Divided Highway

There are few perks to waking up at 5AM on a Saturday…when you'll be heading to work shortly, and just finished a 12 hour shift and countless lodge dealings. Add in a freak overnight thunderstorm delivering wind gusts, pounding rain and strobe-light-esque lightning the likes you only get in the country and you've got a recipe for a restless night. No matter, it's not everyday you catch the backside of a storm illuminated by a low-rising sun.

I wrote up a long-winded tome Monday evening but it never made the likes of the net…probably because we didn't have the net. Though now we do. Sort of. The iPad has arrived, the unlimited plan situation has been rectified and I'm enjoying loading up on the apps at speeds approaching 28.8. This is the Edge network and I can literally enjoy a book at my side while pages load. BUT, it's better than nothing, and the Pandora app more than makes up for it. The big time shortcomings, which I knew previously, is that the iPad is NOT a computer replacement. I'm very much OK with this (which is why I bought one) even if it is occasionally a real PITA.

If a person did nothing more than net surf, it might work, supposing that you visited a friend or Apple store for updates, and didn't care about losing purchased apps should a reset be necessary, and you had someway of getting your DVDs onto the thing, and bought the camera kit to load your pictures, and all your music fit into the RAM with your apps…and you didn't regularly use apps that required pointer precision any greater than the bluntness of your finger (like 3D modeling, CAD layout, graphics and photoshop, etc.) If you doubt me, I'll gladly show you Adobe Ideas, which takes a stab at it.

Mostly though, the iPad has no visibly organized, easily accessible, file system. There are apps that seek to rectify this, but it's like running MultiFinder on a Mac 128k. In a desktop world where documents have equal footing to applications, the iPad/iPhone structure essentially buries your files within applications that can only run at one time. This format works great on pocket sized devices where you might tackle straightforward tasks, like crafting an email or checking your stocks in a business app, but the concept doesn't scale to larger devices (like the iPad) that have the hardware power and capability to do things you wouldn't normally do on a tiny pocket screen where modifying and 'bringing together' multiple documents is very realistic, like making a powerpoint. It's like running At Ease where you can only launch apps, not docs, you have no HD privileges, and the floppy drive is unavailable for temp storage. Now how are you going to write an email with rich text, attachments, and in-line photos that require a quick cropping and size adjustment? Better free up your evening.

Baby steps, and it'll get better. In a lot of ways, it's the Newton file system.