iPad Gen4 - A New Toy AND Grapefruits

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I just bought the new iPad. A few years ago I watched the Apple announcement of the original iPad and I bought one of the first ones available. I didn't stand in line for a dozen hours like some people, but it seemed like a revolutionary (magical!) device, and I suspected it might change the face of computing.

I wasn't exactly right. That first iPad, I discovered, was excellent for consuming content. I could recline on the couch or in a chair and very comfortably read my emails or the latest news or surf the web. The iPad was pretty snappy too. As far as the apps went, there were only a few that made me sit up and say "wow" but that might have been me and not the apps.

What I was hoping for was a device that would allow me to sit comfortably in my chair and write, transposing the myriad thoughts of my scattered mind into some semblance of order in electronic form.

That's what I'm doing now.

It took more than the new iPad (I call it the Gen4, but only because Apple doesn't differentiate its products well). In fact, I think I could have done this with the original iPad if I had bought the right keyboard.

I did buy an external keyboard for the iPad1, but it somehow just didn't seem to work. It seemed awkward and hard to manage.

I now have an external keyboard and case (from ZAGG, but they are not the only providers of such devices) and it is a simple matter to type this blog. I have about ten different word processors, including Pages, the one designed by Apple. I'm still trying to figure out which to use. It's a process.

The iPad Gen4 uses the new Lightning connector. I haven't noticed any difference in performance between that and the old thirty pin connector, but I also can't do a side-by-side comparison. This machine has the A6 chip, but I have nothing to measure the performance of the chip either. Things do seem "snappier" but that might be because I expect them to be (for the price, they'd better be!).

I still need to do some graphics with this new machine. I like the Retina display, but so far I've only seen the crisper text in my various programs. Still, my aging eyes seem to appreciate the cleaner text.

So far I'm liking it. Some friends from work like the iPad Gen4, too. I took it in for them to look at and they thought it was a pretty good combination. And if my buddy Rex is reading this, I think I found that light, but seviceable wordsmithing tool we were looking for.

I've saved up for this one for a few years and now I have it and I'm glad. Time to save for the next one!


In the real world (non-virtual), I went walking around our (new) neighborhood yesterday down a different path than I usually walk. There was a grapefruit tree in someone's back yard, but a third of this tree was hanging over their back fence. Ripe grapefruits which fell littered the ground. I tried to pick only two, but ended up with three. They are delicious! They seem to be the Ruby Red variety. There are literally hundreds of these hanging on the tree, threatening to fall off or rot on the branches. Today Darling and I took a little walk over there and gathered a few other grapefruits. Some had black scaly patches where they touched each other, a kind of mildew we think. After scrubbing them off, they look lovely!

I might have to try to figure out who the owner is and go talk to them. This much fruit shouldn't just go to waste!

(It only just this second occurred to me - what if the grapefruit is poison because of some treatment near the tree or something? If you see no further posts from me, well...)




<<UPDATE 12/7/2012>>
Darling decided to gather a few more grapefruits.

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