Paul Mayne blogs here since 2003.

I’ve launched my first iPad application, a game I designed for my kids who love to play memory card games. My sons (not including baby Dylan) are 4 and 6 years old. It was a lot of fun using them for ideas on the graphics, features and sounds. Seeing their eyes light up was priceless when I showed then the initial designs and especially when we had a working game on the iPad.

The game was designed to play with 1-4 players and is a perfect family activity. Even young kids understand the concept right away. The game is live and available for download on the iTunes Store for $.99. If you like it, a star rating and review would be much appreciated.

Designing for the iPad is a lot of fun. I can imagine it will be fun to design for the iPhone 4 high-res screen as well, something I plan to do soon.

Application page | iTunes Store Page

— July 2nd, 2010

I’ve been using at iMac 27-inch as an external display for my new Macbook Pro for over a month. I’m here to report that as beautiful as the high-resolution LED screen is, this machine is not made to use as an external display.

Why?

More pixels, that’s why. If you’re a designer and you’ve had the luxury of working on a 30″ display, it’s very hard to go back to anything smaller (in terms of pixels). Despite not being updated in six years, Apple’s 30-inch Cinema Display (2560 pixels wide) is the only (Apple) display option if you want more that 1920 pixels wide. And they are still charging $1800 for that beast. For $1700, you can purchase the base model 27-inch iMac, which has an amazingly brilliant LED backlit display with the same pixel width as the 30-inch display, 2560, just at a higher pixel density (108 dpi on the iMac 27-inch vs 100 dpi on the 30-inch Cinema). The 30-inch Cinema has more pixels in height, 1600, while the iMac 27-inch has 1440.

Even with less total pixels, I prefer the iMac screen to the old Cinema LCD screens. They are so much brighter and vibrant.

Apple has been very slow to update the LED Cinema Display line to any size other than the 24-inch. MacRumors reports on why. Sounds like we’re due for the 27-incher next month.

What’s the Deal?

Here’s a list of the issues you will find when using an iMac as an external display for a Macbook:

• The iMac must be awake and fully booted into OSX in order to function as an external display. This mean lots of wasted power and fan noise.
• When waking the Macbook, if you don’t first wake the iMac, the only way for the Macbook to recognize the display is to unplug and re-plug in the mini display cord.
• The above issues make having a dedicated mouse and keyboard for the iMac a requirement. Thus, I have 2 mice and 2 keyboards on my desk. This sucks.
• Can’t make use of the built-in iSight camera, mic or speakers on the iMac (like you can with the 24-inch LED Cinema Display).
• Can’t control the brightness on the iMac display, either from display controls or from the keyboard. Must switch the display back to the iMac’s OS and adjust there. Command+F2 on the iMac’s keyboard.
• Can’t make use of the USB ports. This mean more cord management with using your Macbook on the desk.

Overall, you don’t get any of the plug-and-play features that make using an LED Cinema Display so nice. But you do get that amazing screen.

— May 21st, 2010

I’ve been a happy iPad owner since day one. Even as the first version of the device, it’s well refined, useful, fast, a beautiful screen and has a battery life that doesn’t quit. It’s not without some issues, most notably the is the wifi connection bug. It seems about once every other day I’ll lose my wifi connection (mid-use) and have to open the settings and re-connect. It also get’s poor wifi reception compared to my Macbook and iPhone.

Overall, it’s made reading and consuming information much more pleasurable than holding a laptop or staring at a tiny phone screen when lounging around the house or riding in a car.

Here’s a review of the apps that I’ve been enjoying on the iPad for that past couple weeks:

GoodReader – $.99 – Want to read your PDF’s on the iPad? I have a fair amount of books in PDF format that I wanted to read on my iPad. This utility is great at getting your PDFs onto the iPad by either the file transfer via iTunes, or my favorite, via network using your Dropbox account. The actual reader interface needs some improvement, better page turning, and the overall interface is a little buggy.

Instapaper Pro – $4.99 – This is my go-to app when laying in bed. Instapaper is simple way to mark an item you want to read later (via a browser bookmarklet) on your desktop machine. You then sync your “read later” items into Instapaper on the iPhone or iPad for easy to read text versions of the page, available for offline viewing. I’ve used this app a ton on my iPhone, but with the larger screen on the iPad, this app makes reading articles a pleasure. Bonus that the iPad app is free for iPhone Pro users as they made the same app dual-compatible. I also like that many twitter clients and rss readers integrate with a “sent to Instapaper” option.

AirVideo – $2.99 – This beauty let’s me stream those 100′s of .mkv movies I have on our Media center PC over my local network. You need to install an app on the server machine, then you can see your video folder. There’s the option to “Play with live conversion” or you can set a queue to convert your videos to iPad compatible format, which will stream via this app, or you can copy into iTunes to transfer onto the iPad. The live conversion works good if your server machine is a decent and you’re getting good wifi reception. Otherwise you get buffering, but have the option to set the quality to lower if you have problems. Awesome app!

