Monday, December 27, 2010

Ruler 1.0 - iPad/iPhone Compatible

Ruler 1.0 - iPad/iPhone Compatible




Description
Turn your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch into a beautiful, easy-to-use ruler.

Measure stuff way larger than your device, no additional pocket space required!

Mark measurements with a plastic pointer. For measuring objects larger than your screen, alternate between marking and scrolling. Ruler snaps to your marker for simple, accurate measurements.

Carefully crafted with the highest quality digital wood, you’ll love Ruler. No trees were harmed.

TIPS

- Tap the blue marker for a menu:
- Copy: Copy the marker's currently measured value.
- Reset: Slide the ruler back to zero with one tap. (iPad only; iPhone does not currently run OS 3.2)


Cracked by : 1uc4z



Download on HotFile

Sunday, December 26, 2010

iPad games Top 30 best free

Top 30 best free iPad games

Updated: What the iPad has for gamers who don't want to pay

top-20-best-free-ipad-games
Like most MMOs, Pocket Legends for iPad requires an investment of time
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So you've got your shiny new iPad and come to the dawning realisation that you've no cash left to buy any games for it.
Have no fear, because the App Store offers plenty of iPad gaming goodness for the (unintentional or otherwise) skinflint. Our pick of the 30 best free iPad games are listed below.
Note that apps marked 'universal' will also work on an iPhone or iPod touch, scaling down controls and graphics accordingly.
1. Air Hockey Gold (universal)
Air hockey games work much better on the iPad than the iPhone, simply due to the iPad's larger screen. Air Hockey Gold isn't the only free game of this type, but it was the one that felt best during testing, and the two-player mode works nicely.
Air hockey gold
2. Aurora Feint 3
Aurora Feint 3 is essentially Puzzle Quest (Bejeweled welded to a basic RPG). Slide gems and match three to gain energy or smack your foe during battles. The horizontal-only sliding combined with accelerometer-based gravity-shifting in the well means you have to think fast in this game, which is well-suited to the iPad.
Aurora feint
3. Bub - Wider
This curious creation is a tranquil arcade game, where you tilt your iPad to guide a bubble around forests. The aim of Bub is to snare strangely named seeds and avoid foes. There's little new here over the iPhone release, and the fuzzy graphics desperately need an upgrade, but Bub works well on iPad due to the precision the larger device offers.
Bub wider
4. Checkers Free HD
It's checkers. On an iPad. For free. What more do you want to know? Oh, OK, then – Checkers Free HD is a pretty decent version of the popular board-game, with a variable difficulty level, configurable player names, an 'undo' function for wusses, and a toggle for forced captures.
Checkers free
5. Cliffed: Norm's World HD
This race-to-the-bottom vertical platform game lacks depth but Cliffed is fun for a quick high-score blast. Use the chunky controls to make your guy dash left or right to avoid rocks and leap down holes. If the screen catches up with him, it's game over. Cliffed XL (£1.19) adds characters and power-ups.
Cliffed
6. Compression HD
