What a temptation!

I wasn't going to get an iPad 3, really I wasn't. I'm just not an upgrade-every-generation kind of girl. I still use a PowerBook G4 for work, and my desktop was a CRT eMac until 2010! At most, I was considering trading in my wifi model for an identical 3G - used, even. The retina display is cool and all, but I can wait another year for it. Maybe even two.

But Apple had to go and throw in the one thing I really wish I had. They went and upgraded the rear camera! Nooooooo!

I've seen people make fun of this upgrade, I've seen people question the existence of the rear camera at all. I agree that the iPad is a bit awkward to take photos with. But here's what it comes down to for me: I have my iPad on me almost all the time at home. I do not have my camera (or even my phone, which takes slightly better pics than the iPad) on me all the time. When my baby does something cute, I can either run and find the camera, wait for it to power up, and possibly miss the cute, or I can switch to the camera app and capture the cute now, but at low quality. I do a little of each - but with a decent rear camera, I'd never have to choose again.

But is that convenience worth $330 (assuming I could get $300 for my current iPad)? I'm still not sure. Luckily, I wouldn't buy one til it's jailbroken anyhow, so I've got some time to think...

iPad 3: Tactile display? Nah, couldn't be.... Could it?

I would just like to call your attention to this thread over at the MacRumors iPad forum.

The OP gives fairly compelling evidence that a tactile display is not outside the realm of possibility for next week's iPad 3 intro. Apple even may have obliquely referenced it in their event promo tagline: "We have something you've really got to see... And touch." The tag line for the iPhone 4S/Siri announcement was "Let's talk iPhones." It was innocuous enough on the surface, and only after the fact was it clear that it was foreshadowing Siri. "Something you've really got to see" is likely the much-anticipated retina display, but why the "and touch?" iOS's touch interface hasn't been something worth noting in years. Could it be a tactile display?

Eh, probably not. It seems like a very cool technology that will make it to the iPad in another year or two, but I'm not convinced that it's ready for prime time just yet. But I wanted to post this so that it goes on record that, if Apple pulls this particular rabbit out of its hat, Zweimeter totally called it.

Thank you, iFile!

I write and post most of my posts using the BlogPress app, and it has served me well.

But today it didn't. When I tried to post my last entry, it hung. It eventually claimed to have posted it, but the entry didn't appear on the blog. I tried again, and the same thing happened. Then BlogPress crashed. When I restarted it, my entry was gone! Because BlogPress thought it had been posted, it was deleted from the list of drafts. But since it hadn't actually made it, it wasn't in the list of current posts either!

Enter iFile, a Cydia app available to jailbreakers that gives you actual access to your iPad's filesystem. I managed to find, in BlogPress's documents folder, all the drafts I'd saved today as text files and copy the text out to PlainText for safekeeping until I had time to try and repost. Success! A half hour's worth of typing saved!

For those naysayers who claim that the only reason to jailbreak is for silly cosmetic improvements - this is why I jailbreak!

My new addiction: Fairway Solitaire HD

Back in college, at one point everyone on my dorm hall was addicted to a solitaire game called Tri-Peaks. The cards are laid out to form three pyramids with only the bottom row face up. You turn over a card from the draw pile and can play the card above or below it from the board, earning more points for longer runs. Like most solitaire games, it's the perfect balance of mindless clicking with just a hint of strategy to keep you paying attention.

I have a Tri-Peaks app on my iPad, and it's fine (and free). But just the other day I ran across a game that takes the Tri-Peaks concept to a whole new level: Fairway Solitaire by Big Fish Games. First off, almost every level uses a new and unique card layout, and some are much harder to clear than others. I found the level full of "52 Card Pickup" boards especially challenging:

Second, they add in a few trick cards to slow you down - in keeping with the golf theme, things like water hazards, sand traps, and roughs. This board has blue water hazard cards, all of which must be cleared to unlock the rest of the cards:

But to make up for these difficulties, you get those clubs down in the bottom right corner - playing a 4-iron puts a 4 down for you to play on, etc. You find these randomly, or can buy them (and other helpful add-ons) with golf bucks.

Which brings me to something I really appreciate about this game. There is an excellent balance between the rate at which you earn golf bucks and how badly you need the helping items you can buy. Unlike many "freemium" games, it's never impossible to play without buying more golf bucks with real cash (although, of course, that is an option). If you want to use clubs constantly you'll need to, but if you're playing smart and using your clubs judiciously you'll find that you can usually afford them when you really need one.

The free version of the game comes with eight full courses of 3-9 boards each, and due to the inherent nature of solitaire games the replayability is very high. But this game was so addicting, not to mention well-designed, that I had no problem paying the $3 to access all 50+ courses (plus extras). And I rarely pay for games!

The one complaint I have is the low value of long runs. Runs of 5 or fewer cards have no value aside from the cards they clear, and runs of 6 or more are worth only a paltry number of golf bucks. You only get a major reward - 1000 gb - if your runs (only those of 6 or more each) add up to at least 20 on one board. In traditional Tri-peaks, even runs of 3 or 4 can be worth significantly more points than individual cards cleared, and a long run of, say, 15 is worth quite a lot. I'd like to at least see runs of 10-20 cards rewarded more heavily here.

Overall, though - well done, Big Fish!

Yes, Virginia, there is Flash on the iPad.

