My wife is always picking it up to search for something, usually something to do with shopping but other times just to find out the answer to something. This was always done before with my iPhone (still first generation and going strong), but now it’s the iPad that is picked up first. I have the wifi only one, and find this is fine for me as I tend to be always around a connection. I can see myself getting one of Three’s Mifi devices on pay as you go for my needs when out and about.

My son loves watching mickey mouse or other assorted Bob the Builder or Fireman Sam movies, he’s only 3 and can navigate his way around the apps and games with ease. Which does go to show you that the UI and responsiveness of the device is the best you can get.

I managed to use it for work doing UI concepts with an excellent app called iMockups there’s a great review with video at TUAW found I could mock them up then email the wireframes to myself .

Using it as a photoframe viewer always turns head’s, as does using it for either radio in the kitchen or recipe guides when cooking.

Here’s  is a quick list of apps I have been using.

1. Dropbox
2. Penultimate – not taking for the Moleskin fanatic
3. Adobe Ideas
4. Sorted – to-do’s
5. SimpleNote – notetaking
6. Explore flicker – handy for backgrounds
7. Accu Weather
8. GoodReader
9. Doc HD – doc editing
10. Early Edition – RSS reader that looks like a newspaper
11. Let’s Golf – game and way to addictive

Loads more and you do find yourself in the app store looking for great apps alot.

This is a handy idea, put your iPad in a bag and attach it to the back of your front seat in your car for the kids.

Read more on how to do it here – www.tuaw.com

http://osx.iusethis.com/app/clone2gofreeyoutubedownloaderformac

With Today you can keep track of what’s on your plate for any given day without keeping iCal open all the time. Today syncs with iCal and your life’s agenda so daily events & tasks are always available via one, convenient little interface.

Looks handy check it out here – www.secondgearsoftware.com/today

I use Little Snapper all the time for collecting screenshots of websites and my work, it’s a great way of saving all those snippets of creativity. I use two machines my desktop and my laptop and I needed a way to keep both of these in sync. I also wanted to be able to edit and use Little Snapper on both machines, although not at the same time so that if I was casually using my laptop on the sofa it would automatically update when I used my work computer.

I do this by using Little Snapper and DropBox – If you want to do this then here’s how:

1. You will need a copy of Little Snapper

2. You will also need a Dropbox account (remember the more images you store in little snapper the more your dropbox account will expand).

3. Install Little Snapper

4. In Little Snapper go to the Preferences then Advanced choose Create New Library

5. Name the Library whatever you want and save the location to your DropBox

6. Close down Little Snapper, and go to your second machine or installation of Little Snapper.

7. On the second machine load up Little Snapper and go to Preferences – Advanced and select Choose for the Library

8. Select the Library from your DropBox one (you just created)

9. Close down the application down, now open it up again and hey presto you now have the same Little Snapper database between both machines.

The database will now sync between machines as you add new items to it, if you do this for the first time and have a large DB of data wait for Dropbox to sync completly before opening Little Snapper.

Having just the one copy of the Little Snapper database is great and it means I can use either machine to save a collate ideas into the program and will be updated to the other machine.

Protecting your MacBook is a top priority and it’s job one for BookBook. Slip your Mac inside the velvety soft, padded interior. Zip it closed and your baby is nestled between two tough, rigid leather hardback covers for a solid level of impact absorbing protection. The rigid spine serves as crush protection for an additional line of defense. BookBook creates a hardback book structure that safeguards your MacBook like few other cases can. Far better than any floppy neoprene bag ever will. End of story.

www.twelvesouth.com

Got my AppleTV two days ago and after a few initial problems is now working great. Will post my review screenshots and information on my experiences with the device.

SnowChecker is a Mac OS X program that provides a neat interface to browse compatibility data found on snowleopard.wikidot.com.

It has several features, including:

• Scanning for applications on your hard drive to display only relevant compatibility data
• Robust search
• Sorting

So if you need to find out which applications you have that work or will not work in Snow Leopard then download this free app to check.

http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/snowchecker

After installing Snow Leopard (in haste) I haven’t found anything that exceptional to keep it going in the face of my main app not working, Adobe Photoshop CS3!

Adobe Photoshop CS3 crashes all the time, I just can’t keep up the workflow with this happening. Adobe don’t support CS3 on Snow Leopard and actually don’t tend to support older versions of there programs for newer operating systems. I have even tried the trial version of CS4 and that crashes too, so I’m left with no other option other than to downgrade Snow Leopard to Leopard!

I wish I had made a backup of Leopard before installing the newer Snow Leopard, I do have a copy but its four weeks since my last backup (let that be a warning to me and others on backing up before you install a new operating OS!!!).

Here’s what you do:

1. clone your drive as is right now – use either Super Duper of Carbon Copy Cloner, I have used the later numerous times and works great!

2. Pop in your Leopard Disc and do an “erase & install”

3. You use migration assistant to bring your apps and data over from the backup.

That should be it, I’m in the process of doing my back up so will update this post with any findings!

UPDATE: 8 September

Well it took almost three days trying to Leopard back. First you can’t use migration assistant to migrate your apps and files from Snow Leopard to Leopard. It will as in my case though try, and with over 250GB of data to transfer I tried three times, and each time it failed right near the end. The thing to look for is when you first start up migration assistant, if the user details you select say “0kb” then it won’t work, as soon as I tried migration assistant from my previous Leopard backup the user I selected stated the true amount of data, then I clicked transfer and one hour and forty five minutes later it was back!

I have my iTunes folder on another drive and when I purchased some new music I got an error where it wouldn’t download (err = 500) or simliar. I found the fix for this here http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1843056

I’d like to report that CS3 and all my apps are once again working!! I’ll think I’ll wait now until everything is tested and working on Snow leopard before I upgrade.

Still have the laptop to fix, which isn’t going to be much fun as I don’t have a very recent backup of that…

theappleblog.com