Compression HD is roughly what you'd end up with if you used a hammer to smash Puyo Puyo into the garbage compactor scene from Star Wars. Pieces fall, and you move and rotate them to fashion lines of three. All the while, the walls are closing in.
Compression hd
7. Dizzypad HD
Dizzypad is a one-thumb game which has you tapping the screen to have your frog leap between rotating lily pads. If he falls in the drink, he dies (pollution, eh?), but extra lives can be gained by munching bugs or bravely skipping lily pads. Extra modes are available via in-app purchase.
Dizzypad
8. Escape - Norm's World XL (universal)
IUGO's puzzler Escape has you swiping to make your silhouette leap between circles, which vanish when you leave them. The idea is to jump on every circle, whereupon you move to the next level. 59p in-app purchases are available for tougher levels and two-player modes.
Escape
9. Frotz (universal)
Although it works on an iPhone, Frotz isn't great on the smaller screen. But on the iPad, with its larger keyboard, the interactive fiction player is a revelation. It uses the Z-Machine format, and you can download a selection of freely available text adventures (including the original Zork) using the app, or upload your own files to the app via FTP.
Frotz
10. GodFinger for iPad
There are quite a few open-ended god games for the iPad, but most are pretty charmless affairs (we're looking at you, We Rule). GodFinger takes you in close, enabling you to interfere with your subjects in detail. The interface is interesting, the game is full of character, and while it doesn't last forever, it'll provide you with plenty of entertainment.
Godfinger
11. Harbor Master HD
This game might look like Flight Control in the drink, but the gameplay mechanics are subtly different. As with Firemint's effort, Harbor Master is a line-drawing game, this time with you drawing paths so boats can dock. However, once they've unloaded, they must leave the screen or sometimes visit another dock, ensuring things rapidly become complex and frantic.
Harbor master
12. Hole-in-a-wall HD
Hole-in-a-wall HD is pretty much the space-age equivalent of that Saturday evening TV show where daft people try and fling themselves through holes in a wall. Here, though, you swipe to rotate a shape, aiming to fit it through a very specific gap. The game doesn't come off flawlessly (it's often hard to judge alignment as the wall zooms towards you), but perseverance reaps rewards.
Hole in a wall
13. Implode Nature! (universal)
Effectively a taster for IUGO's full Implode game, Implode! Nature nonetheless gives you ten buildings to blow up. The chalk-themed physics-based destruction looks great on the iPad, and although there aren't that many levels, achieving perfection on them all is a challenge.
Implode hd
14. Labyrinth 2 HD Lite
Another demo for a paid-for title (and one that made our top 10 best paid-for iPad games), Labyrinth 2 HD Lite's definitely worth downloading if you don't have the full game. It's the digital equivalent of tilt-based marble games, but with varied, crazy designs. You get 15 mazes here, and there's always a high-score to beat.
Labrynth
15. Loco Railer Lite
Draw tracks to guide your train to 'stations' (directional arrows) in this simple action game. The tracks don't always do what you want, and Loco Railer Lite is a basic, slightly clunky game, but it's nonetheless oddly compelling and endearing.
Loco railer

