Semi-OT: Apple iPad

I went to the Apple Store - a horrible experience - and tried it out on Bitsavers. The good news is that it renders even older PDFs quite well, and the two-finger zoom allows you to focus in on the part of a print you need. The bad news is that you can't save it to the device! The good news is that there appears to be an app in the App Store called GoodReader that will allow you to save them; I also found an article on using iTunes (the primary mechanism for handling content) to organize PDFs. The worst news is that it's virtually impossible to buy one of the silly things. IMHO, Apple is constricting supply to keep up the hype. So I plan to wait for Google's competitor - the gPad? - that is strongly rumored to be coming out later this year. I really like Apple's products, but I hate their approach to business.... -- Ian ________________________________________ From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Zane H. Healy [healyzh at aracnet.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 8:35 AM To: classiccmp at classiccmp.org Subject: Semi-OT: Apple iPad Okay, I know the iPad is totally OT, but here is my question, does anyone on this list have one, and have you tried using it for reading PDF's off of Bitsavers? How practical is this? I'm finally making real progress at getting my computer "lab" setup with the systems I plan to keep, and don't have a way to read manuals out there. Currently the only computer that doesn't have a VT420 attached is the Commodore 64. Guess I should get the SGI o2 or Sunblade 1000 hooked up... Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |