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First of all – i’m editing this post with my MB Pro. I tried to do it with the iPad… but the article was too long and there are issues. Issues like the keyboard… read more:

The beginning:
Unboxing was a little bit suprising because the box was much bigger than the iPad itself. Unlike for Apple because they try to avoid too much packaging material these a days. In the box there’s of course the iPad itself and a little paper wallet containing the warrenty certificate and a sheet with infos how to proceed. And there’s the charger with the USB connection cable… But the charger wasn’t needed because of the fact that the iPad was charged fully.

Next step:
Contacting iTunes – so i had to startup my MB pro and connect my iPad via the USB-cable.

Setup:
Setting up the iPad is easy at all. After connection iTunes automatically starts up and the first backup of the device takes place. Select the content you want (don’t forget to get iBooks from the iTunes store!) and organize the apps with the designated tool in iTunes. Really easy – and for those of us already owning a iPhone / iPod – nothing new.

Content:
Yes – that’s the point i stick to. iBooks only shows up FREE books which are Project Gutenberg related – nothing else. But I’ve heard that ‘Random House’ already has a signed up contract with Apple for their books  to be available within the Austrian Apple-Store. We’ll have to wait..

Movies? – No movies there, no TV-series. Only podcasts.

Alternative contents:
You are able to put your own videos into iTunes – this is what I’ve done before the iPad – this is what I’ll do now 🙂
Books? Well – use Stanza – this app allows you to add ePub documents which are available through the internet. And of course PDFs. But PDFs are not so nice to be handled within the iPad as eBooks are.

Differences to the iPhone:
There are differences.

Safari. There’s no ‘Search within this page’ feature as you have on the MB Pro. I’m missing it really.

But:
I – and my family – love the iPad. For reading. Surfing. Watching movies. Using Apps.
It’s so easy to browse the content you want. Flash? Not missing at all. Most of the internet sites I’m used to visit already switched to HTML5. Videos are available… Ads are not missed.
You’re able to write emails – if they aren’t too long. You’re able to post on your blog – if the article isn’t too long. There are things you can do with the iPad perfectly – others are… well – not horrible… but simply not convenient.

Give it away again? No. Never. 🙂

Update:
All the issues I had are solved by giving the iPad settings a closer look. Settings I’ve done month’s ago on the iPhone 🙂

What the hell…

Just recognized that there’s a problem with the contacts app now. I just wanted to create a new contact (on the iPhone 3G with iOS4 GM, no jailbreak) and realized that there is no field for phone numbers now:

There’s a button to add additional fields – but again no phones, no emails, no fax – NOTHING!

The + button at the ‘ringtone’ field does not work.

So I tried to create a entry and then this:

An entry was created in the contacts database – but the entry was created with EMPTY fields (Ohne Namen –> without name)…

It’s really not the way apple is normally delivering a GM of it’s new OS – so what’s going on here?

BTW: I cross checked this on my second iPhone (3G, iOS4 GM jailbreaked) –> the same behavior

I powered up my DROBO about two days ago and recognized that the noise issue I had before (running fan, not going into standby) seamed to be not so a problem any more (it was really quiet…)…

But today I wanted to store some files on the DROBO and in the background TimeMachine tried to backup my MacBook Pro – the result I got was a loss of network connection due to a reboot of the DROBO.

I re-powered the DROBO and checked the system LEDs —> showing me now that there is a thermal (overheating) problem with the black box in front of me… I’m now a little bit disappointed!

What the hell should this damned error message tell me – of course the box is too hot…. but it IS NOT too hot. It’s pretty cool – so what’s about this error… have to examine over the next hours… to be continued

DROBO 2.0

After almost two month now I want to give a short overview about the ‘new’ DROBO 2.0 box.

Well – it’s a up and down… with more ups, I think 😉

I found several problems on using / setting up the Drobo and some (one) of them are showstoppers.

First of all – here’s my installation in detail:

DROBO 2.0 USB/Firewire, Airport Extreme, MacBook Pro and Sony Vaio

1 – The standby-issue

I thought that it is possible to connect the Drobo to the Apple Airport Extreme via USB 2.0 as external Disk. The Airport is able to host HDDs connected as Airdisk and share them over the network so that every linked computer would be able to connect.

Well, it IS possible to connect the Drobo to the Airport… BUT

The problem is very simple – connecting the Drobo to the Airport will prevent the Drobo from going into standby mode. That results in a really noisy black box. Because the Drobo is situated right under my flat-TV that is absolutely unacceptable. And – of course – there’s also the point that it will consume much more power than being in standby…

Drobo-Share

The question here is now if the DROBO SHARE component would resolve that issue…
Anyone out there having tested it? In combination with the Airport Extreme?

How did I resolve the problem?
Also very simple – I disconnect the Drobo every time I do not use it from the Airport Extreme – within seconds the Drobo switches into standby-mode and is much quieter from this point on. But it is not completly quiet – sometimes the Drobo comes alife by powering up the fan – so if you want it really to be quiet you will have to disconnet the Drobo also from the powerline.

2 – The TimeMachine issue

There’s not really a issue here. Not on the Drobo side, but on the TimeMachine.
TimeMachine always is using the whole HDD capacity you are connecting to the Mac you are using. So if you don’t like to fill up the whole drive with TM backups you will have to create a separate partition to be used for backing up your Mac via TM.

It’s working great and no problems are found so far – I think there will be no issues because both – Apple and Data Robotics – are reffering this functionality. At the Data Robotics you can find a detailed description how to setup an additional partition on the Drobo.

Update, 02-02-2009:
There is a DroboApp called ‘Time Tamer‘ available to limit the appetite of TimeMachine by using a Drobo. I thought that DroboApps only work in combination with DroboShare… but some of them are also working ‘normal’ via AppleScript (Automator in detail)… seems to be worth to check it out…