PS. It also goes out on our facebook page.

~ Brooke

We’ll we’re here in line at the Apple Store at Jordan Creek Mall in Des Moines, Iowa. I woke up at about midnight and got everything all packed up. I’ve got a friend with me and we headed out. I’ve got a MacBook Pro with an AT&T cellular card, an iPad 3G, and my iPhone 3GS all with a lot of battery power and backup battery. Before I left home I checked out Twitter to see if anyone was here yet. Here’s the pic I found:

So far we’ve heard one crying baby and a guy throwing up so this should be an interesting night. It seems like there’s a decent mix of preorder and nonpreorders. I came to the store earlier in the day and they confirmed there were enough iPhones that I would get mine. I’m still waiting in line I’ll keep you update through this blog and Ustream live video streaming later in the morning.

Below are few pics of the line this morning:

That was Sunday. I thought it was just an automated email just to make me think they were still thinking about me and I was important. Then Monday comes and I was very busy blogging about the new iPhone. Once the WWDC keynote was over I finally got to checking my email and I had this email:

I headed out to the Apple store right away and while paying for my iPad I logged into Apple’s website in the store and canceled my online order. Here’s my first picture of my iPad!

Of course I wasn’t smart enough to have them activate it in the store so I had to wait until I was at a computer to set it up.

I’ve had my iPad a couple days now and have it jailbroken already. I’ll be writing about that, apps, hacked apps, and a review on the iPad itself.

Let me know your favorite App Store apps or hacks from Cydia so I can test them out.

Right now my iPhone has all my music on it that I own. I know, it’s not a lot but it is about 1,400 songs. I don’t think I”ll be putting any music on my iPad. I also have 312 apps which really don’t take a lot of room. My available capacity is 14.7 GB. I originally bought the 32GB iPhone 3GS so I wouldn’t be restricted on taking pictures and video. If I wanted to record a 30min clip, I didn’t want to be limited by space. On the iPad, I won’t be taking pictures or video so I won’t need that extra space. As for watching videos like movies, I probably won’t be ripping videos to my iPad. Most movies we watch are from Redbox so use a laptop or my 24″ iMac.

I also want some accessories. I for sure want the camera connection kit. With all the “unsupported” peripherals I just have to have the USB connection. I’d like a dock for my office, just to save desk space, but I can get that later. I will, for sure, get a case but I will spend a lot of research looking for the best one. I’ve heard bad things about Apple’s case. Let me know what case you like the best and other accessories you recommend.

Of course there are all kinds of hacks for the iPad already. I will start reviewing these right away. I will for sure be jailbreaking my iPad.

Apple’s website says that the iPad will ship in 7-10 business days and then it will take up to 5 days to be shipped and delivered. I’ll be sure to be tweeting it’s progress so stay tuned. Their website shows shipping out on June 16th and delivered on June 21st.

The company that develops this is Brave New Code and they have announced some updates coming in the future to the plugin for WordPress.

Themes – This means that not all blogs with this plugin will look the same. We can customize the look how we want it.

Web-app mode – This will affect our readers the most. Check out the details from Brave New Code:

For iPhone/iPod touch visitors this means they can bookmark your website to their home-screen and your website will automatically be saved as a self-contained application which will run in fullscreen mode.

This means no address bar at the top of the screen, nor navigation bar at the bottom. Just your mobile site, in full and glorious view.

All posts, pages, comments, etc., are handled with Ajax, and assets and resources for your mobile site will be saved and stored locally on a visitors device using HTML5 cache technology, whether in web-app mode or not. This means a super-fast and highly-optimized, custom website experience for your website visitors, as native as one can get to a native application on the iPhone/iPod touch.

Other features for website owners include a new admin panel, a paid options with more features like real tech support, not just reading their forums and easier for current plugins to work along with being easier to create plugins for WPtouch specifically. You can also create a loading page for your web app like the one below:

Loading Screen for Web App

Links

Blog Post from Brave New Code: http://www.bravenewcode.com/2010/05/the-big-changes-in-wptouch-2-0/

Don’t expect this too soon. The Beta hasn’t even been released yet. We’ll let you know when we change things.

Thanks to our number one fan, we now have an iPhone app! Matthew Batey tweeted me this morning and sent me these two screenshots of an app he made for us.

Right now it’s available through his source at http://web.me.com/matthewbatey/Matthew_Batey/Cydia and I’ve added that source to our Sources Page. He has some other stuff in there too so check it out! He’s submitted it to the BigBoss repo too.

This app is pretty simple but it gives you direct access to our website, forum, Twitter account and YouTube videos and there’s buttons for refresh, back, forward and stop. If there’s anything else you’d like to see on the app, let us know!

ScreenShots

Ok, so not all of my apps will be in folders, but it’s still not real pretty. With categories I could pick my own icon. And I could put more than 12 apps in a folder. The way the folders open and work is really kewl, but there are still limits. It is definitely easier to create and edit what’s in a folder in 4.0 than it is in categories. It opens faster and looks better too.

So I miss the ability to really customize things and have no limits on things. I really miss SBSettings. I use it a lot to turn of and on wifi, adjust my brightness and lock my screen from rotating. I’ve swiped the status bar a few times forgetting that it’s gone. Speaking of the status bar, I also miss having the temperature up there. I use it every morning when getting ready to run or get my kids ready.

Something Apple has never fixed that is REALLY ANNOYING is when you get a text message, you get a popup with the message. I hate this. When you’re on a phone call and get a few text messages you have to close them all before hitting end and hope no one around you says something they shouldn’t… That’s why I love popup blocker and quick dismiss. This allows you to get texts and not get any popup or only get them when your iPhone is locked. Quick dismiss lets you hit the home button to close the popup without removing the badge on the Messages app and then you can get to it later.

I also used popup blocker along with status notifier to show me when I have text messages, again, in the status bar. It will show other things like email or missed calls. Another app I used all the time and keep trying to use is SnapTap. This lets me take a picture by hitting the volume button when the camera app is open instead of trying to hit the little button on the screen. It will also start and stop a video recording.

All of these little hacks, mods, and customizations will keep me jailbreaking my iPhone. It’s nice to have Apple integrating (stealing) these features into their firmware. I really think they asked the question of “Why do people jailbreak?” and tried to add those features. Folders, homescreen wallpaper, backgrounding, spell checker and many more jailbreak apps may become obsolete with this update but I still think we will always jailbreak!

Once we got there I asked the staff if I had to stand in line to buy something other than the iPad. She said no and that I could go right in and if I wanted I could look at an iPad. I went in and bought my Airport Extreme and checked out the iPad after I was done. It is very amazing and I can’t wait to get one. I did notice that it was a little heavier than I thought and my arm did get tired after standing and holding it for a while. Still, amazing. Anyway, while I was standing there showing it to my wife I saw the news videographer setting up for a shot inside the store. I told my wife and we tried to act normal. Later, I forgot all about it and someone ended up telling me on Facebook that they saw me on the 6:00 news. I caught a later airing and here’s the video and a screenshot from the few seconds we were famous…

Video

I also took a couple screenshots on the iPad of our website in Safari. For those wondering, you can take screenshots just the same way you can on an iPhone or iPod touch. Just push the home button and the lock/power button at the same time.

ScreenShots