My inner geek is telling me I need a Kindle. Even before the newer and cheaper models I’ve always been drawn towards a Kindle which is strange because I don’t read books, period!

I have an iPad 2 and several eBooks on that in both iBooks and Kindle app format. I’ve started to read books and then lost interest or been distracted by push alerts for a game of Words with Friends of Twitter alerts. That’s one of my issues with the iPad as a reading device, it’s far too easy to get distracted. I should really turn on AirPlane mode if I want to sit down and seriously read a book on the iPad but I just can’t bring myself to do that and I don’t know why.
Reflections and glare have always been my biggest gripe about the iPad and iPad 2, so much so that I recently bought and fitted an anti-glare matte film to my iPad 2 and I’m kicking myself for not doing it sooner, I won’t go into the details but you can read more about that here.Then there is the big issue of readability/legability of books on the iPad screen. I’ve played with Kindles a fair bit and they hands-down beat the iPad in terms of having a natural book-esque quality to the screen and words. The e-ink almost perfectly mirrors a printed page and when I first saw an e-ink screen in a shop I thought it was a dummy display model until the page changed. e-Books were made to be read on an e-ink display like that found in the Kindle, it’s easier on the eye and there are no problems with glare or reflections.

The early Kindle’s suffered from slow page transitions but from what I can tell this is no longer the case on the newer Kindles. Like a real book there’s no illumination for the screen, no backlight at all, so if you want to read in low light in bed you’ll still need your bedside light on. That doesn’t bother me too much but it would be nice if they could make some kind of low power illumination similar to that used in kameleon remotes or the very old Psion Series 5mx palmtop I used to own.

I’d also be a little less precious about a Kindle I think, I don’t know if I’d buy a Kindle cover for it or not, the screens seem pretty robust even if the main unit itself is quite light and feels like cheap plastic. Having tried a variety of different iPad cases I’m sure I could find some Kindle covers I like.

At present I subscribe to a lot of magazines with Zinio and read them when I get chance. These wouldn’t port well to the Kindle’s black and white screen and colour is a must so I’m going to continue reading them on my iPad. However, I’m now teetering on the point of buying a Kindle to try and get me into the habit of taking time out from my busy tech life, leaving my iPhone, iPad 2, MacBook Air and other gizmos in the other room and sitting down to read a good book. I doubt I’d use a Kindle as much as some of my friends who rattle through one if not two books a week, I wish I had that much spare time on my hands but I don’t but I’d certainly like to get into the habit of reading a book a month at least.

My other draw towards getting a Kindle is to see how they cope with PDFs. In work my employees have dozens of technical engineering journals to read every week, they used to be delivered as hard copies in the post but almost all have now converted to issuing PDF only copies of their technical journals. This isn’t a problem for me on the iPad 2 but none of my staff have iPads and I’m not likely to buy them all one any time soon. I have toyed with the idea of buying an office Kindle or two that they could load their PDFs onto and take home to read at nights/weekends but when I last looked into this, the early Kindle’s didn’t handle PDFs very well at all. From what I can gather now though, the latest Kindle have native PDF support and it’s simply a case of drag-n-drop your files via USB.

I have watched several YouTube videos that say in practice PDF viewing on a Kindle should be simple but in practice it’s not. Since the PDFs are not in kindle format you can’t mess around with font styles, font sizes etc and many PDF documents we have are published with text in columns across the page. The Kindle doesn’t appear to have a mode to extract that text to read in a flat page so you end up constantly panning around the page which isn’t very natural or efficient.

Long story short, I’ll still probably buy one of the new Kindles for experimentation and to see if it helps get me into the habit of reading books on a regular basis. Watch this space.

Left = no film, Right = Power Support anti-glare film

If you’ve read my Elago S4 Breathe iPhone 4 case review and my more recent Cool Bananas SmartShell iPad 2 Case Review you should now be getting a feel for the fact that I hate dressing up my Apple devices in anything big and bulky unless absolutely necessary. The same applies when it comes to covering any Apple device screens in a “film” to protect it. Since the very first generation iPhone I’ve been plagued with tiny scratches on the glass, I used to curse every time I saw one, now I just take it in my stride and accept scratches will appear unless I wrap my iPhone and iPad in cotton wool.

