Tom's Big Post about his presentation 6-6-2012 on the iPad

Hello and welcome to the big post-presentation blog post! I’ll go through the topics I discussed and then on to WWDC rumors (yes, iOS 6 is coming!)

First, I covered 4 apps to use with your Mac to enhance your iPad, plus a neat piece of hardware that you can control from your iPad.

Type2Phone lets you use your Mac as a keyboard for an iOS device. Your iOS device must support Bluetooth keyboards (iPhone 3GS, iPad) and run iOS 3.2 or later. It’s available in theMac App Store

Type2Phone runs with 10.6.6 or later and works great with OS X Lion.

Printopia lets you print from your iPad to a printer connected to a Mac, whether locally through the USB port or as a network printer. You can also “print” PDFs or JPEGs to a Printopia folder within your Mac’s Documents folder or to a Printopia folder within your Dropbox folder. That way, you can share your work from your iPad to all your Dropbox connected devices.

Printopia is available directly from Ecamm.com for $19.95. It installs as a preference pane in System Preferences. It requires OS X 10.5, 10.6 or 10.7. Your iPad and your Mac must share the same Wi-Fi network.

Q: What are Printopia's system requirements?

A: You'll need Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 or OS X Lion on your Mac. Your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch will need iOS 4.2 or newer including iOS 5 and must be AirPrint capable. (Older devices such as the original iPhone, iPhone 3G and 1st and 2nd generation iPod Touch do not support AirPrint.)

Can you find other products for adding AirPrint to your Mac or PC? Sure. FingerPrint from Collobos Softwarehas versions for both the Mac and PC. PrintSharing from Avatron is an iOS app (as opposed Printopia and FingerPrint, which run on your Mac) and works with a Mac or a Linux (!) machine with CUPS installed. This means Ubuntu Linux will work with it.

But I can personally attest to Printopia working great. Download the free trial and give it a whirl for 7 days.

I next turned to AirServer, which enabled me to walk around with my iPad while displaying my presentation on the projection screen.

AirServer uses the AirPlay protocol, which enables you to stream audio and video from your iPad to an Apple TV or a Mac using 3rd party software. It offers a free 7-day trial, so try it out first. They also have a version for the PC.

The PC version is not as full-featured as the Mac version, but it does offer mirroring.

What iPads does AirPlay work with? AirPlay requires iOS 4.2. For mirroring, you need a iPad 2 or 3.

Now I have read that you can “jailbreak” your iPad 1 to make it work with AirPlay mirroring. “Jailbreaking” is done at your own risk and you could turn your iPad into a $500 paperweight. You have been warned.

I should mention AirParrot and Reflection, which compete with AirServerApp. AirParrot allows your Mac running 10.6 or 10.7 to mirror its screen to an Apple TV or a Mac with AirPlay capability. Reflection is a product that competes with AirServerApp.

I mentioned Air Display next, but couldn’t demonstrate it. Air Display lets you use your iOS device as a second monitor for your Mac. You can use your finger or stylus to manipulate text and images and files on this second screen. You can even mirror your Mac’s display, giving you a mini touchscreen Mac.

Microsoft Excel 2008 didn’t work out so well as a touchscreen application on a 9.7” screen, but try a paint application instead.

After I finished discussing those 4 apps to enhance your iPad, I turned to streaming music and video from iTunes to your iPad.

To stream music from iTunes, you need to set up Home Sharing in Tunes. Go to the Advanced menu in iTunes to set this up.

When you turn on Home Sharing, you get this:

You’ll need an Apple ID, which you created when you activated your iPad or bought music from the iTunes Music Store. Or you can create one on the spot.

Once you’ve set up Home Sharing on the Mac, it’s time for the iPad. Go to the More menu on the bottom of the Music app on your iPad/iPhone/iPod touch.

You want the Shared item at the top of the pop-up menu. You should see all the music libraries you can log on to, from your iPad’s local selections to the iTunes libraries on your Mac or PC. “Thomas Briant’s Library” resides on my Mac, while “Thomas’s Library” is on my Wintel 7 machine.

To show videos from iTunes, such as music videos or full-length movies purchased from the iTunes Music Store, go to the Video app. Under the Shared item, you’ll find your videos from iTunes.

The above illustration shows my shared videos from my Wintel 7 machine.

I then demonstrated four iPad applications.

Paper is a quick sketching application. It’s not as full-featured as AutoDesk’s SketchBook Pro and it’s not intended to be. I reviewed it here.

Kid’s Paint is a fun painting application intended for kids of all ages. I liked the ability to take a picture and draw on it. I reviewed it here.

Star Walkis just awesome. Apple chose it as one of the apps to demonstrate the iPad when it was introduced.

Finally, Angry Birds Space. This takes the birds and the pigs into orbit, where you have to deal with the effects of gravity. On the plus side, you can fire a bird around the back of a planet or asteroid to sneak up on the pigs!

As always, comments are welcome, but I will delete obvious plugs for products.

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager

MacValley Users Group