Don’t you hate it when work and life in general gets in the way of fun?

With my Take Control of Fonts in Snow Leopard book out, and Take Control of Safari 5 waiting for its spot in the editorial/production queue, and my spate Macworld articles done in timely manners, and medical adventures under control for the time being… it’s back to the fun of my two blogs, this and MacTipster, starting with an entry in both blogs about what it’s like to combine Me, Mac/iPad, and Medicine.

Head Illusion iPad app – not as stupid as I expected!

Okay, so my husband, whose… let’s say “sensibilities”…  are quite different from mine in so many ways, gifted me with an iPad app called Head Illusion from Dina Pace. Would you trust an app that claims you should hold the iPad in front of your face, screen facing your “audience” while they stare at a old-timey hypnosis-inducing black-and-white moving spiral for 10 seconds, then move the iPad and your head will appear to shrink or grow (depending on the direction of the spiral)? No, neither did I.

Typing on iPad: Capital Offense

That’s “offense” as in “the best defense…”. I don’t love the iPad keyboard. I barely tolerate it (a topic for another entry).

Need a capped word? Need to YELL AT SOMEONE in all caps? Are your sentences not automatically being capped? Tired of the two-tap capital: tap the Shift key, then tap the key? Here’s all you need to know about Caps on the iPad:

• Check your Settings for capitalization features. On your Home screen, tap the Settings icon, choose General, and turn on Auto-Capitalization and Enable Caps Lock (they’re on by default).

• Don’t capitalize sentences: Let the iPad do it for you. With Auto-Capitalization on, once you use sentence-ending punctuation (a period, question mark, or exclamation point) followed by any number of spaces, the next letter you type will be capitalized.

• Tap, hold, or slide for an uppercase letter. I’m liking the slide method more and more (except perhaps for letters in the center of the keyboard—in landscape mode, they’re pretty far from the Shift key). Tap the Shift key and the arrow turns blue; tap a letter and you get a capital, and the Shift key returns to normal. Or: Hold the Shift key down (so to speak – that is, keep your finger on it) if you need a few capital letters in a row and you general use two hands for iPad typing (otherwise, Caps Lock is a better choice). Or: Slide from the Shift key to the letter you want capped (tap-and-keep-your-finger-down on the Shift key, drag to the letter key) and release when you reach the letter. Once you get past the “but I’ve never typed like this before” engram, this swipe-to-type method starts to feel like the most natural way of getting a capital letter.

• Caps Lock is handy not only when you’re in a rude, shouty mood, but also when you’re typing a lot of acronyms… AOL, BASIC.. oh wait, it’s the twenty-first century… HDTV. With Caps Lock activated in General settings, a double-tap on the Shift key turns it blue (the whole key turns blue, unlike the blue-arrow-only state that indicates that just the next letter will be capped) and provides capital letters until you double-tap the key again.

• Type ! and ? more easily. (Okay, they’re not capitals – but as you know very well, they are shifted characters.) You don’t have to tap the Shift key and then ! or ?: those keys are perfectly placed for the slide method of typing. Hit the Shift key as your finger goes down, swipe over to the punctuation, and lift your finger.

Me, Mac/iPad, and Medicine

This is what being a Mac professional means in your personal life:

Two weeks ago, as part of my ongoing medical adventures, I was waiting in my very own private walled-not-curtained pre-op cubicle for what, given my history, was a minor procedure. The doctor (one of my two very favorites) walks briskly down the hallway, spies me through the open door, and stops in:

“Sharon! Sorry to keep you waiting, I’m running behind. I have someone in the O.R. for a very short procedure—15 minutes—and you’re next. But, I’ve gotta tell you—I have NO free time at home anymore since I got my iPad! I just can’t put it down!

“Also, I have to ask you: I’m having trouble syncing my Blackberry to my Mac [he had just switched from a PC]. Maybe you can tell me what I should be using.”

And he was swiftly off to his other patient. The nurse in my little room, busy setting up an IV, looked a little taken aback during this exchange, although I couldn’t quite identify the look on her face. And then she said:

“I’m having trouble syncing my iPhone to my PC…”

That’s what it’s like being a Mac pro.

Wouldn’t trade it for any other job.

Except maybe Queen.

When my iPad became a tool (the good kind of tool)

So far, my iPad’s been a toy. But I finally got to use it as a tool. In public. And while the “public” wasn’t impressed, I was, and that mattered more.

Selecting Text in an iPad Ebook

Selecting text in an ebook on the iPad (that is, in iBooks – not in a PDF reader) is somewhat different from selecting it in, say, Pages or Safari. It can even be a little erratic when you try something “fancy” like selecting a paragraph. In addition, there are two different “modes” for a single-word selection: one that assumes you may not have selected what you really wanted (due to tiny text, fumble fingers, or both) and one that figures you got what you wanted on the first try.

