As we all know, the iPad can lend itself to pretty much anything; be it reading, browsing or typing, it’s a much better experience than on an iPhone or iPod touch. And the same is true with gaming.

Sure, games are good fun on the iPhone, and with the Retina display, they’re super-sharp and at an incredibly high resolution. But the screen is still far too small.

The iPad’s screen is great for gaming, but I’m not talking about Call of Duty or Gran Turismo here, I much prefer playing simple, clever games that don’t push the device to within an inch of its life, resulting it crappy graphics and shoddy gameplay.

I like my portable games quick to start, simple and fun. If it can’t be played for five minutes waiting for a bus, then it’s failed.

So here are five games that I love on the iPad because they’re simple and fun…

Angry Birds

This game was great on the iPhone and – even if the developer hasn’t added any new features at all for the iPad – I still bought it and completed it again. And it’s even better on the ‘pad.

Flicking birds into stuff which crashes down with a satisfying noise and kills green pigs is what Angry Birds is all about. It’s beautifully simple, quick to pick up and have a go and hugely, unbelievably, scarily addictive.

Seriously, if you could combine chocolate and heroine the resulting injectable goo wouldn’t even come close to Angry Birds. I have attempted a single level over and over again for hours.

Angry Birds HD costs £2.99

Flight Control

I’ve written about Flight Control a few times before and I was a big fan of this plan-landing game on the iPhone, but with the iPad we have extra levels (one of which is in 3D).

The game is, again, simple. You are given an airport with several runways and helipads. A range of planes and helicopters fly onto the screen and you’re job is to draw a line from each aircraft to the correct runway, making sure they don’t crash into each other.

Flight Control is another game that I’ve play for literally hours on end. It’s simple graphics and fun captions and music make it a joy to play. It gets stupidly difficult and sometimes stressful, but the range of aircraft and airports keeps it interesting for many hours. There’s also a two-player function on the iPad game, where you can play split-screen with a friend.

Flight Control HD is £2.99

Plants vs Zombies

Another game that will cause you countless sleepless nights and an irrational fear of the undead. Actually no, that’s not true, they may want to eat your brains but it’s ok, you have some pea-firing plants to save you.
Sounds odd, I’ll give you that, but it’s brilliant. A very big game – so it should be for six quid – but it doesn’t get too repetitive, with new plants and challenges every few levels to keep things interesting.

Plants vs Zombies HD is £5.99

MX Mayhem

Remember that game you played on school when the IT teacher wasn’t looking? That 2D one with the bloke on a motocross bike. You had to navigate over hills and stuff without falling off? Yeah, that one. This is that.
Need I say anymore? Go on then, you touch the right half of the screen to accelerate and the left to brake.

Tilting the iPad left and right moves the riders balance forward and back. That’s it really. It’s such a simple game and I love it. When you fall off there are some good rag-doll effects, which sees the rider fall on his head and slump at the foot of a cliff with the grace of a damp towel.

I did complete this in an afternoon – never managed it on the iPhone – but now I’ve written about it, I’ll be playing again right now.

Moto X Mayhem is £0.59

Need for Speed: Shift

Ok, I did say that I like simple games and anything too complex is a big, fat no. But I’ve changed my mind. I paid £7.49 for Shift, not expecting an awful lot if I’m honest, and was pleasantly surprised. Most racing games on the iPhone or iPad make me feel violently sick. It’s the motion of it. Why does the screen need to tilt around when I steer? Awful.

Thankfully, when using the – rather good – interior view in Shift, the horizon stays still while you turn corners. This changes everything. I find it very playable, and with a good selection of licensed cars from the VW Golf to the Bugatti Veyron and plenty of races and tracks, it’s a proper game.

Need for Speed: Shift is £7.49

But then along came the iPad, and without sounding too much like a fanboy, the bigger screen makes it the perfect device for Instant Messaging. And yes, I know I could use my laptop, but tapping away on the ‘pad is much more comfortable when sat on a sofa or armchair.

Anyway, Beejive IM for iPad is brilliant. It’s never crashed on me or even been slightly slow to open. No, it’s as fast as a native app and flicking between open conversations is effortless. It displays my contact list, names of who I’m talking to, and one conversation, plus the keyboard, all at once. This is something the iPhone, and any device with a small screen, cannot ever do well. The use of screenspace is perfect.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, the app supports MSN/Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Facebook Chat and many, many others. Other neat features include letting you change the wallpaper and other such gimmicks.