Top 30 best free iPad games

Updated: What the iPad has for gamers who don't want to pay

16. Pocket Legends for iPad
Most iPhone OS MMOs are dreary text-based affairs, so it's nice to see Spacetime Studios creating something a bit more ambitious with Pocket Legends, providing us with an iPad-specific 3D world populated by the usual motley collection of fantasy characters. As always with MMOs, the game demands you invest plenty of time to get anything out of it.
Pocket legends
17. Solitaire Ace
After a few hands of Klondike, we actually ended up preferring this free app to several of the iPad solitaire apps with hefty price tags. Solitaire Ace might be simple (no undo, only one theme, just three solitaire variations), but it's fast and responsive, with intuitive controls and extremely clear cards.
Solitaire ace
18. Tap Blaster HD
Tap Blaster HD currently comes off like a demo - it's silent, and it's not terribly polished. However, in two-player mode Tap Blaster HD is a lot of fun. Ultimately, it's Pong, but you fire up to three projectiles at your opponent, in 'first to five' matches. There's also a reasonable single-player mode.
Tap blaster
19. Tap Tap Radiation
The Tap Tap rhythm-action games are popular, but they're also a little staid. Tap Tap Radiation takes the game off the rails, with hit zones meandering around the screen, occasionally snapping into new formations. The result is a much more exciting and fun game that will excite long-time Tap Tap fans and newcomers alike.
Tap tap radiation
20. 10 Pin Shuffle (Bowling) Lite (universal)
We're big fans of 10 Pin Shuffle, a universal app that combines ten-pin bowling and shuffleboard. Of that title's three game modes, the best one is included here in 10 Pin Shuffle Lite, for free. Called 10 Pin Poker, it adds a card game to the mix. Get a spare or strike and you're given one or two cards, respectively. At the end of the tenth frame, whoever has the best hand wins.
Ten pin shuffle
21. Pilgrim's Punch-Out (universal)
Become a 1980s NES-style Scott Pilgrim in Pilgrim's Punch-Out, a movie tie-in that isn't at all a massive rip-off of (sorry, tribute to) Nintendo classic Punch-Out!! Decent controls enable you to fight your way to glory, and although the game's over pretty quickly, there's always a high-score to beat.
Pilgrims punchout
22. Fowlplay HD
If you ever wanted to poop on someone's head from above, Fowlplay HD is the game for you. Taking on the role of a pigeon that should really cut back on fibre, you zoom around a stylised forest that appears to be populated by refugees from Minigore. Aim your deposits at their heads, avoid the trees, and grab any power-ups that come your way.
Fowlplay hd
23. Tetari (universal)
Tetari is a lovely puzzle game which plays a little like a claustrophobic Tetris. Using familiar pentomino pieces, your aim is to clear coloured squares from the board through making solid lines, which vanish. Higher levels start with more 'debris', forcing you to think hard about where to lay each and every piece.
Tetari
24. Choice of the Dragon (universal)
It might look like it's been repeatedly beaten with an ugly stick, but luckily the magic of Choice of the Dragon is in its witty prose. Playing as a multiple-choice text adventure, akin to an extremely stripped-back RPG, this game is an amusing romp that perhaps lacks replay value, but you'll enjoy it while it lasts.
Choice of the dragon
25. Lux Touch (universal)
There are several Lux games on the App Store, but the original is now free and works very nicely on the iPad. Essentially, this is Risk, and while the computer AI isn't terribly bright, Lux Touch should nonetheless keep fans of the original board game quiet for a short while.
Lux touch
26. New York 3D Rollercoaster Rush HD Free
Six of the full game's 40 tracks are on offer here, in New York 3D Rollercoaster Rush HD Free, a simple arcade title. Tilt your iPad to control the coaster's speed, aiming to keep it on the track, and take risks to ensure the crazy riders have a great time (and, presumably, give the health-and-safety guy a heart attack).
New york 3d rollercoaster
27. iLifeGame (universal)
John Horton Conway's famous Game of Life cellular automaton exists for practically every platform, and this simple iOS version, iLifeGame, gets things right with clear graphics, the ability to draw your own starting points, and a small collection of predefined patterns.
ilifegame
28. Pukk HD
Given that it's another Pong clone, Pukk HD isn't the best game to play if you've no friends, because the single-player mode is extremely dull. However, with another player, it becomes an exciting battle of digital tennis - and it looks a lot nicer than Tap Blaster HD, too.
Pukk hd
29. SLS AMG HD
Yes, this is ultimately a car advert, but then so is You Cruise - and that's one of the best iPhone racing games. SLS AMG HD isn't in the same league, but there's plenty of fun to be had flinging your car at breakneck speeds down tunnels, avoiding obstacles and driving on the ceiling in a manner not entirely dissimilar to Atari classic S.T.U.N. Runner.
SLS amg hd
30. MixxMuse Arcade HD
Part Looptastic, part Tap Tap Radiation, this DJ game provides four levels that are a taster for Pulsar's other MixxMuse titles. However, there's enough entertainment in MixxMuse Arcade HD to engage music fans for a few hours, dragging mix components in time to the beat and dealing with the frantic tap-based minigame.
MixxMuse arcade hd
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Liked this? Then check out Tap! magazine for more apps, games and kit reviews for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
Tap magazine
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the iPad's Software

