Show Off Your Digital Photos With Apple’s New iPad
Touch-Screen Tablet Lets Digital Photos Shine
With digital cameras and photo scanning becoming more and more common, many of us have large collections of digital photos. And though this trend of moving photos to digital has made life easier in many ways, it brings with it new complications. Sure, emailing photos is a piece of cake, but what’s the best way to display your digital photos in the kitchen? Or in the living room? And how should you show grandma the photos of your latest trip to Disneyland when you visit her this weekend?
What’s the best way to share and show off your digital photos? According to Steve Jobs and the rest of the crew at Apple Inc., that’s an easy question. The much anticipated Apple iPad, a tablet-like touch-screen computing device that will hit shelves at the end of March, has seen more hype in the tech news than any device since Apple launched its game-changing iPhone back in 2007. Apple calls its newest creation a “magical and revolutionary product,” and confidently declares it to be “the best way to experience the web, email, photos, and video. Hands down.”
The device, which measures 7.47 inches wide by 9.56 inches tall by 0.5 inch thick, is dominated by the 9.7-inch glass-covered capacitive touch screen. With a screen resolution of 1,024×768 pixels and a technology called in-plane switching (IPS) to boost viewing angles far beyond those of a traditional laptop screen, the iPad’s display does seem like a great way to show off your photos, both around the house and on the go.
On the software side of things, the iPad runs a version of the same intuitive operating system that runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This can be seen as a good thing or a terrible thing. On the plus side, millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users already know exactly how to operate the yet-to-be-released iPad, and the interface is so intuitive that a baby could use it. On the downside, the operating system’s simplicity brings with it several limitations, the most significant being that the device can only run one application at a time, and that the only way to get new applications is through Apple’s own App Store.
Fortunately, Apple redesigned the iPhone’s photo app specifically for the iPad, and it really lets your digital photos shine in ways that just aren’t possible with other devices. Want to show off your old family photo albums? You can scan your old photos to digital and import them onto the iPad in seconds. Got a digital camera? Import directly from your SD card. The iPad displays photos as tiny “stacks” of thumbnails, which you can easily expand, browse through, and move around. When the iPad is docked in its charging station, it becomes a digital photo frame, displaying a montage of photos using a wide variety of beautifully fluid slideshow settings.
All said, the iPad isn’t for everyone, but it can be used by anyone. Some say it can’t do enough, but it does do certain things, like photos, really really well. Look for it starting in late March, or check it out at www.apple.com.
Tags: Apple, iPad, photos to digital