Beejive supports push notifications for messages received, so it’s very easy to log in then close the app until someone speaks to you. This works fine for me and is as close as I’m getting to multitasking until iOS4 comes to the iPad later in the year. But even then, you’d have to flick between applications, and with Beejive opening and closing pretty much instantly, it’s really no different to ‘true’ multitasking anyway.

The price is, as with the iPhone, a little steep, but it’s worth it. I’ve already used this app way more than I ever used it on the iPhone, and that’s on my WiFi only iPad. I really do use this instead of my MacBook for IM when I’m watching TV.

First out of the blocks to get the iPad magazine absolutely right is Wired. The magazine looks great on the iPad’s 9.7 inch screen as you’d expect, but it’s the content and navigation that makes Wired so much better than other magazines I’ve read. I’m looking at you, iCreate and Mac User; offering no new content and a shoddy navigation system will not sell digital copies for you.

Anyway, Wired. All of the puffs and headlines of contained content on the front cover are links, so there’s no need to flick through page by page to find what you want. There’s an exclusive Toy Story 3 clip also linked on the cover; this video is downloaded with the app, so all content can be viewed offline. Very useless for anyone with the WiFi only iPad.

Swiping left and right moves you on to the next feature, while swiping up and down scrolls through each feature. This is a great way to flick through the content quickly, as a 4 or 5-page feature is displayed vertically, so it takes just one swipe to move on to the next.

One tap on the screen reveals the controls; a scrubber to scroll quickly through the magazine, a home icon to take you back to the front cover, a drop-down contents list and an icon that zooms out from the magazine, letting you see the entire layout. This is a great way to scan quickly through the issue, with descriptions of features at the top of the screen. The app remembers how far you have read each article and positions the zoomed out preview accordingly

Adverts take up whole pages, as you’d expect in a magazine, but some here offer video content that you can click to view – again, these are downloaded with the sizable 527mb magazine.

Some pages are interactive content, such as a neat animation of a pop-up book, which is opened and scanned through as you swipe your finger over it. There’s also an image of a heart on a health advert that can be spun around.

Images really do look stunning and although I don’t like reading books on the iPad, magazine content is perfect as it’s just a few hundred words at a time, with lots of colours and text boxes to keep your eyes busy and not get too tired of block text.

Sadly, the app only offers the American copy of Wired, with each issue priced at £2.99. You do get a hell of a lot of content for that price, and the layout and navigation is perfect. Some complaints on the AppStore are of too many adverts, but from what I can see these adverts are the same as what would appear in the printed edition. Ever picked up a glossy magazine and not had to skim through 5 or 6 full-page ads before finding the first feature? Didn’t think so.

Wired have set the benchmark high for iPad magazine and I really hope that other publishers will jump on the bandwagon soon. I have a subscription to TopGear magazine and I’d happily ditch it for an iPad version if the quality was as high as Wired. The large size of each issue could be a problem if you’re trying to download via 3G or public WiFi, but having all of the content available offline outweighs the size in my opinion.

Wired Magzine is available here for £2.99

Alistair

Just weeks before Rupert’s paywall drops on the Times’ sites, their iPad app has hit the UK AppStore with a price of £9.99 for a one month subscription. On the face of it this may seem steep, but you do get the entire contents of the six Times newspapers of the week. Sadly the Sunday Times is not included in this price, and will have it’s own app launched soon at a currently unknown price.

So I coughed up my £10 and downloaded Friday’s paper. Sure, the app looks like a newspaper but it’s so much moor than just text and the odd photos. Those photos look great and there’s also embedded video thanks to Sky News and the navigation includes some slick transitions. No naff PowerPoint stuff, but actually decent, subtle animations when hopping from one story to another by tapping on the headlines.

An account is not required, unlike on the Times website, but I’d happily hand over my name and email address in return for the ability to leave comments on stories and features. I think this would act as feedback to the writers, pointing out typing errors in copy can’t be a bad thing in retaining the paper’s credibility. Also, comments lead to a social community developing, so long as they are moderated to avoid YouTube style hate and trash talk. I’ve mentioned my request for comments to a guy who works on the app and this has been passed on, so if I hear anything I’ll update this post.

I have used the app extensively over the last few days and only corm across two problems, both of which occurred while reading Monday’s edition. First, I tapped to view a story and the app crashed; no big deal but when I reopened the app I found that all of my papers had been deleted, forcing me to download them again. Also, one story seemed to be missing; tapping the headline gave me a blank page time and again. Small issues really as the rest of the app works beautifully.