 the iPad's Software

Understanding the iPad's SoftwareThere have been tablets before the iPad. They weren't as beautiful or well crafted, but that wasn't why we chose not to pick them up. It was the software.
To call the iPad a big iPhone is both truth and disservice, belying the simple fact that changing the screen size really does change everything. It's more than the difference between standard def and HD, between 5 1/4-inch action figures and 10-inch scale, between vegan facon and real pork belly. When you open Scrabble for the first time, and the entire board's splayed in front of you, or holding the screen aloft, steering your plane in Plane X so it doesn't crash into the ground, it physically soaks up enough of your viewing field you can actually become absorbed. Like Jesus says in his breakdown of the hardware, "The iPad functional objective was to make the product as invisible as possible, a simple, elegant stage for the real important actors: The applications."

Interface

The iPad software is familiar, though, because Apple trained the world how to use it with the iPhone. A grid of glossy icons—touch one, and the app balloons out of nowhere to fill the screen, remaking the iPad into something completely different than it was a second ago. The gestural language of multitouch—the pinches, the swipes, and the flicks. It's an interface designed to be manipulated entirely with your fingers, and the basic elements of all translate, just on a slightly grander scale. It's simple, slick, natural.
Speed. Speed matters. When the hardware disappears, and there's just software in front of you, speed is what makes the verisimilitude of directly manipulating whatever's the on the screen bleed into the sublime. It's the responsiveness that makes you feel like you're actually zipping around a map, not swiping at a screen that's merely interpreting electrical signals generated by your fingers into commands. The second "wow" moment—after you turn the iPad on and the screen bursts to life—is when you flick through a entire web page with a single swipe, instantly and smoothly.
One of the ways it's fundamentally different from the iPhone is that the interface and software are now truly designed to be used equally in both portrait mode and landscape. It sounds like a small thing, but it's not—it gives power to the idea that you can use it however you want, that it's really a blank slate that morphs to become whatever you want it to be. It's remarkably proficient at figuring out exactly how you're holding it, and the software gracefully, speedily adjusts itself accordingly, rolling into position. All of the core applications—Safari, Mail, iPod, Notes—shift into new layouts, optimized for whichever way you're holding it. It feels so natural so quickly that you simply expect it to be the case, so when third-party applications don't remold themselves to how you're holding the iPad, it's jarring.
Understanding the iPad's SoftwareEven if the iPad perfectly upscaled the iPhone interface and apps, pixel for pixel, they wouldn't feel right on the iPad, so (most) everything is redesigned for the larger screen, when it makes sense. For instance, slide-to-unlock is the same distance as it is on the iPhone, but the iPod music lockscreen controls that you can see above are spread across the entire screen.
Understanding the iPad's SoftwareTwo new user interface conventions in particular transform apps to make real use of the extra space with either more information density or greater focus: Split view and popovers. (Twitterific isn't a native app, but it shows off both here.) Split view appears in landscape orientation, and presents two windows panes—typically, on the left is navigation (your various inboxes in Mail, music sources in iPod, all of your notes in Notes) and on the right is whatever you've selected (a message, an album, a note). On the iPhone, this would be two distinct screens—you click on something in one pane, and suddenly you get the other pane—drilling down instead of working in parallel. Many apps, particularly ones that are using mail as a UI model, like Instapaper, use this.
Popovers, a kind of contextual pop-up dialog box layered on top of whatever you're looking at, are in almost every app. Completely contextual, they can act as navigation panes (like when Mail's in portrait mode, a popover shows all of your messages or inboxes); or typing a URL in Safari, a popover will appear, showing suggested URLS based on your history; or a scrolling list; or as a navigator to pick out a photo to load into iWork. It's a second layer, one that never existed on the iPhone because there isn't enough space.
Understanding the iPad's Software

