Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's iPad keyboard? Apps?

My retirement present last week was an iPad 4. So far I love it but really hate typing onto the screen, so I need to buy some sort of keyboard. The recommendation I get from a lot of people is the Logitech Ultrathin bluetooth keyboard, which fits on magnetically as a cover and is only about 8mm thick. Unfortunately it's very expensive in the UK; does anyone have any suggestions for alternatives?

Also, what apps do people find useful, especially for writing? The main apps I've added so far are

• DocsToGo, which lets you edit microsoft office files, in the premier version that supports cloud documents and Dropbox
• Dropbox, for file sharing between my various computers
• Marvin (a free ebook reader)
• Google maps
• an oscilloscope program
• GoSkyWatch (for identifying stars)
• Measures HD (which gives you several measuring instruments including compass with GPS coordinates, seismograph, etc.
• and PSE HD, a good periodic table program.

I think that DocsToGo is probably going to be my main writing program. Anything else that people find useful?

Congratulations on your retirement!

I think that most of the apps I find useful would not be applicable to you (e.g., CourseSmart for reading e-textbooks, or the Proloquo2Go app which is my son's "voice"), or you already have covered (e.g., an e-reader app). One you might find interesting, though, is DC Comic's app.

You might wish to look into Mercury as an alternate browser to Safari. You also might want to look into Pages -- Apple's word processing app. Rumour has it that they might make it available for free in the next OS upgrade, though, so it might be worthwhile to hold off buying it.

Joy,
Lynn

I'd really need a good reason not to use a MS word-compatible word processor, since I mostly work on a PC, so unless Pages supports that it probably isn't much good to me.

Does Mercury have any significant advantages over Safari? So far I have no problems with Safari, and use it on my laptop as well as the iBook, so I don't see much need to change.

The comics app is a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion!

First, a caveat: I haven't used Pages much myself (I do my word processing on my PC), but I understand it to be very highly regarded by those who do. It can save documents in PDF or Word format as well as in its native format.

I can certainly see you wanting to stick with Safari, since you already use it and are happy with it. I find Mercury to be easier to use for performing tasks such as saving web pages to read offline. It also seems faster than Safari. You can read about it here if you have any interest in it. Since it is free, you lose nothing if you don't like it.

Joy,
Lynn

Actually I can see at least one useful feature for Mercury, the desktop mode - there's one site that goes to a very unfriendly tablet view if I look at it with the ipad, but there's really no need for it, the usual view would be fine and works much better.

Forgot to say I managed to get one of the logitech keyboards in very good used condition for £20 plus postage - very pleased with it. I've also added the following apps:

Feedly for RSS feeds
Tube status (for the London underground)
Around me (shows what places in various categories e.g. transportation, restaurants, etc. are near your location)
Google Earth
Some fractal graphics programs
Life
Molecules (a molecular modelling program)
Xapp ISS (shows where the ISS is and if you can see it)
Science360 (a huge collection of science images, videos, etc.)
SketchbookX (a painting program)
Bar-code (reads barcodes, QR codes etc.)
and some games including various solitaires, sudoku, etc., Tanks! Free (a Battlezone clone) and Deep...Lander (the old Lunar Lander game.

I am new to the boards and I am in the process of trying to get everything figured out....very excited to be 'on' here instead of lurking

Okay--so we just recently purchased an iPad 4, I have an iPhone 4S, and we have a standard Dell home computer...I have a hope to someday try and write fanfic, and would love to know the technical 'how to' before I even think about figuring out the actual writing 'how to'....

I am wanting to do the majority of any type of writing on our iPad. We purchased a Logitech bluetooth keyboard--which has taken a little bit of practice to get used to typing on, but so far, sort of so good.... I am wanting to be able to have access to whatever I write on the iPad, and possibly the phone and home computer. I read the previous discussion about using either the DocsToGo or Pages apps for writing.

I am kind of out of it 'technology-wise' and have a some questions to the process, if anyone can help....

--Would DocsToGo or Pages be a better fit for fanfic writing? (for writing it mostly on the iPad, then posting here on the boards, then ultimately on the Archive)

--I thought I read that for the Archive things need to be in Microsoft Word or text-only format...are these apps appropriate to start this whole writing process?

--How do I get my story from my app, to the boards to post, and then to the archive?

--Once I figure out the app and get a story going on our iPad, how do I go about viewing it on my iPhone and home computer?

I have heard of iCloud--but do not know much about it (or understand it, for that matter )....I apologize ahead of time if any of these questions are really common sense--I understand our home computer well enough, but the iPad/app thing is pretty new to me....

Thanks--looking forward to being on the boards,
LMA

This may not be very helpful, but it's how I mostly use the iPad:

I'm not using the iPad as my main writing PC - mostly I'd only use it for writing if I'm travelling or away from home all day and don't want to carry my laptop PC. Generally I create the story as a Doc file on my windows PC (or on an iBook running Word for Mac) and save it to Dropbox; I can then edit it using Docs to Go. The final editing etc. is also done via one of my other PCs. Since I'm a very slow writer, it's unlikely that I would reach a point where I want to post something from the iPad while I'm travelling, but it's easy enough to copy and paste from e.g. a word processor file to a web page - you just can't have the document and a web page open simultaneously on the iPad, which is a nuisance but it's easy enough to switch back and forth between the apps.

iCloud and Docs To Go are basically a way of sharing files between two or more computers. You create a document on e.g. a PC, save it to iCloud or to Dropbox (which looks like a directory on the PC), and it is automatically uploaded to a file server somewhere, then any of the other computers on that account can open it. My PC, the iBook and the iPad can open any of the files that were saved to Dropbox. I haven't personally used iCloud yet, but I think it works much the same way.

Thanks very much for the information, and you definitely made things more clear to me....

I ended up purchasing Pages the other night. It was a lot more user-friendly than I was guessing, and after playing around with it for awhile, I think I overall understand how it works. I had a poem that I wanted to try to submit, so I typed it into the app, and from there figured out how to get it posted here by cutting/pasting. I also saw how easy it is to send it along as a Word document when e-mailing/etc, so now that makes sense to me also.

A little bit of trial and error seems to go a long way

Thanks again--really appreciate the help!
Laura