Sheer Elegance: the iPad eBook Interface

Okay, this may hardly be worth a blog entry, but I’ve already shown this to everyone I’ve seen in person with my iPad. (Besides, I’m in charge here.)

The turning-the-page interface while reading a book has such attention to detail, I’m in awe. Swipe from the upper corner, and that’s where the page curls over; from the bottom, and it starts there; from the middle, and the whole page curls over instead of a corner. Glide your finger back towards the edge of the page before you let go, and the page flutters back down into its original position. That’s all very cool/fun, and adds an almost-subliminal real-world feel to the experience, but it’s not the part that made me write this.

iPad Restart/Reset: “The Elements” Made Me Do It!

So, I’m writing up a long review of The Elements for iPad, and see that many users are complaining about its crashing. I hadn’t seen that, and I downloaded the app on Day 1. So, of course, as soon as I even think that, it crashes. Repeatedly. Every time I turn a page. I read some comments that resetting the iPad clears up the crashing problem. And it occurred to me that some people never have to restart or reset their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad – until they do. And then they don’t know how.

iPad Screenshots: How and How Not

I figured that taking a screenshot on the iPad would be the same as on the iPhone/iPod Touch: Hold down one button, press the other, and, snap! And I was right. And wrong. You can skip the wrong part.

My first few… several… oh, okay, many screenshots on the iPad were failures. Here’s all you have to do:

1. Hold down either the Home or the Sleep button.

2. Press the other button – Home or Sleep, whichever one you’re not holding down from step 1.

It couldn’t be easier: you’ll get a flash of white, suggestive of a flashbulb going off, and that’s it.

But when I got a flash of black, and was dumped into “Slide to Unlock” mode, I thought the first was the iPad differentiating itself from the iPhone/Touch, and the second was a careless bug/feature. I took several shots, and then, when I went to check, I couldn’t find them; they’re supposed to be put into a specially created Photos album, but they just weren’t there.

Well, what a difference a second makes: If you start with the Home button down, and press the Sleep button just a little too long, you’ll be putting the iPad to sleep. But with your finger still pressing the Home button, as soon as you release the Sleep button, the Home button is turning it back on. So: a flash of black (going to sleep, then instantly waking up) followed by the Slide to Unlock situation.

So, if you’re going to start with the Home button down, make the Sleep button press a quick one! Alternatively, start with the Sleep button down, and make the Home button secondary – it’s much more forgiving of a slower release.

Getting the screenshots to your computer is easy, if not obvious. They’re stored in the Photos app on the iPad in an album named Saved Photos. When you sync your iPad, this is one of the few things that don’t go into (through?) iTunes: the “photos” go right to iPhoto. They’re separated into Events based on the dates you took them, so you can get to them in iPhoto either through choosing Events from the Library list, or Last Import in the Recent list (assuming you access them before importing more pictures from elsewhere). And, of course, you can email a screenshot (“Proof of the Highest Score in the Western Hemisphere!!”) the same way you can email photos from the Photos app, by tapping the Export button and choosing the email option.

Back to the Apple Store (and the Hi-res MacBook Pro)

Well, although I didn’t have time to write about it, I did get back to the Apple store the day after the fiasco I described in Painful Shopping at the Apple Store. I called ahead the next morning to make sure there was a hi-res MacBook Pro on display. I’m not sure I would have trusted the over-the-phone reassurance until the voice on the other end mentioned the metal bezel around the display, which I knew was the case for anti-glare models (instead of that classy black border on the glossy screens). So, once again, I headed out on a field trip, to check what a difference hi-res might make.

Painful Shopping at the Apple Store

Off-topic for the iPad, but on-target for commentary about today’s abysmal Apple Store experience, painful in more ways than one.

Okay, I admit that for a long time I’ve said that the Geniuses aren’t usually all that smart – but when you christen something “genius,” you’re only asking for trouble and snarky remarks. And I know that I’ve been using Macs since before some of the Genius Bar dudes were born (seriously!), so it’s not a fair match if I stop by the Bar to toy with them.

But I expect sales people and geniuses to know the basics, and to be able to answer reasonable questions, about Apple products. Especially when the product is a new one, on display (more or less). I went to the Apple store this morning, where I wanted to do a quick look-see, hands-on, test drive of certain a new MacBook Pro. But, nooo…. And if this is the way shoppers are treated – by totally uninformed personnel – I’m shocked that any but current Mac users would bother buying a Mac from a place like this.