On Multitasking

The iPhone evangelized the rather retro notion of running just one app at a time. And this has been mostly fine (though by no means excellent), given the screen size, and with workarounds like push notifications. The limits of these workarounds are more painfully exposed by the iPad's giant screen: Switching out of a game or movie or email to dedicate the entire display to instant messaging feels absurd and wasteful, even considering that, in landscape mode, half the screen is dedicated to the keyboard.
What's sad is that the kinds of things people commonly want multitasking for—mostly people who don't even care what true "multitasking" means—seem simple enough, even for this operating system: Messaging, geolocation and playing music from apps like Pandora in the background. Even though Pandora makes beautiful use of all the room it's granted, not being able run it in the background while surfing the web, typing out an email—or hey, sending an IM—just feels ridiculous in so many ways. Every time you have to close it to do something else, a little bubble of fury rises in your throat, erupting as a flustered sigh. I really can't respond to my friend's message without closing everything I'm doing on this huge thing? The choices you're being forced to make feel false and arbitrary, like bacon or eggs.
Understanding the iPad's Software
The modal nature of push notifications stabs your brain harder too, like when your zombie slaying groove in Call of Duty is wrecked without warning by a little blue square that takes over your entire screen, informing you that a new IM is waiting. It just doesn't work. At the very least, notifications need to be implemented very differently, because the iPad is meant to be immersive—and it really is—and to have that shredded by a workaround for capabilities it currently lacks, that's kind of heartbreaking. Something like Growl, that's unobtrusive, could work. (This will hopefully change with iPhone 4.0.)
The hardware constraints that made running one app at a time make sense are nearly obliterated in the iPad—the battery and screen are an order of magnitude larger, the processor markedly zippier. I suspect the remaining hardware cramp may now be the paltry amount of RAM in the iPad, a mere 256MB—the same amount that's in the iPhone 3GS—but it doesn't really matter why. As Apple's fond of intoning, people just want it to do what they want it to do.
Put simply, the iPhone might not need multitasking. The iPad does.
Understanding the iPad's Software

Mimesis, or a Love Affair with Paper

For a blank slate that can magically transform into anything, Apple's preoccupation with mimesis might seem a little curious. The Contacts app looks like a Moleskine address book while Calendar imitates a real-world datebook—though it functions so beautifully and smoothly it's very possibly my favorite native app. iBooks uses a bookshelf metaphor that practically smells of rich mahogany, and books whose pages turn with a realistic animation that you can't turn off. Ticking off messages in Mail stacks them like a pile of paper. In other words, Apple wants their apps to feel something like real-world experiences.
As Jesus noted, "Apple designed this device to be treated like a book," and this carries through to any app that's an abstraction of paper. Maybe it's meant for your parents to feel more comfortable using the iPad to read books and organize their contacts and calendars, but the implementation of the realism feels so cheesy in some places that it's simply not comforting, not even to that target audience, I suspect.
Understanding the iPad's Software

Typing

Yes, it's pretty much a jumbo iPhone keyboard. (An idea that seemed so silly, we made fun of it.) We have been typing on the iPad in depth here, but simply put, an external keyboard is ideal. Still, as we noted earlier, the compromise here "is going to be inherent to all touchscreen keyboards on tablets." There's no novel solution, not for Apple or anyone else.

The Apps

The native iPad apps have shrunk in number versus the iPhone, and—with the exception of Safari, Mail and the App Store—the remaining apps carry much less weight. Which is to say, you won't use them as much as you do on an iPhone. The iPad is really all about the applications and content that developers will create.
Understanding the iPad's SoftwareApp Store and iTunes
Quite honestly, the App Store on the iPad is now the best way to get apps. Navigating and finding apps feels far more serendipitous and engaging than pointing and clicking on a desktop, and with the screen real estate, you can actually see the store and app previews, unlike the iPhone. It manages to fracture one of biggest advantages, though, by jerking you out of the App Store every time you buy an app. This should feel seamless, and allow for more of a shopping spree. If the transactions happened almost invisibly, it wouldn't feel like you're spending money as apps pop onto your iPad, and you wouldn't feel like you've got whiplash, either.