I’ve tried all sorts of screen protection for the iPhone in the past and hated the way they all make the screen feel under the finger, Apple spent a long time developing the feel and smoothness of their glass touch-screens and it’s sacriligious to cover them up with a cheap and tacky film. I also used to hate the micro-bubbles that appeared under the films that, no matter how carefully you clean and apply the film, there’s always a few you can’t eliminate. I also found that the films would mark much more easily that the bare/naked glass with a fingernail or similar. Granted the mark is on the now removable film but what’s the point in a film to protect the screen from sightly marks if that film itself marks more easily?

So when I got my original iPad a few years ago I didn’t even entertain the idea of putting an iPad 2 screen protector on the beauty and even after a year’s daily usage the screen remained fairly free from scratches. The same could not, however, be said for greasy finger prints and smudges on the highly reflective iPad screen. I’d go so far as to say the iPad made my OCD demons mad on a daily basis. I bought a special screen cleaning spray (which is very good by the way) and used it regularly to clean my iPad screen.

All was well, I loved my iPad and eagerly awaited the iPad 2, which I upgraded to on launch day. The screen on the iPad 2 was no different to the original although I did find my fancy new smart cover had a tendency to leave 3 vertical lines in the screen smudges so the good old cleaning spray was out in force even more often.

Then came a nice sunny Summer (unusual here in the UK) and I found the iPad’s achilles heel, reflections!! Using the iPad was near impossible outdoors on a bright sunny day, even with the brigtness turned up to the max and the screen free from any greasy finger marks, viewing the iPad 2 outside was not comfortable.

Since I live in the UK and sunny days can be few and far between I dealt with it as best I could, moving into the shade wherever possible to read anything on the iPad. It wasn’t until I booked a long holiday to Florida that I realised I had to find a solution. I subscribe to many digital magazines via Zinio and have several eBooks that I wanted to read whilst sunbathing in Florida. None of this was going to be feasible on the stock iPad screen so I started investigating iPad 2 screen protectors but more specifically, anti-glare screen protectors.

I thought I’d do some thorough research into the best ones around and buy one to try for the holiday and remove it upon returning to the UK. After hours reading on-line reviews and user ratings I decided the best one was probably going to be the Power Support Anti-Glare iPad 2 Screen Protector and sod’s law it had to be one of the most expensive too at £29.95! Wow that’s around the same price as Apple’s Smart Covers for what was essentially going to be a disposable screen anti-glare film for my holiday.

After ordering the £30 film it arrived in the post and when I opened it to have a look I immediately started to get buyer’s remorse. Had I been ripped off? £30 for a thin piece of film? I don’t quite know what I was expecting, maybe I was hoping there would be more than one in the pack in case I messed up the installation first time around. But no, just one single sheet in the big cardboard packet. GULP!

I didn’t rush into fitting the film. I read all the instructions and the extremely helpful fitting video on YouTube

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Then I took the plunge, moved into a dust free environment (i.e. my bathroom with the extraction fan on), cleaned the screen, cleaned the screen again, used a can of compressed air to blow the screen and then peeled back the first film and applied the top edge of the screen protector. Slowly applying the rest of the film as per the video above and finally breathed a sigh of relief when the last edge was down. There were one or two large bubbles which pressed out to the side with ease, it’s strange, the film isn’t like the iPhone films I’ve used before, this film is quite thick and you don’t get small round bubbles, rather large bubble patches that press out easily.

After patting myself on the back for the flawless application of the film I placed my iPad 2 back in the Cool Banana case and immediately noticed a problem. The film is such a snug fit and goes right up to the edge of the glass, the Cool Banana case is also a snug fit on the front and the lip on each corned sligtly covers the edge of the glass, hence touches the anti-glare film. It’s not too big an issue, but it did cause the corners of the film to lift up a little and since I thought this could let dust and other bits of gunk under the film I decided for the purpose of my holiday I’d rather have the anti-glare film and sacrifice the rear protection of the Cool Banana case for now.