NetNewsWire – $9.99 – The best RSS feed reader on the mac that syncs with your Google Reader account. The iphone app wasn’t great, but this iPad app is quite good. Simple, easy to use, fast. Definitely missing a “Mark item as unread” option.

Things – $19.99 – My tool for managing my tasks. Fantastic desktop app, great iPhone app and now the best of all, the iPad app. Beautiful design to a concept and interface that makes creating logging and managing your to-dos a pleasure. As much as I love this app there are two major downsides: no cloud-based syncing and the price. The wifi direct sync to the desktop app requires all devices to be open to sync, it’s hokey. The desktop app is $50 and iPad app $20, but I suppose you pay for quality. I just hope they don’t charge for the update that adds cloud sync.

1Password – $6.99 – An invaluable app on the desktop to manage and save passwords. With as much use I get from the iPad browser, having all my passwords right there is fantastic. I just wish I could populate my passwords in the native Safari browser (rather than the in-app browser), as the in-app browser is quite limited, like you can’t bookmark sites or save images.

Plants vs. Zombies HD – $9.99 – I got sucked into this game. Don’t buy unless you want to spend countless hours shooting zombies with peas. Awesome graphics, sound and really fun gameplay with some strategy.

Twitterific – free – A decent twitter app but I expect better options to be available soon from Echofon or Tweetie (which is now Twitter for iPhone/iPad, purchased by Twitter).

Safari – native – Very impressive. With the exception of missing the Flash player, this browser is a pleasure to use and easy to read and interact with almost any website I’ve visited.

— April 19th, 2010

Thanks to my new found circumstances which include working full-time freelance, I’ve been in the market for a new Macbook Pro. Watching at the Apple rumor mill and seeing the release cycle for the MacBook Pro line was well overdue for a refresh, I held off. Impatiently waiting for a Tuesday morning I would wake to find the Apple store down for maintenance. (The longest Macbook Pro Streak without an update is 266 days. The current is at 263 days. This will be tied this Monday or broken Tuesday.)

I’ve been using my wife’s 2.0 GHz Macbook, it’s ok, but not up for running apps quickly and with only 2GB ram I could only open a handful of apps at once. As painful as it was, I couldn’t bring myself to pay full-price for the current MBP line knowing the next line will have the i5 and i7 processors. But after three weeks I’d had enough, caved and purchased a 27-inch iMac with the 2.8 GHz i7 processor and 8MB ram. The machine is fast, the LED screen is magnificent.

As great as this machine is, I already miss the portability of a laptop machine. I work remotely often and enjoy working (specifically coding) away from my office. When designing I prefer plugging into a large screen.

So I’m still in the market for a MacBook Pro, just not as urgent. I may wait until Apple releases 27 or 30-inch LED Cinema displays, then post my iMac on Craigslist.

— February 26th, 2010

Here are a few of my favorites from the past year.

Best New Band: Passion Pit
Not the typical Indie Folk stuff I’m really into, more electronic sounding, but something about it soothes my soul. I had quite an adventure getting into their sold out show in Salt Lake last Oct. but persistence paid off and it was an incredible set.

Best Album: M. Ward – Hold Time
M. Ward has his own style and continues to put out amazing music that I can listen to any time. Was lucky enough to see him play a live set this Summer Gallivan Center, Twilight Concert Series.

Best Live Show: Avett Brothers – Red Butte Gardens
Can’t beat seeing an amazing band with good friends on the grass at Red Butte. These guys jam and sing and wax poetic. Glad my buddy Brian insisted we sit up close.

Best Movie: Fantastic Mr. Fox
I’m a huge fan of Director Wes Anderson, so I will admit, anything he creates I will mostly likely rave about. But this one was especially sweet as I enjoy nothing more than sharing a good time with my sweet kidos. Jackson, Eli and I enjoyed watching all the promos and teasers and trailers that were released on Apple Trailers in the weeks before the theater release. They were often heard quoting many lines of the film before we even saw it. “Don’t cuss and point at me!”

Best Moment: Seeing Dylan Mayne Born
We will always remember spending all morning glued to CNN watching a hot air balloon fly over Colorado. Then our cute little fella arrived.

Best Video Game: Beatles Rock Band
A great way to re-live all these amazing tracks with my little ones. Supported with some incredible and colorful motion graphics and illustrations that make it such a pleasure to play.

Best Desktop App: Things
Keeps me in focus when I let it. Great lifehack tool.

Best iPhone App: Tweetie 2
Best way to digest my Twitter addiction.

Overall it’s been a great year. We went on a couple awesome family vacations, Disneyland / Seaworld and my fav place Sun Valley Idaho. I’m blessed with beautiful children and a sweet wife and I get to spend a lot of time with them doing the things we love. And I get to golf a lot. I can’t really ask for anything more than that.

— January 3rd, 2010