Also, the most fundamental problem with the App Store remains: The interface breaks down when you're trying to sort through a sea of 150,000 apps to discover a few you'd really want. And the iPad's sole surviving instance of Cover Flow, a floating widget of app previews at the top of the home screen? Kinda gross lookin'.
The iTunes store looks and feels like the App Store in terms of basic navigation and layout, but it's obviously built around previewing and purchasing music, movies and TV shows, so the interface is kinda like a touchified version of the main iTunes Store interface on the desktop. Tapping album covers or film posters flips them around to show you the basic info with previews. One of the big changes is being able to download movies—even 5GB HD flicks—over Wi-Fi. (Though I wouldn't really recommended it, since my bigger download errored out a whole bunch.)
Understanding the iPad's SoftwareSafari
The velocity of scrolling, zooming and panning around web pages in Safari is one of the first "whoa" moments you'll have with the iPad. It's superfast, which is why it feels so awesome. The size is the other component—being able to see that much of a website radically alters the experience, turning it into something that's incredibly satisfying. Really, you've never felt anything like it.

There are a few problems, though. (And I'm not even talking about Flash. In case you were wondering, no, there's still no Flash. It hasn't affected me once since so many sites have remade themselves for the iPad, and the one time I did get upset, I quickly remembered that a Hulu app is coming. YMMV without Flash though.)
Safari's one place where the iPad's memory shortage makes itself apparent, since you're limited to nine windows, and quite often, it dumps the contents of a window, so when you go back you'll have to reload the whole page. That's pretty annoying. This is also, I suspect, why it doesn't have true tabs: People aren't encouraged to open a bunch, because it can't handle it. Still, tabs would be incredibly welcome for the sheer fact that the iPhone-originated process of switching between windows (click the button, you're taken to a thumbnail view of your windows, then click the window) feels more tedious than ever. With this nice big display, it shouldn't take two screens and multiple seconds to switch to a new window when everything else practically flies.
Something else we'd like? Text enlargement, like in desktop Safari. Our own Jesus, like many old dudes, prefers larger text. There's no reason it can't be done now. And when we're scanning whole, giant web pages, there's really still no "find in page" search feature?
Photos
The traditional photo album grid has never felt slicker. Zooming in really fast, incredibly smoothly, on huge photos is definitely one of those "oooo" moments, as is "pinch to peek." The problem? Getting your photos on there and syncing is still pretty messy, pulling them in albums via iPhoto or in specific shots via iTunes. Legitimate connections to online photo services would be nice too, so you could populate it with your Flickr or Picasa or Facebook photos. Hopefully these services will soon roll out apps to handle this from their end.

Understanding the iPad's SoftwareMail
Given that it looks so much like its iPhone forebear, perhaps more than any other iPad app, you'd be forgiven for not realizing it's one of the most important apps on the iPad. In truth, it makes use of every new bit of user interface, and it's the starting ground for so many other apps, from RSS readers to Instapaper to Twitter clients.

In landscape, it uses the split view, with your inboxes or messages on the left, and the contents you've selected on the right. The panes look and feel like their respective iPhone screens, just fused all together. If you hit "new message" or "reply," an overlay pops up with the keyboard, which takes up half the screen, and a message box that doesn't quite cover the entire top half of the screen. (You'll see this messaging overlay pop up again and again in apps like Twitterific.) Adding contacts takes place via a scrollable popover—like the old contacts list, but it doesn't take up your entire screen.
Portrait mode is more focused: When you select a message, it's all you see. To switch to a new email or look elsewhere in your accounts, you have to bring up a popover, which runs down the entire length of the iPad shows you the rest of your inbox. The mode overall is good if you have a hard time concentrating, but navigating via the popover can feel a little disjointed.
Overall, Mail works great, but the same functional limitations as the iPhone version still apply, like no unified inbox, no push Gmail, and the inability to attach a file to a message from inside the app. The list goes on, and these shortcomings feel more pronounced because of the power and size of the iPad.
Understanding the iPad's SoftwareContacts, Notes and Calendar
Contacts is one of the literal "I'm a book!" apps that takes it a little far for no apparent reason. But cheesy art effects aside, in structure it's like iPhone contacts but with a two-pane view, like the Mac Contacts app. Notes is essentially the same as the iPhone with more "realism" added via the subtle outline of stitched leather surrounding the yellow legal pad. It's still gross.

