Since last week everyone with a keyboard has thrown in their two cents about Apple’s newest device, the (poorly named in my opinion) Apple iPad. A tablet computer built to be ‘better than an iPhone and better than a laptop.’

Many have called it a ‘jumbo iPod Touch’ and they’re not far off. Built on the iPhone OS, the iPad really does have some impressive features and what it represents is far more important than it’s current form.

I’m a geek. I know computers pretty well. I’ve fiddled with multiple operating systems, learned to dig through Explorer windows, folders, and libraries to find files, jumped through hoops and at times inflicted upon myself headaches unparalleled trying just make things work *and* look nice.

The iPad is not a tinkerer’s machine (unless [until] you can jailbreak it, then it’s another story.) It’s meant to be a easy, no nonsense way to write emails, check out videos, listen to your music, and browse the web for the Average Joe, who know nothing of command lines or even Start buttons (yes, they’re out there, I work with them.) Computer users who don’t know a program exists on their PC unless there’s a shortcut right on the desktop. There are big, clearly labeled buttons to explain what things do on the iPad, and when you open them, they open full-screen! No managing windows or minimizing or searching the taskbar, no setup required. I think there’s definitely a place for such a device in people’s lives. I think the iPad is going to be a huge hit with baby boomers. No more haranguing their children and grandchildren into teaching them to use a computer; it’ll just come naturally.

Recently I watched a clip on youtube where someone had cut up the keynote last week into just the adjectives. Simple. Easy. Beautiful. That’s what Apple envisions as the future of personal computing. I can’t say I disagree, so long as there’s still something around to tinker with, be it a PC, or an Android device. I’m looking forward very intently to the next iteration of the iPad, or a tablet device running Chrome OS or Android. Apple has made a bold move heading down this path, hopefully others will follow.

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Florida Winter Sunset, originally uploaded by smarthero.

Liked the look of a sunset a few days ago, snapped a photo on my iPhone and ran it through a Polaroid-filter. Really liked the results.

The iPhone is a fantastic device, with many excellent features and apps, but not without it’s faults. Apple’s restrictive policies meant that many features were locked away from a stock device for sake of stability and a solid user experience. Multi-tasking is left by the wayside in favor of giving individual apps plenty of memory, even with the faster and more technically-capable iPhone 3GS. Thus, a community of hackers began to dig into the guts of the iPhone to unlock these features and create apps to take full advantage of the finest smartphone to date. Jailbreaking, as the process of running modified firmware on an iPhone is called, was a risky process in the very beginning. There was the potential of ‘bricking’ your phone, leaving you with a very shiny paperweight. These days, thanks to the iPhone Dev-Team and the infamous iPhone hacker Geohot, jailbreaking the iPhone can be as simple as pressing a button. So, how do you jailbreak the iPhone? There are few different methods, both on Mac and PC. The two biggest are the iPhone Dev-Team’s Mac Pwnage Tool and Geohot’s Windows Blackra1n program. Jailbroken apps can be found on ‘Underground App Stores’ like Cydia and Rock Your Phone. The best how-to instruction for both programs can be found at iClarified, a fantastic Apple resource site. Anyway, enough exposition, on to the pretty pictures! Here’s a quick shot of my homescreen, using a custom theme called Suave with the jailbreak app Winterboard.

Winterboard is the number one jailbreak theming app, allowing you to create custom backgrounds and icons, as well as modifying additional UI elements to your heart’s content. Notice the custom alert badge and five-icon dock.

Above is a combination of two different apps, Backgrounder and Kirikae. Backgrounder, as the name suggests, allows you to run multiple apps at the same time on the iPhone. Instead of having to close out of one, open another, then close out the second to reopen the first, apps are stored in memory. Kirikae puts a solid UI and Windows-like Taskmanager onto Backgrounder, creating a list of favorites for quick-switching and killing backgrounded apps. A must-have for any jailbroken iPhone. The second screenshot includes customized ‘flags’ to indicate what apps are running in the background on the springboard.

One of the biggest quirks of the iPhone is that in order to turn on and off functions like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, you had to dig through several pages of settings to reach their toggles. Jailbreak app SBSettings is an excellent solution. With a single swipe across the top panel of the iPhone, an attractive (and themeable!) UI slides down, with a number of options now just a swipe away.

Finally, there is Orbit, a very slick jailbreak app for quickly moving between pages on your iPhone. Instead of swiping back and forth through up to twelve pages of apps, Orbit creates a Mac-like Exposé view all of your pages, allowing you to jump quickly from your homescreen to your last screen in just two taps.

This is the first of probably a few writeups on the iPhone I’ll be doing since it’s my new Favorite Toy, so expect more sometime soon, likely about some of my favorite apps, both jailbroken and otherwise.

Feel free to throw me some questions or comments!

p8tch is an idea by John Young. You all know about QRCodes, right? They’re a two-dimensional barcode system that is super popular in Japan, and they look like this:

Each QRCode image can hold a small bundle of information, which can be quickly decoded and displayed, often by a camera-equipped cellphone. In Japan it’s often used for marketing, social networking, and of course, porn. A lack of support from US carriers and phone manufacturers has led to the QRCode never really taking root here in America. A number of phone applications have been released to read the QRCode, including a fairly decent one for the iPhone.

What John Young has done is begun selling patches customized each with their own unique QRCodes. The really cool thing about this is that the url that the patch’s code directs to is completely up to you. You could use it to link to your email address, flickr photostream, facebook profile, personal blog, or to a map. It’s a real-life anchor to the digital world. There are a handful of different patches to choose from, each with a unique logo such as this one: