Killer new GoodReader feature: PDF annotation

GoodReader is an iOS application for transfering and reading files, especially PDFs. The lastest version supports PDF annotation which is great when you have to give feedback on someone else’s work.

iPad tips and tricks

Keyboard pop-up keys: If you hold some keys a bit longer, a menu pops up with additional keys. Rules for these menus:

• If you hold and then let go, a default key in the pop-up menu will be pressed. In some cases this key is the same as the original key (“n” on the English keyboard), in other cases it is different (on the German keyboard, “u” leads to a “ü” and a comma leads to an apostrophe).


• If you hold and then slide to a key in the pop-up menu, that key will be typed.


• If the default key in the pop-up menu is different from the original key, you can also slide up starting in the original key and the default key will be typed. This is quicker than holding.

Buttons

• Shut down: press and hold Sleep/Wake button until red slider appears.


•  Reset (forced restart): press and hold both Sleep/Wake and Home button.


•  Force-quit an application: press and hold Sleep/Wake button until red slider appears. Then press and hold home button.


• Mute the sound: Hold the volume-down (=less volume) button.

Scrolling

• Scrolling nested areas in Safari: Sometimes there is a scrollable area inside a (scrollable) document. If you try to move the smaller area with your finger, all of the document moves. Solution: Use two fingers to scroll the smaller area. To try it out, you can go to this page and scroll the text areas.


• Vertical scroll lock: If you start scrolling straight down or up, a view locks into vertical scrolling and prevents accidental horizontal scrolling.


• Scrolling to the top: As mentioned before, tapping on the status bar scrolls to the top.

Miscellaneous

• Download a URL into GoodReader: Just prefix a “g” to the URL (so “http://...” becomes “ghttp://...” etc.). This allows you to copy a URL, paste it into a browsers address bar, prefix a “g”, and download it. Or you can download the current page by prefixing a “g”.


• The first day of the week in the calendar: can be configured in iCal, but unfortunately not on the iPad. Details: macbitz.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/ipad-little-known-difference-between-uk-and-us/


• Download the iPad user guide: at support.apple.com/manuals/ipad/

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iPad wishes

After having used the iPad for a while now, I can now give a more definitive wish list. This post rehashes some of my earlier iPad post; read that post for a wider context.

Coming in iOS 4.2 (among other things):

• Multitasking: Thank god for this one. Even though Apple’s version of multitasking is limited, it does practically everything that is needed while saving battery power. A biggie will be the ability to directly switch between applications, program-switcher style. No more detour to the home screen. Also having any app play music in the background is great. I hope they also make alarm clock apps work. Right now, alarm clock apps must be active to go off and if they wake up from sleep, they cannot turn on the display, you have to do that manually.


• Unified inbox: Using to email accounts in parallel is currently painful. One has to constantly navigate up and down the tree of mailbox folders to access the different inboxes.


• App folders: Giving names to groups of applications should help with finding them quicker.


• Printing: Never missed this, but I’m sure many people do.

Open issues:

• Unobtrusive notifications: In Android, the phone status bar contains a summary of important past and ongoing events (call missed, new email received, etc.). More information is also always accessible. This includes things such as the song currently being played and the phone being connected via USB. This is the one missing piece for completing the illusion of multitasking. If I compare the iPad with my desktop experience, I don’t mind that I can only access one application at a time (quickly switching them without losing state is another thing, see above). I do mind that I don’t see if I’ve received new email. Apple has hired the webOS notifications architect, so it seems that they are aware of the issue. The iOS 4 switcher that comes up after a home button double-click could be easily extended to provide more notification functionality. It is already used for printing and to control sound tasks that run in the background.


• Keeping web pages in memory: Currently Safari usually completely reloads a pages that are in the background and become active again. This is terrible, because it takes a long time. Couldn’t one use the flash storage to cache that data?