Cool Banana case causing film to lift in the corners

Text remains nice and clear/sharp even with the anti-glare matte film fitted

My first surprise was how clear the screen still was with a film on it. My second and biggest surprise was how the film felt under the finger. I’m going to stick my neck out here and say it feels better than Apple’s bare glass. On the bare glass I found that my finger encountered differering levels of resistance when I swiped over a particularly greasy area of the screen. Not apple’s fault, my fault for having greasy fingers I suppose but with the anti-glare film there was no greasy residue just a smooth dry surface for my finger to swipe across.

Now onto the main reason for fitting the film on the iPad 2, the anti-glare properties. Wow! Seriously, wow! This film is amazing, you can honestly sit in full Florida lunch time sun, on a beach and read everything on the iPad screen without straining your eyes, moving into shade or trying to tilt your iPad to an un-natural position to reduce glare.

Two of the guys on holiday also had tablets, one had an iPad 2 and the other a Motorola Xoom and they were impressed with the film too. The Xoom owner is your typical “anti-everything-Apple” geek but even he had to admit the iPad 2 with anti glare film was the only device that could be used out in direct Florida sunshine. He even used it over his Xoom to check some work emails and football scores because it meant he could stay around the pool rather than go inside and use his Xoom.

left = with anti-glare film, right = no anti glare film

I completely forgot to take photos of the iPad 2, Xoom and iPad 2 with anti-glare film side by side in the sunshine whilst in Florida but I did remember when I got to the airport which had some pretty large and harsh fluorescent lights overhead. I loaded the same BBC news article on both iPad 2′s and tried taking some crude side-by-side comparison photos. They’ve not come out as well as expected but you can clearly see a big reduction in reflection of the ceiling lights. Once an iPad enabled friend comes over I’ll do some much better comparison shots with fixed lights, tripods, etc and also a video to help demonstrate just how good the Power Support Anti-Glare iPad 2 Screen Protector really is.

As a testament to how good the film really is, I’ve been back from Florida for 2 months now and the film is still on my iPad 2 for several reasons:

1. The reflection reduction is so good.
2. The lack of greasy fingerprint and smudge marks
3. I prefer the feel of the film to the original glass
4. It’s protecting my glass from any scratches.
5. …it’s expensive and I don’t want to waste it when it’s this good.

It was proving pretty tricky to photograph so I resorted to my trusty Veho USB Microscope
to get a video and some photos at the end of the post.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

You can press along the top and this gap flexes in and out but it’s resting position is with a gap probably just less than 1mm. This might not sound like much and you may not notice it initially, especially on the black iPad 2′s but on the white ones, once this gap starts to gather some dust and dirt it really starts to become noticeable.

I made an appointment at the local Genius Bar and showed them the problem, on the way through the store I stopped and checked all 16 or so iPad 2 they had on display and none of them had this issue. The genius at first wasn’t sure so he sought a second opinion and the 2nd Genius straight away said “that’s not right, I wouldn’t be happy with it if it was my iPad” so they agreed to swap it out for a new one. Even though they were out of stock for sale iPad 2′s, they have a separate stock for exchanges and repairs and luckily for me they had one white 64GB white one.

He brought the new one out, passed it to me in the cellophane wrap to double check the new one whilst he started doing the paper work. Unfortunately the replacement one he handed me to inspect had an even bigger gap just under neath the headphone socket but only about 1 inch long unlike the one I took back which had a 5-6 inch long gap.

The genius seemed a little surprised too and went out the back for quite a while, eventually he came back and said since I rejected that one and they had no others in he’d have to order me one, so I’m waiting for a call to let me know when they’ve got it in.

Some of you may think I’m being a little fussy here, but let’s just remember how proud Apple were of the tight fit and finish and tolerances of the iPhone 4 bezel and metal surround (even if it did have a few holding-it-wrong issues) and let’s also not forget this isn’t some £100 palm-pilot from the 90′s, this is a £700 tablet (including the smart cover which of all the iPad 2 accessories is the only thing I’ve bought so far) and if I’m parting with £700 for something it needs to be 100% right.

