The iPad experience

So even though I’ve had the pleasure of using an iPhone 4 for several years now, only now do I notice immediately after switching from the iPad mini how heavy it is! It’s actually heavier than the much bigger iPad mini, and feels uncomfortably heavy initially. Up until now, the solidness of the iPhone 4 has always been a positive to me. The iPad mini is almost (but not quite) too light and this changes the expectation of a smaller device.

After using the the mini for a while, I’m also painfully aware when launching Safari how short the phone’s screen is. So I am not surprised that Apple responded to its iPad advances by adjusting the expectations of how an iPhone should look and feel. I just wasn’t prepared for it!

As I currently don’t have a cover, I’m wondering how to take the iPad with me to work. I already much prefer it in terms of speed, easy of use, and screen estate, to the iPhone. Typing feels a lot easier as well making it much more suitable for articles like this one.

On first use

Oh, and how annoying is it to restore from an iPhone backup as your first iPad experience only to find out that half your apps have been miniaturised? Personally, I think iPhone apps shouldn’t restore to iPad at all, and instead if and when iPad versions are available one should see a list of apps to upgrade to.

Also Instacast, why no iPad version? Perhaps it’s makers agree the iPad is not optimal for enjoying podcasts. I wish we had the option to try it.

So far, it seems I have successfully post-predicted the iPhone 5, the podcasts app and Smart Cover! That makes me think Apple has been using the iPad mini internally for one or two years prior to the iPhone 5, and concluded similarly.

On the TV experience

Later that night as I lay awake and watched BBC News two more things hit me:

1. How suitable the iPad mini is for watching TV and using apps like Netflix; not just in terms of screen size and crisp visuals but also in terms of content browsing.
2. How any future Apple TV has to group content apps within a dedicated interface as you don’t want to intersperse these with regular apps on the springboard.
3. There really should be a way to rest an iPad like how laptops are held up by their bodies, so I can lie back and watch.

So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of devices bundle where a small iPad acts as the content guide for an apps enabled Apple TV. Maybe add a content browser app with the content apps inside. The tv itself is then just a bigger output of the content already viewable on your tablet.

Plus In the future I would hope to see some sort of evolution of the Smart Cover that can support a device in a 90 degree angle like the iMac stand.

First, create a new theme file called redirect.php with the following contents:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Redirect
*/
the_post();
header('Location: ' . get_the_content());
die();

To create a new redirection page:

1. New page, change the template to ‘Redirect’
2. Switch to HTML editing mode and put the url in the content area.

• DRY (don’t repeat yourself)
• KISS (keep it simple stupid)
• Easily customisable WordPress base theme.
• Uses post formats (standard and link have been implemented)

You can build on it to speed up your own theme development. It’s so minimal that I wouldn’t recommend it as your final site theme. Instead it makes it trivial to apply your design to a WordPress blog, or to build out from this starting point. This site is build on top of the project for example.

Version 1.1 is now available
Download | View on GitHub

Changes:

• updated styling and version
• previous next buttons on singles
• ie style targeting (unused), remove admin bar until supported, top nav
• archives added and accessibility improvement
• date permalinks
• consistent titling
• edit link in footer, no home
• moved comments into its own template file
• padding issue

Your feedback is welcome.

• DRY
• KISS
• easily customisable WordPress base theme.

You can build on this to speed up your own theme development.

For example, let’s consider the following code:

$csv_file  = "users.csv"
Import-Csv $csv_file | ForEach-Object {
    $username = $_.USERNAME
    $ad_user = (Get-ADUser -filter {sAMAccountName -eq $username})
    if (!$ad_user) {
        # create account, it does not exist
    }
    else {
        $filter_accountchanged = { $ad_user.DisplayName -cne $displayname }
        if ($ad_user | Where $filter_accountchanged) {
            # update existing accounts with changes
        }
        else {
            # account exists and has not changed
        }
    }
}

You will find that all existing accounts come up as having changed. This is because $user.DisplayName is not returned by Get-ADUser.

The issue is resolved by asking Get-ADUser to return all properties:

$ad_user = (Get-ADUser -filter {sAMAccountName -eq $username} -Properties * )

Now all properties are returned, and the “account change” filter works as expected.

• HiddenFields DataExtension: Takes form fields specified through $hidden_fields and hides them from edit form. View code
• Description DataExtension: Specify a $db_descriptions array to DataObjects to attach formfield descriptions. View code

“I really don’t want to see the PC becoming a closed platform. Microsoft is not a company that’s able to benignly oversee that process. They will f*** it up. We’ll all be doing Kinect support and 16 language versions, we’ll all be supporting a Microsoft Office plug-in. It’s my own worst nightmare.

[...] “The PC continues to be as relevant as it was ten years ago, despite consoles coming and going, because it is an open platform. If that changed it would be terrible.”

It’s interesting times for the gaming industry, indeed.

This is a very simple module that prevents your site users from losing data. It works by by blocking the save process if the record changed since it was retrieved, preventing accidental overwrites. (user1 starts editing, user 2 starts editing, user1 saves, now user2 can’t overwrite user1′s changes). By default, Silverstripe lets you lose data by overwriting the record on save.

You might know that Pages benefit from versioning (so you can restore to a previous version), however by default DataObjects don’t have versioning enabled so this module will come in handy then (AFAIK it’s not trivial to enable either).

If feedback is good, I will try to add it to the SilverStripe modules list.