Brontesaurus Blog

If you haven’t heard (and with every single tech blog and social media sites being completely saturated with Apple news, I can’t see why the hell not) Apple announced their latest and greatest [citation needed] handheld product, the iPad. I think this announcement took a lot of people off guard and wasn’t what many were expecting. It was long rumored that Apple was coming out with a tablet mobile device. When the word tablet is heard, people think of a fully functional touch screen PC, and this didn’t make a lot of people happy.

A lot of complaints is that this new device lacks a lot of basic functionality and some hardware. Some of the top complaints included:

• The huge bezel
• No camera
• 4:3 force aspect ratio
• No multitasking

If we have learned anything from Apple is that the first generation of any device is going to lack features on purpose. Theres more money to be made in making 3 devices instead of 1 device that does it all. The 1st gen iPhone is a great example with no 3g, copy paste, or video.

With that being said, I think there might be some great promise with later generations of the iPad that would cure some of these “OMG APPLE YOU ARE SO STUPID FOR NOT HAVING THIS” mentality. In later generations I would expect to see:

1. Better price for storage
2. Included 3g support in the price
3. Make the bezel smaller and overall slicker looking device, aka something that doesn’t look like its for your grandma or 2 year old.
4. Widescreen support, not being forced into 4:3
5. Multitasking (I would love to see Apple put OSX on it, but more money is to be made with their app store so that will just have to stay a dream)
6. Camera (If an ipod nano can have one, why not this?)

All in all, I’m not trying to courage or discourage anyone from getting this device. If you have a use for it and like, great, get one. If you are on the fence about getting one, and if history has taught us anything, I would suggest waiting a year or so. Let the OS updates to come out, let more iPad apps to come out, and maybe there will be a price drop or a 2nd gen iPad in a year or so.

When I found Magic Prefs which is a Magic Mouse preference and configuration utility for OSX. Without this program, the mouse only comes with 2 touch sensitive gestures. I have no idea why Apple wouldn’t want to capitalize on more features with this fully functional multi touch surface. But the good news is, with Magic Prefs you can configure a very broad range of clicks, touches, swipes, and pinches to actions with your mouse making it a true multi touch surface.

I have had my Magic Mouse for a couple weeks now and my biggest pet peeve with is was the physical click. It’s not like other mice where its easy to press down on left and right click, the Magic Mouse is very noticeably harder and you really tend to notice it after couple hours of use. With each click I seem to be more and more conscious of my physical ability to left and right click. Lucky for me with Magic Prefs you can configure tap left and right tap clicks just like the multi-touch pad on the Macbook Pro. It’s a very little and simple feature, but has made me a much happier Magic Mouse user.

I highly suggest checking out Magic Prefs if you own a Magic Mouse.