The Eye Game   Bill Storage's photo blog

Photos look great on the iPad. As long as you’re pulling them from a website. Noting a lot of hype last year about the iPad being a photographer’s best friend I recently bought an iPad camera connection kit (beautifully packaged, like everything from Apple) so I could view photos straight from the camera. I plugged my CF card into the camera connection kit and my iPad complained that the connected USB device requires too much power.

Apparently Apple reduced the USB output by 80% in iOS 4.2, rendering the camera kit useless for CF cards and didn’t bother reporting that fact to prospective consumers of the camera kit. Their site still says: “The iPad Camera Connection Kit gives you two ways to import photos and videos from a digital camera: using your camera’s USB cable or directly from an SD card.”

Many others reported what I found. One photographer reported specifically buying an iPad to review photos with clients at the end of a shoot. “The fact that Apple has suddenly and without any warning stopped supporting the camera connection kit is appalling.”
I might have researched the issue in advance if not for the constant praise of iPad I hear from photograpers. E.g., Apple iPad – A Photographer’s Best Friend and The iPad – The Best Device For Photographers.

Really? You can’t use the iPad to transfer photos from a camera or its memory card onto a portable hard drive. Even if the iPad’s memory were large enough to hold all the images from a photo vacation, you can’t transfer them to the iPad without using a bunch of hardware that negates the iPad’s weight and size advantage. A Toshiba mini-laptop with the same size screen as an iPad costs half as much, has a keyboard, and can actually transfer images between external memory devices.

As long as you are in consumption mode, the iPad works well. The minute you  try to produce, arrange, annotate, edit, or do anything creative, the thing is useless. There’s some degree of humor in this, given Apple’s stated commitment to creativity.

I’m not the first to offer this sentiment. Vivek Wadhwa, an eloquent and bold individual who regularly calls Silicon Valley on its fanboy silliness, notes in Why I’m Craigslisting My iPads that the iPad’s “means of transferring documents—through iTunes—is pathetic.”

Despite the fact that Safari crashes evey time I visit an interesting site, I still use it often. My iPad answers two important questions for me each day:
1.) What other movie was that actor in?
2.) What ingredients do I need for Thai green curry?

A1: M. Emmet Walsh was also in Blood Simple: “Now in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else - that’s the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas, an’ down here –  you’re on your own.”

A2:
1 pound chicken breast  cut into 1 inch cubes
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons cooking oil
2 tablespoons green curry paste
2 green onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 cups coconut milk
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup cilantro leaves, for garnish