UPDATE 26th April 2011: I had a call from Apple to say that the replacement iPad 2 they had ordered was in store. I tried calling to ask them to inspect it before I drove for an hour to the store but their stupid phone system auto-hangs up every time so I had to make the drive. I checked the new unit and whilst there were no gaps around the bezel, the left hand side aluminium was badly scratched (where the smart cover connects). I asked if it was a refurb unit to which they said no, I pointed out the marks and said I’m rejecting this one too and he took it out the back for 5 minutes and came back out with a brand new sealed retail unit. They apologised for messing me around and gave me the brand new retail unit which upon inspection seems perfect. So as far as quality control and build quality go for the new iPad 2, it’s not looking good, I rejected 3 out of 4 units!

1 – REJECTED my original one as seen in the photos and videos with a long gap across the top

2 – REJECTED the first replacement offered to me with a smaller but wider gap under the headphone socket

3 – REJECTED the second replacement offered to me a week later with no gaps but badly damaged down the left hand side

4 – ACCEPTED the new retail unit they opened for me, no marks, scratches or gaps…since getting it home I’ve noticed some light bleed around the edges but can’t be bothered going back to the store again just yet.

I bought my MacBook Air in Feb 2008 and for the last 11 months I’ve always been frustrated with the restrictive screen angle. It didn’t seem to go much past vertical (roughly 120°) so there were certain situations when I had it on my lap where I could not get the screen back far enough to view comfortably.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) my MacBook Air hinge broke/snapped the other day and this has resulted in the screen folding almost completely flat (roughly 160°).

There were no suspicious “circumstances” when the hinge broke, it had been sat on my desk from the previous day with the lid shut and I simply opened the lid whilst the MacBook Air was on my desk and when the screen reached the usual point of resistance (roughly 120°) there was a momentary feel of resistance followed by a snapping/popping sound and the screen then went completely flat.

The screen was still working perfectly normally, no loss in general resistance of the hinge, the backlight was functioning ok, the picture was perfect and there were no nasty noises when opening and closing the screen.

The hinges appeared to be in tact when inspected just above the keyboard so I closed the lid and lifted it up to inspect the underside of the hinges. It was then that I noticed two tiny (and I mean tiny) specs of metal/plastic sitting on my desk roughly where the hinge was. On inspection they appear to be some kind of light weight alloy metal and look like they have sheared off at one end.

I kept hold of them both and tried to get some photos of them with my digital camera but they were too small too get a decent macro focus on, so instead I resorted to my Veho USB Microscope (handy Christmas present) to take some photos and have included a pencil tip, pin tip and ruler for scale purposes just so you can get an idea of just how small these pieces are. [see the gallery at the end of the post for all the photos]

I’m guessing that these two small parts were integrated into the hinge as “stops” to prevent the screen from opening too far. If that is the case then making them just over 1mm wide seems a little daft to me and I’m not surprised they have snapped.

I don’t really mind too much that the screen now opens to around 160° but I’m taking it in for repair this week just incase the excessive opening angle is causing any ribbon cables or similar connecting the screen to the motherboard to rub and wear through. There do appear to be numerous cases of this mentioned across the web, many seem to just have the screen open flat like me but a few others have cracked hinges and completely broken hinges.

I shall update once I’ve heard back from Apple Service.

UPDATE (4th Feb 2009): I’ve now picked my MBA back up from repair and I’ve got a brand new lcd screen, surround, lid and hinge, basically the upper half has been completely replaced and from what I’ve researched that always seems to be the case, replacing the whole screen assembly rather than just the hinges. I have noticed that the new screen seems to suffer from the dreaded horizontal grey lines syndrome I’ve been reading about, I guess it’s a screen from the new Rev-B models, it’s certainly not as crisp as my old screen but I’m going to spend some time with it first before I decide if I’ll complain about it. Also, because of a problem with the date and time being lost every time the battery ran low I’ve also got a brand new battery, which was nice.

The iPhone is in perfect condition otherwise, there’s no marking on the rest of the screen or casing. He’s hoping to get it replaced/repaired under warranty but as the nearest Apple store is nearly an hour away he’s sensibly waiting until he’s next in the area.

Some people have mentioned that Apple won’t repair cosmetic defects under warranty but since this is under the glass and there’s no way he could have caused it himself I think they should.

Has anybody else has similar problems?