So let’s return to an age-old question. Is news worth paying for? Being a geek, I like having the paper on my iPad, or Kindle or whatever, so yes I’ll happily pay for it. After all, the app is a lot cheaper than buying the printed paper for £1 each day, albeit more expensive than the website subscription, but of course then app offers news offline once downloaded.

The Guardian recently said that the advert revenue is all they need and will not use a paywall, and will presumably not charge for apps either, buy their editor conceded that if the Times’ paywall works, then The Guardian may well follow suit.

The argument boils down to an argument between tangible and intangible content and if they can both command a similar value. People seem to forget that they are paying for the journalist, not just the paper his or her words are printed on. As an example, it costs the Times neatly £1 million per year to have a permanent reporter in Iraq.

Anyway, this debate could run and run; I’ll end by saying that the Times iPad app is very good and has encouraged me to consume more news than I would otherwise, and the price is perfectly acceptable for what it provides.

The next year will be very interested indeed for the printed news sector. I can’t wait.

The Times for iPad is available here

Alistair

PS.  I’d just like to add a big thumbs-up to whoever runs the Times iPad App Twitter account, www.twitter.com/news_TheTimes , who have helped me with the above-mentioned crashing issue. Great customer service!

First up, the product launch and hardware design…

The Purchase

Along with the rest of the Internet, I have got myself an iPad. Yes, I’m an Apple fanboy, a geek, I have more money than sense and I bought the £429 ‘big iPod touch’ without a specific need for it. I hope that covers all of your complaints, so let’s move on.

First up I’d like to talk about the UK Apple launch. Sure, I could have ordered online and had it delivered to my door for free on launch day – or even a day early according to some customers – but I don’t like waiting all day for the delivery man to not bother knocking on the door and taking my package to the depot. So I got up at 6am and headed down to my local Apple Store, at the Bentalls Centre in Kingston-Upon-Thames.

I joined the queue at about 7:20am – 40 minutes before the store opened – and I was probably 65th in line, with a further 70 or 80 behind me once the doors opened at 8am. But, this being Apple and Apple being American, the doors didn’t just open, Oh no. There was cheering, whooping and high-fives from the 20-strong staff as they ran a lap of the shopping centre, before returning to the store and cheering everyone in.

I had expected it, but I – along with everyone else – felt rather awkward. The highlight was when an employee fell over while running past. He’s fine, I’m not that mean. Oh, and while I’m here, thanks to Starbucks for offering free pan au chocolate and coffee/hot chocolate to everyone in the queue.

Twenty minutes later I had my shiny new iPad WiFi 16GB – the cheap one – in my hands, waiting to catch the bus home.

Now let’s see what this thing is really like…

Hardware

The iPad is surprisingly heavy. It’s also feels incredibly solid and well-built, thanks to the aluminium back and glass screen. It feels nice and thin thanks to the tapered design and the buttons have a quality click to them. The weight is reassuring but does become annoying if you’re going to read for hours at a time. The bezel may looks large in photos but if it were any smaller than you wouldn’t be able to hold the iPad without touching the screen. My thumbs fit nicely in the width of the bezel without interfering with the touchscreen.

The screen is – as with most smartphones – a magnet for fingerprints, but the screen is bright enough to make any marks disappear. But while the screen is very bright and beautifully crisp, it can be too bright when reading in a dark room and the settings only allow a small adjustment in brightness. Although the iBooks app lets you lower the brightness much further, I just with this setting was system-wide.

The iPad has the same home button. volume rocker, power/lock button and headphone jack as seen on the iPhone 3GS and they all function in exactly the same way as you’d expect. There’s also a speaker at the bottom right, which is much better quality and louder than you’d expect. I’m listening to a podcast right now at 50% volume and it’s plenty loud enough and very clear. Music plays just as well.

Apple is known for exaggerating they battery life claims with Macs, but the advertised 10 hours of WiFi browsing or video viewing for the iPad is certainly correct. This battery is awesome and has easily lasted me a full day of use – and by a full day I mean I have been glued to this thing, browsing, downloading, gaming and reading and it still lasts the day. This is a good job, though, as charging seems to be slow. Connected to my MacBook Pro via USB it seems to charging incredibly slowly; the iPad does come with a mains charger and the quoted charge time is quoted at 5 hours.

