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Posts in iPad

Fast PDF Is What iBooks for PDFs Should Be

There’s a huge market in the iPad App Store right now, and that’s for PDF readers. Here’s what’s going on: the iPad came out without a dedicated PDF app developed by Apple and so GoodReader (our review) quickly became the most popular paid app. Months later, Apple announced that a PDF-capable version of iBooks was coming out, and we all started wondering whether iBooks for PDFs could kill any other similar app out there.

Reading PDFs in iBooks feels good, but it’s not the perfect experience many predicted. The interface design is beautiful and elegant as Apple’s tradition, but the app doesn’t hold up well to large documents and, in my tests, I found that opening a 14MB file required even 10 seconds (or more) for the app to start up, load the document and let you swipe through it. Unlike Apple said weeks ago, there’s no page curl effect, and TUAW exposed the problem. Ultimately, I’m deeply disappointed by the poor performances of iBooks with large PDFs. Perhaps another update is on its way, but who knows.

I’ve been using another application to read documents on my iPad, Fast PDF. It’s indeed the best 3rd party software to read PDF files currently available in the App Store.

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The Most Impressive Brushes Speed Painting Video You’ve Ever Seen

The following video was streamed live worldwide from Brooklyn on Monday, June 21 2010. It features finger painting with the Brushes iPad app by artist David Jon Kassan, and the original session was approximately 3 hours long. The speed painting video is just 8 minutes.

Really, you haven’t seen anything like this. This is the finest example of how Apple’s tablet is indeed meant for content production, not only consumption.

Impressive, indeed.

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Star Walk Follows the Stars! Review & Giveaway!

Growing up in suburban neighborhoods full of light fixtures, airplane traffic, and an illuminated sky just miles away from the uptown, I’ve never really had a chance to just step out in my back yard and appreciate the night sky. The light pollution is awful, and I always remember heading out on camping trips with my Dad and staring up at the night sky that was alive with flickering lights and unknown suns. I may appreciate those ancestral bodies more than others, but I think everyone would find Star Walk for the iPad to be an application you’ll immediately fall in love with.

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Gourmet Magazine for iPad Gets it Right

Looking for the best magazine experience for the iPad? Sure we have flashy titles like Times and Wired, but Gourmet Live for the iPad helps you reveal your inner cook by providing users with an incredibly clean format.

When it came to Wired’s debut, one of the biggest complaints was about the column layout. Gourmet does away with such silly jitter and flashy animations. In fact, there’s nothing completely broken or confusing about Gourmet - it captures the essence of the iPad by being linear, simple, and elegant. I’m not a cook, nor am I interested in learning how to make a great Pumpkin Pie, but Gourmet Live may at least encourage me to try.

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Google Updates Gmail for iPad, Adds Fullscreen Compose Window

Google has rolled out some nice improvements for Gmail on the iPad, introducing a fullscreen compose window and several scrolling bug fixes.

“Today we’re happy to announce an improved experience for writing emails on Gmail web interface for iPad. When you write an email you’ll now get a big full screen compose window instead of splitting the screen between your inbox and the compose view. More text is visible at once and there are no more distractions with messages on the side. We’ve also fixed problems that prevented scrolling on long messages. Thanks to everyone who reported the issue via the ‘Send feedback’ feature at the bottom of the screen.”

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