• Universal file system: File management is already possible, but only per application. This leads to a game called “where is my PDF”? In my Dop Box? In iBooks? In GoodReader? Ideally, such a file system could be mounted on the desktop and directly accessed. I would also love to have tags, possibly even instead of folders. To make the difference clear: A file can be in at most one folder, but could have zero or more tags.


• Cursor navigation: I still find the magnifying glass to slow. Roughly positioning the cursor with a tap and then using arrow keys for precise positioning would be great.


• More key on keyboard and/or a function key: Having to switch keyboard layouts just to be able to type numbers sucks.


• Hitting links in web pages: Links are often too small and zooming just to go to a link is time consuming. Android allows one to traverse links with a physical key. It might make sense for Safari to introduce a virtual key for this.

More ideas:

• More screen space for the app switcher:




• Could be used to show on/off switches for airport mode, Wi-Fi, etc.




• Use two apps side by side: The one-app-at-a-time approach of the iPad works in most cases, except when you have to, say, transcribe something from a web page in a text editor. Nothing more than a 50/50 split of the screen between two applications would be ever needed.

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VLC video player coming to iPad

This is good news for iPad users: VLC is coming to the iPad. VLC has always been a kind of killer application, because it allows you to play almost any video without the need to install plugins. Having it on the iPad is great. [Source: Mac Rumors]



Update 2011-01-08: “VLC: gone from the iOS app store”

iTunes MP3s: remember playback position

Handy for long MP3s: In the information dialog, under “Options”, you can enable “Remember position”. Then, like PodCasts, whenever you revisit an MP3, play resumes where you last left off.

Cloud-sync your iOS calendars (bonus: PC/Mac)

Scenario: You have an iPhone or an iPad and would like to collaboratively edit calendars. You probably want both web and offline access. Thus, neither syncing with iTunes on your PC/Mac nor using a web application such as Google Calendar is an option.

This leaves you with the following alternatives:

1. Mobile Me: Allows you to sync your iOS device over the internet and provides a web application to manage the calendars. Pro: I’ve heard good things about the web application. Con: Costs.
   
   


2. Microsoft Exchange: You need an exchange server. I don’t know more about this solution, so I cannot comment on pros and cons.
   
   


3. Google Calendar: There are several ways of syncing your Google Calendar account with iOS. Pro: free, nice web app. Con: You depend on Google which is often slow to fix bugs and completely shuts itself off from customer requests.
   
   

(1) and (2) are fairly well documented. For (3), there are the following options:

1. Google Sync: Allows you to sync your Google Calendars as an MS Exchange account.
   
   [Old, does not work any more, all calendars are always synced] If you want to sync more than one calendar, you need to configure this via Google Sync at http://m.google.com/sync/ Warning: works only from an iPhone. On other devices, you need to fake the iPhone as the browser user agent.
   
   


2. Google Calendar CalDAV: Uses the CalDAV protocol for synchronization. By default, only the default calendar is synced, if you want to synchronize multiple calendars, you need to configure this via www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect (source: Google).
   
   


3. Calengoo: Is an app for the iPhone/iPad that directly accesses Google Calendar and also works offline. Has a nice user interface, many people seem to prefer it to the built-in calendar. Con: Costs.

Comments:

• (1) and (2) are compared in a thread on Google’s support forums. Summary: Google Sync is currently better (uses less battery, does push).


• Calendars that you sync between your PC/Mac and iPhone/iPad can be unsubscribed either before or after adding the calendars from Google Calendar. In the latter case, don’t remove anything existing when adding the new data (there is an option to do so when adding an account). In either case, iTunes offers you to remove the calendars from your iOS device when you unsubscribe.
  
  

You can also synchronize your Mac or PC bidirectionally with Google Calendar:

• iCal/Sunbird: CalDAV.


• Outlook: Google Calendar Sync.


• Mac-only: BusySync (bought it in pre-CalDAV times, works really well). Pro: You only pay once.


• Mac-only: Spanning Sync. Con: Yearly subscription.

Related reading: The Google Sync homepage gives a good overview of all available options for syncing Google data.