It's possibly the most persistent myth about the iPad: No Flash support.

Competitors like to trumpet it to let you know that they give you a "fuller web experience." iPad newbies express concern that their new device will be horribly hobbled. People come to jailbreaking forums asking if there's any way to get Flash by jailbreaking.

Let's ignore the fact that Adobe themselves have declared mobile Flash dead and that the majority of the web has already moved on to HTML 5. The fact remains that there are some sites that still use Flash heavily - Facebook games, photo editors, local restaurants that haven't touched their site since it was built in 2004. Are iPad owners really sacrificing this chunk of the web?

It is true that Safari, the built-in web browser, doesn't support Flash. And it was true that when the iPad was introduced, there was no way to get Flash. But the iPad is nearing two years old, and has hundreds of thousands of apps built for it - do you really think nobody thought there was money to be made in a Flash-supporting app? Of course they did, and of course they found a work-around - by running the Flash through their own servers on its way to you.

In truth, iPad owners have several options for Flash browsers (no Jb required):

Puffin - This is the Flash browser that I personally use. To be honest, 90% of the time if I come across a site using Flash I just leave the site and find somewhere else to do my business. But I wanted to give Flash on the iPad a try. Puffin works great for video, and slow but acceptable for editing photos and photo books on sites like snapfish. It seems to have some trouble with Zynga games on Facebook, though, randomly reloading at inopportune times. At 99c, though, it's a cheap way to check out the occasional Flash site on your iPad.

Photon - I haven't tried it myself, but Photon gets very good reviews for speed and handling of a variety of Flash sites, and seems to be extremely popular. Popular enough that according to AppShopper it hasn't once gone on sale since raising its price to $4.99 in August, but if you need regular and reliable Flash it may be a good investment.

iSwifter - Don't let the Free tag fool you - iSwifter only gives you ten minutes of free browsing at a time to check it out, after which you'll need to pay $4.99 in-app for the full browser. I took the free sample for a short spin. iSwifter is designed with Flash games in mind specifically - it definitely handles Zynga better than Puffin. But if you're looking for more general Flash support, it comes up short on websites it hasn't been specifically optimized for.

SkyFire - SkyFire was the first browser to bring Flash to the iPad, and is still popular. However, its capabilities are limited to Flash video, not interactive content. If that's what you need, it's what SkyFire was built to do and according to reviews it does it well. But if you might want to use some interactive Flash content as well sometimes, $4.99 seems like a steep price for a fraction of the functionality of Photon.

What IS jailbreaking?

Over on the MacRumors iPad forum, someone asked why the authors of jailbreak tweaks don't release their apps to the general unjailbroken public. This question indicates a fundamental misunderstanding about what jailbreaking actually means, one that I think is quite common.

So what does it actually mean to jailbreak your iPad?

When your iPad arrives brand-new from the store, there is only one way to get apps onto it: Apple's App Store. Whether directly onto the iPad or via iTunes, the App Store is the one and only place where you can download apps and install them onto the iPad.

Apple has 100% control over what appears in the App Store. There are good reasons for this - for example, because Apple tests every app before approving it, malware doesn't make it into the App Store Andy thus has no way to make it onto your iPad. But there are certain types of apps that Apple simply doesn't allow, such as those that make system-wide changes or affect iOS itself. And there are other apps that can't be approved for other reasons - for example, VLC is a popular media player on desktop computers. But VLC, and thus the VLC app, is written using code that is covered by the GPL (Gnu Public License), and some of the App Store's terms conflict with the GPL. Thus, distributing the app in the App Store would violate the license its code was written under.

So where does jailbreaking come into this? Well, jailbreaking your iPad does exactly one thing: When you jailbreak your iPad, it adjusts the code so that it is possible to install apps from a source other than Apple's App Store. That's all. Well, and it installs Cydia, which is just an alternate app store. So once you've jailbroken, you can download apps from Cydia that Apple would never approve, like ones to change the appearance of your icons or reassign what happens when you click the home button.

Of course, the downside is that since Cydia doesn't have the lengthy approval process of the App Store, there is the possibility of malware or just bugs in tweaks that are system-wide. But it's not too hard to Google a package before you download it to make sure it's legit - and the one time I had one that messed things up a bit, it all went back to normal once I deleted it.

I think that a lot of people hear the "break" part of jailbreak and think that it somehow involves breaking the iPad or iOS itself - it doesn't. The one and only thing that changes when you jailbreak is where you can download apps from - until, of course, you start downloading them and tweaking the things you want to tweak.

iOS 5 and lovin' it!

With the release of the Absinthe jailbreak, I have finally upgraded to iOS 5.0.1!

I am super-impressed with the new photo album features. I've mentioned before that I do a lot of photo management and editing on my iPad, and now it's going to be twice as easy! I'd been searching for a good red-eye eliminator, and now it's built right in, along with rotating and cropping - all without the annoyance of a second copy of the photo. It's about time! Also long overdue is the ability to create multiple albums, though I'd gotten around that with the Cydia tweak PhotoAlbums+.

Less-intrusive notifications are also nice, but the multitouch stuff I've mostly disabled. With an infant often banging on the iPad, I prefer the gestures provided by Activator - though now I do wish Activator provided a way to switch directly between apps like the built-in multitouch.

Honestly, there's not much else that I find that exciting in iOS 5 - but the photo improvements are enough to make me very happy!