Calendar, on the other hand, is a graceful application that makes the iPhone Calendar feel too constrained, and the desktop iCal feel too convoluted. Sort by day, week, month or list (showing the next 10-15 events). In day or list view, the list of events is in the left pane, and a closeup of individual events or days is in the right pane. Week and month views zoom out to a traditional calendar view, where popovers reveal event details. A scrubber on the bottom lets you quickly zip to any day or week, depending on the view. It's really nice, at least for basic calendar usage.
Maps
It's iPhone Maps, but bigger and so, so much faster, and that's a world of difference when you're talking about zooming around the world.

Understanding the iPad's SoftwareYouTube
It's hard to believe this is YouTube, almost—it looks too polished. The streamlined interface is miles ahead of what you get when you type youtube.com on your desktop. I can actually just sit and watch YouTube for the first time ever, also thanks to the surprisingly great video quality.

Understanding the iPad's SoftwareiPod and Video
iPod seems a little out of place, I have to say. It doesn't quite look like anything else, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's the jukebox essence of desktop iTunes, stripped to the silver bone because it only does one thing: Play music. Considering what iTunes is like on the desktop, that's kind of refreshing.

Videos is similarly stripped down. It shows you videos. Touch, and it flips to info about the video. Touch again, and it plays. (Our test notes on iPad video here.) Generally speaking, anything shot in artsy super widescreen looks a little weird—like any Wes Anderson movie—since there's a ton of black between the bars and the bezel. The rub is that the movies where that effect is the worst also suffer the most from zooming to fill the screen, chopping off massive amounts of the picture. (A necessary evil, unfortunately.)
Apps that essentially mono-task are fine, and they definitely expose how goddamn unwieldy the desktop iTunes as grown (as well as the fact that Apple is aware of this), but there are definitely missing features we'd like to see. If the iPad is designed to be used in your house, why can't you music and videos from your desktop to your iPad using iTunes, right inside these apps? Seriously. And why isn't iTunes Remote iPhone app updated for iPad, to be used to control your desktop's iTunes? Little things like that would add up to make the iPad feel that much more connected.

Magic Spells, a Computer and a Cloud

The moments where the iPad's spell dissipates are when it runs into this uncanny valley between unique modal tablet and standard personal computer: It feels so much like a computer from the future sometimes that you just expect it to do stuff you can do with your laptop. When it can't, you get kind of depressed. Like when you want to flip a couple of IMs out without ditching your entire Scrabble game, or you really just want to send an attachment in Mail, or do something really basic like save a PDF so you can read it later. (You can't do this without a separate 99-cent program, GoodReader; without that, you have to re-download your PDF every time.)
And how about the entire setup process, which slavishly ties it to another computer with iTunes. It can't replace your parents' complicated desktop, because you need that complicated desktop to setup the iPad, and then to manage your music and videos (not to mention software updates down the line), so it's frozen as a secondary device. Then are the moments you wish it was more connected, like a phone. Take the Nexus One. Two minutes out of the box, a minute after punching in my email address, all of my contacts and emails are there. I didn't plug it into anything.
In other words, it's the moments where the iPad feels like it could be more, and you know it in your hands, in your fingers, as you're holding it. That it has this potential to do this or that, but it doesn't yet, and you really really want it to, because you're so incredibly enthralled with everything it already does.
Potential. Promise. Hope. That, if anything, is the real magic of it. In the meantime, it's off to a pretty good start.