Jasonified.

At home I have a fairly typical Apple media setup - iMac, external storage, Apple TVs dotted around the house + iPads etc.

When playing media across devices via iTunes, specifically films and TV Shows, you can “continue playing” or “start from the beginning” and iTunes will (sometimes) maintain the state across these devices for you.

It strikes me that with iCloud and the proliferation of “cloud services” for bookmarking and state management, this should be much easier, more reliable, and simply *better*.

I like the idea of playing a game on one device, moving to another (where I have the same app and iCloud state management selected) and picking up where I left off.

What about writing some markdown in Byword on the iPhone, switching to the iPad, opening Byword open and the cursor is where I left it (or even finding it open, ready an waiting when I slide to unlock).

Imagine writing a tweet in Tweetbot, opening the photo browser and realising the image you want to post is on your iPhone and hasn’t synced via photo stream. No problem, just unlock the iPad and there’s Tweetbot, not only open, but showing the photo browser with your tweet sitting, ready to post underneath.

We have “resume” for movies, tv shows and for books within apps like iBooks and Kindle.

Why not everything else?

Rumors of Apple working on a game console have been around for a while - today I played on it and it’s amazing.

And what’s more you can own it today.

Apples game console consists of an iPad 2, HDMI adapter and a copy of Real Racing 2 HD, the first game to support the “console” configuration.

(More games are sure to follow)

The result when plugged into an HD TV is an experience that I can only describe as amazing and akin to playing on a “proper” console.

The iPad 2 outputs 1080p graphics to the TV whilst leaving menu options, race track info and stats on the iPad screen.

Oh and did I mention the iPad becomes the steering wheel?

With more games undoubtedly supporting this type of setup in future the Apple game console has well and truly landed.

Game on.

Lots of confusion about this right not with some Apple representatives saynig the iPad 2 is shipped unlocked but Apple info saying it’s

“specially configured to work with a single specific carrier”

Now, configured doesn’t just mean a locked SIM. Remember the 3G iPad allows you to subscribe *on the device* to a data plan and the software allows you to select what package you want.

What Apple could be refering to with “configured for” is that the US iPad 2s are set to have Verizon and AT&T data plan purchasing on the device which means that won’t work in the UK etc.

However, this doesn’t confirm that the SIM is locked and so it might be possible to put in an O2 Micro SIM (For example) with a pre-configured data plan and bypass the data configuration….

We’ve had rumors of a retina iPad 3, and an iPad 2 with a new hi-speed lightpeak interface taking up the space of a “mystery port” spotted on early case designs.

But what if there’s no retina iPad 3 and that port IS a light peak interface and could drive an external display at 2048 x 1536 (or a higher retina display resolution)?

Interesting and no more wacky than other speculation going on right now!

I’ve recently helped someone with a new iPad get setup so they can download from the AppStore and Amazon for Kindle books.

Some people think that the iPad is the answer for people who don’t use / can’t use a computer.

Here’s the sequence:-

1. Activate iPad. This requires a computer with iTunes installed.
2. Connect to Wifi
3. Set-up free email account and you can’t do this for gMail from the iPad - you have to use a desktop browser!
4. Configure e-mail
5. Add new Apple ID, verify via email
6. Download Kindle app
7. Open Kindle
8. Create Amazon account
9. Add iPad to account
10. Download / buy books

Yeh, dead easy isn’t it?

(ps. I managed to help this individual using my MacBook Pro to activate and my iPad + SkyFire to setup accounts I couldn’t on their mobile safari.)

In a recent tweet I mentioned how I believed that location based services are going to be very “last year” and the new next big thing will be proxmity/vicinity services. In other words location puts you in a place and proximity puts you in a room, on a floor, outside a shop, next to a device etc.

(btw I’m not saying location itself is dead it’s just the first part of a process to enhance the offering - you need proximity for the detail)

Just now my Boxcar push notifications for twitter (which should work on my iPad and iPhone) were only coming through on the iPad and it got me wondering….

…wouldn’t it be neat to have a proxmity preference setting that said “I’d like to get push notifications but this is my preferred device (or my preferred device is the one I’m using/looking at) and if another device is nearby and has the same push settings, only display them here”

So, I can have my push notifications set on BOTH my iPad and iPhone but my (soon to be invented and make me millions of pennies) proximity system would ONLY notify me on my preferred device so I wouldn’t get multiple “pings”

One step further is to use my soon to be not invented or patented “proximity chip” (which would be fitted to a watch, ring, embedded under the skin etc) to detect *which* device I’m closest to and ONLY show the notification on that one!

Going further what if we ditch the ship and use a device with a camera that is kinect/3D/face aware which could throw it’s two pennies worth in, telling other devices that IT is the closest thing to me because I’m looking straight at it and so popup the message there.

Now that’s a future I can live in.

When I heard that Displaylink had finally brought their display-via-USB technology to the iPad I was looking for forward to something special.

Installation was straight-forward and no reboot required. I downloaded the paid app from the Appstore (for the price of half a beer) and installed it on my iPad.

The iPad was docked in the keyboard dock and this seemed to create the first problem. After launching the iPad app and connecting to my computer, a screen flicker later and I was looking at a portrait screen showing a landscape resolution. Lots of empty space above and below.

No matter what I did in rotation settings then iPad did the opposite. I only managed to get it working by removing from the dock and propping it up (landscape) against something making it pretty useless.

More annoying is that despite promises otherwise, Aero switched off when the monitor became active and wouldn’t even switch back on when the app is quit.

This is all very frustrating because the actual refresh performance is better than iDisplay or anything else I’ve seen (although iDisplay supports touch which is nice)

So pretty useless right now and requires a software update urgently!

You can download at http://iPad.displaylink.com

Finally found a pretty good Tumblr client for the iPad which allows you to do most of the things the iPhone client can do including posting, editing and managing multiple blogs.

Search for “Tumbleroo” in the AppStore.

Note: Credit to RazorianFly for note on this today - my version requires less steps and doesn’t require you to use the primary iTunes machine.

If you’ve just upgraded to iOS 4.2 on your iPad or iPhone and you’ve suddenly lost any videos or music from your Videos/iPod app then there’s a quick and easy fix.

For this to work you should have an iPhone/iPad that shows it has Videos and Music available (in the about page or via iTunes) but non-show up on the device.

1. Connect to ANY computer running iTunes 10.1 (so doesn’t have to be your main syncing machine) and ignore any sync/wipe options (hit cancel)

2. Click on the device name, expand it and go to Music/Videos

3. Double-click/play a track/Movie/TV Show

4. Now go back to the device, go into Videos/iPod and you should get “Updating Library”

5. Bingo, music and videos restored.