If you’re on this site then you will probably have seen the article posted over on Gizmodo, claiming to show the new iPhone. Incase you haven’t basically some Apple employee forgot his prototype iPhone 4G in a bar, it worked its way to Gizmodo, got remotely wiped and they have ripped it apart showing the world that it’s the real deal.

Sure, it’s a bit chunky and the buttons and shut lines are a bit naff, but remember this is probably a roughly-made prototype so I can forgive those details. We’ve been told about the screen, the cameras, the ports and the microSIM housing, but what about the processor? Surely the chaps at Gizmodo would be fighting to show us if the phone has the new A4 chip, as seen in the iPad?

And another thing, I’m not so convinced about the ‘lost in a bar’ story. Hours before the iPad was announced a photograph was leaked showing a prototyped bolted to a workbench, and even when iPad were sent to reviewers they had to be kept securely in a darkened room. So why the hell was some engineer using a prototype 4G iPhone in a bar, and how did he manage to loose it? Knowing Apple, I’d imagine only a handful of employees have these iPhones in their possession, so I think not loosing it would be at the forefront of his mind. It even had a 3G-style cover to keep the new design hidden from prying eyes.

The pages at Gizmodo – and most tech blogs now – haven’t been yanked by Apple’s once-notorious cease and desist requests as was the norm when  genuine leaks are published. And I can’t think of another leak on this scale. It’s the whole damn phone with loads of clear photos and videos, for God’s sake!

So it’s marketing on Apples behalf.

This prototype may not appeal to everyone but look at what it does have:

Front-facing camera? Check

Better quality rear camera with flash? Check

High resolution screen? Check

Mic for noise cancellation? Possibly

Dedicated button for the camera? Possibly

Larger, possibly removable battery? Check

Sleek, new design? Check

That list matches almost every sensible request made by current iPhone users; so by leaking this product Apple have drummed up a huge amount of interest in the new iPhone. The dodgy shut lines are probably going to be removed by the time we see this phone for real and then what is there to complain about? Apart from the VERY outside chance of having 4G technology – not to be confused with this being the 4th generation iPhone – I can’t think of anything.

One thing though; if the new iPhone doesn’t have just one of the above features, then Apple is going to be in serious trouble. Why would the prototype have more features than the finished product? That’d be suicide.

Expect an announcement in late May/early June and a release date of the new iPhone around mid to late June. We’ll then know if this is the real deal, but I guess we’ll never know if this is a deliberate leak by Apple, or a breach of their famously bulletproof secrecy.

Alistair

Yo, Dawg...

Anyway, enough of the ropey Pimp My Ride link…

As well as having an unhealthy obsession with tech and all things Apple, I’ve had a life-long love of cars and all things automotive. Cars and tech seem to go hand in hand.

So when I stumbled across this video of a chap installing an iPad into a car dashboard, the 5-year-old in me almost exploded with excitement, and the 20-year-old on the outside mentally planned out how this could be done in my mum’s Corsa.

The video stars Doug Bernards, who talks you through installing the iPad into a Toyota’s dashboard and, as you can see for yourself, the results are stunning.

What I’ve always liked about ICE – or in car entertainment – is the back-to-basics approach of it all. Plastic is cut and moulded with a Dremel drill, loads of filler and fibreglass is used to round off rough edges and the whole thing is glued together. And yet, with this bargain basement techniques, the results can look very professional.

Great fit, but I see glare...

I do have a few issues with this iPad setup though. Firstly taking the device out looks to be a real pain, and you just know the first time you forget to remove it, some kid in a hoody will do it for you. And secondly, the power button looks to be pretty much impossible to reach.

Also, can someone please say ‘glare’? The shine of an iPhone or Macbook used outside renders the device pretty much useless, so can you imagine trying to focus on the iPad – as a passenger, officer – with loads of sunlight, glare flying all over the place and while moving? I’d be spectacularly unwell.

And can you imagine trying to poke and prod the screen while moving?

The guys have done an impressive job and I expect to see loads of iPads appearing in show cars very soon, but I don’t see it as a practical replacement for a car stereo, or even integrated DVD player.

Alistair

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Posts that may relate in some tiny way to whatever I’ve just said:

When Did ‘Need’ Become ‘Want’?

iPhone OS 4.0 Preview; Thursday April 8

April 3rd: It’s iPad Day

There’s been a few negative issues surround the iPad – ranging from rubbish WiFi to the inability to charge over USB, to devices over heating in sunlight. Well, such is my journalistic awesonness, I’m not going to cover any these; instead I’m going to jump right to the big one.

