New Dilemmas

I’m going out of town for a couple of days just for a little change and I’m trying to decide what to take with me as far as technology goes. Options: my old MacBook Pro on which I can run Finale and get some composing done, my fairly new 15.6 inch Chromebook, or my new iPad with keyboard case. Time was you just grabbed some clothes and your toothbrush. I can blog with all three, but each has drawbacks. Take the iPad with keyboard—it is handy and portable, but I am a long way from getting used to it, which is why I am writing this post with it. Just above the backspace key is a delete key which shuts down the screen. I hit it remarkably often as I have to backspace a LOT. Plus all the weird little keys like the ones for punctuation and odd signs are all different from where I am used to because with my desktop I have a 

Spanish keyboard which is very handy because it has all the accents. Maybe I’ll take the iPad and one laptop. I’m starting to see why people are converting over from laptops to iPads with keyboards.

I’ve had this iPad for almost a month and while at first I was wondering why people liked them so much and what you could do with them, now I am seeing how your iPad becomes part of you. You can do everything with them and lots of things you never suspected. The first revelation was when I tried reading with the Kindle Reader on the iPad instead of on my Kindle. Oh my, how very much more beautiful and clear everything is on the iPad. The retina screen is just great. Then there is web browsing: the portability means that you can just look up a recipe and grab the iPad on the way to the kitchen. It goes everywhere you go and yes, it can do just about anything. Watch YouTube anywhere, blog on the run, whatever.

The iPad is a boon to creativity. I think the first time I saw one was an ad Esa-Pekka Salonen did for Apple showing how he used one in composition. But you can use it for photography, film-making, writing, and lots of other creative activities such as digital drawing and illustration.

I see that the iPad has a Clips app, which does videos, as well as iMovie. What’s the diff? 

Let’s wrap this up with an envoi. This is Hilary Hahn playing the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony conducted by Paavo Jarvi (aha, this keyboard won’t give me the umlaut).

This entire post was done on an iPad with Boriyuan keyboard case.