for it, and I’m glad I got the 3G version as well as for travelling it will be perfect to just pay the £2 and have access wherever I am.

I personally think OS4 will make this device shine a lot more than it already is, the multitasking will make it feel more like a computer. Saying that I still think it needs to be opened up a little bit more, and I know it’s a grey area and I don’t want to get in to it too much but I’m preying Adobe really do make Flash Player 10.1 work with the open screen project, this device would be insane with Flash.

I will update this post with more pictures, and more views and opinions.

If anyone can recommend any other good books please feel free to do so, if it’s developer or design related.

Anyway, here you go, and the list of books on Amazon is below:

How to become a graphic designer, without losing your soul (Adrian Shaughnessy)

Graffiti Brasil (Tristan Manco / Caleb Neelon)

Web Design: Music Sites (Julius Wiedemann)

Web Design Index by Content 2 (Pepin Press)

The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development (various)

Foundation ActionScript 3 Animation: Making Things Move! (Keith Peters)

Papervision3D Essentials (P; Winder, J Tondeur)

Essential ActionScript 3.0 (Colin Moock)

ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques (William Sanders / Chandima Cumaranatunge)

AdvancED ActionScript 3.0 Animation (Keith Peters)

Learning Actionscript 3 – A Beginners Guide (Rich Shupe / Zevan Rosser)

I got a log of books for christmas, and I haven’t had chance to read any of them, until last week when I picked up one that I’ve been wanting to read ever since I saw it on Amazon, it’s a book called Papervision3D Essentials written by Paul Tondeur and Jeff Winder

I’m about half way through at the moment, taking every spare moment to pick it up even just to read a segment, I’m then going away and thinking up some scenario’s i’d like to use Papervision3D for. I’ve not yet had the chance to use it on a project to it’s full capabilities but would love to in the near future.

This book is amazing, for anyone wanting to start with Papervision3D and even people who use it already, it gives nice optimisation tips and also gives little tips and tricks for certain areas.

I can’t recommend this book enough, so go buy it!! Once I finish reading it, I will hopefully post a more in depth review of the book.

I’ve been busy working on a few projects lately, which has meant that it’s been very difficult to find time to post anything up here, but I just wanted to take the chance to announce the new site launch for Magomed Dovjenko, this guy is a 16 year old Graphic Designer and Illustrator living in Germany. Apart from going to school he also freelances for some of the world’s biggest brands such as Nike, Adidas, Ecko Unltd, Hennessy Ryz Shoes, and many more he has also just featured on one of Germany’s biggest talk shoes called TV Total which you can see here.

Magomed approached me to work on his new portfolio to which I jumped at the chance, I think his work speaks for itself. I would just like to say thank you to Magomed for the chance to work on such a creative project, this guy is shit hot with his feet firmly on the ground. Definitely one to watch in the near future.

view the site

I do agree though there are certain factors in this such as the screen being on all of the time to watch the video, the screen brightness and the audio volume. Check out the video below, thanks to Mark Doherty and Engadget

Battery Performance with Flash Player 10.1 on the Nexus One from Mark Doherty on Vimeo.

Just before christmas I was approached to complete a freelance project for an agency called Denvir, they wanted to create a viral for Burns Day which is on the 25th of January. I was provided with the designs and was left to create the project on my own. On monday I completed the project, please feel free to have a look here, and be sure to send it on to your friends.

I’ve been busy working at Bourne, over the christmas period we moved in to new offices, I hope to post some pictures once everything’s sorted in terms of decorating and tidying up.

I’ve also been busy working on a couple of personal projects and one or two freelance projects, so it’s been all go. So moving forward today will probably have a few new posts on various topics…

After sitting with a good friend today in the office, he was showing me how cool the AirMouse app was, and it is pretty cool. He then closed the app to reveal a large amount of apps, including the new Ikea app. To which I instantly thought, ok why would you want that would you not just invest in an accessible mobile site before going for an iPhone app. After all, in an ideal world everyone would have an iPhone and nothing else would exist, but this is reality and it isn’t going to happen. Why would you alienate a large amount of the market just to produce something on an iPhone? Where you could produce a nice mobile site and create a nice user experience hitting a larger audience.

So my rant went on with my friend, and I showed him my nice BBC iPlayer icon on my phone to which he instantly said “Wow, is that an app?”, he found it hard to believe it wasn’t an app because of the nice icon and how seamlessly it opened up Safari and loaded up the nice iPlayer homepage… Twitter have recently updated their mobile site, and it’s really good, i was so impressed I was even thinking about leaving’ Tweetie2′ for a week and seeing how I get on with it.

I’ve also just seen a tweet from Avery Holden talking about the new Firstborn mobile site being launched early next week. I hope Firstborn don’t mind me mentioning this on here

Now I know this is a rant, I’m not slamming app’s totally. There are a need for them, but they are not the answer to everything! This is evident with the BBC, their homepage works nice and smooth and it’s not an app. I want to see more mobile site’s and please anyone forward me to some impressive ones I can bookmark and create a link dump for them.