Some people think other people don’t need an iPad.

The line between ‘need’ and ‘want’ seems to have been blurred and there’s a lot of hate on the tech forums surrounding this. If someone wants and can afford something, then surely they should be entitled to it? If I have a computer and an iPhone and a Kindle then no, I don’t need an iPad. But the truth is, I want one.

In the same way we buy cars that we want rather than need – otherwise we’d all have Vauxhall Corsas and the roads would be a very boring place. No one ‘needs’ a Ferrari, but if you can afford one and will enjoy owning it then why the hell not?

The same applies to clothes and shoes – try telling any woman otherwise – and I don’t see why it shouldn’t also apply to technology. I see a lot of Macs around university and I would bet that 75% have been bought because the student wants one instead of a cheaper alternative. They might not need the Mac and a cheap Dell would do Facebook just as well, but they wanted one.

So why is the iPad getting so much hate? No one needs an iPad at all. Nobody has a valid reason for buying one as it doesn’t replace their phone or their laptop entirely. But 300,000 were sold in its opening weekend.

300,000 people who decided they wanted one. They all have their own reasons and, unless there was a huge robbery that I wasn’t aware of, they could all afford one.

So why shouldn’t we be able to treat ourselves once in a while? It’s not the cheapest treat I’ve ever seen but so what, if you can afford it then go buy one.

I should explain; this isn’t a dig at anyone, just my thoughts on some responses to the iPad. I’d love to hear your views in the comments below.

Alistair

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Posts that may relate in some tiny way to whatever I’ve just said:

iPhone OS 4.0 Preview: Thursday April 8

Tweetdeck For iPad

Flight Control HD For iPad

Previews of the new iPhone OS are usually scheduled for this time of year and we’ll probably see new hardware around June/July, but what’s interesting is that this OS will be previewed just days after the iPad went on sale in the US.

The invitation every blogger wants. I didn't get one. Sad face

As Apple tells us, the iPad uses the same operating system as the iPhone – although there are a few notable changes, like the appearance of apps and some features – but the general way in which the system works and is coded is the same on both devices. So I guess it’s a given that we’ll see the personalised home screen wallpaper and possibly iBooks appear on the iPhone, but what about any major changes to the iPad?

Multi-tasking is the big one here. We – and when I say ‘we’, I mean geeks – have wanted multi-tasking since the iPhone was first launched back in 2007, but it has never been included, even in the powerful iPad. It should worth by noting here that the iPhone and iPad *do* multitask; in that they play music while browsing and the iPhone is connected to the mobile network while doing anything, but it’s not possible to have, say, Tweetie and Safari open together.

The Palm Pre can multitask, so surely the iPhone can too?

The iPad’s would be perfect for multitasking. I’m not talking about having multiple apps on the screen at the same time – that would just get messy – but to have a tabbed system like how open webpages are arranged in mobile Safari. One tap or gesture shows thumbnails of all apps open, then you can tap on what you want, while everything else remains open in the background.

Yes, this will reduce battery life and yes, it could make the device slow and/or unstable. But surely a couple of open apps at a time can’t be too much hassle for the 1Ghz processor in the iPad.

The iPad has a 1Ghz processor; surely that can multitask too?

What multitasking on the iPhone might look like. Note; it probably won't

So what else might we see in 4.0?

Well, how about some information on the lock screen. I have jailbroken my iPhone and use an app called Lockinfo. It can be configured to display the weather, unread email, Twitter feeds, notifications, missed calls and text messages on the lock screen. This is all viewable – and you can read and delete emails – right there, without needing to unlock and enter the relevant app. I’d love to see something similar in 4.0.

Lockinfo on a jailbroken iPhone

Any new hardware?

No, not on Thursday. Sure, we’ll see a shiny new iPhone – tipped to be called the HD – in June or July, but we almost certainly won’t see this at the OS preview. This event is simply to show us what software is coming and to give developers a few months to build apps for it.

Will it be free?

This update – available in June or July – will almost certainly be free to iPhone and iPad 3G users, and will probably cost $10 for iPod touch and iPad Wifi customers. This is because those with iPhones and 3G iPads already pay a monthly contract, so this entitles them to free software updates.

Of course, this is all speculation but I predict some very grumpy geeks if Steve Jobs doesn’t give them multitasking on Thursday.

All will be revealed at 10am PST – 7pm in the UK  - this Thursday, April 8th and you should expect text commentaries of the event from the usual suspects.

Alistair