My new iPad. Kind of.

I am writing this on my new iPad! Well, it's an iPad 2, so I'm not sure if i can say 'new iPad', but still, I got it last week and have been experimenting on it.

I'm having fun attempting to play the piano (not particularly possible with the app I have) and drawing right on the screen. I've always wished I could have a backspace button on actual pen-and-paper drawing, and now it's almost like I do. The app I have doesn't colour in exactly like coloured pencils, though, so I've got to figure out a way to get the effects I want without layering the same as I would with real pencils.

But... Writing! I was quite excited to start syncing my iPad with Scrivener, so I set myself up with Dropbox and a text editor, went into Scrivener, looked for the sync button and... It's not there!!!!! I have the Windows version, which doesn't have syncing yet, so I have to find another way to do things until they update it.

In the meantime, I've been trying to find out all the little secrets that help you type quickly on an iPad screen, and realising how much I rely on some things that do not exist on a virtual keyboard. Good tip: pressing and holding the comma will give you an apostrophe, or, even better, swiping up on the comma will do the same thing. Most other things I can work around (though I find I keep pressing the space bar by mistake), but I soon realised an important set of buttons that are missing. The arrow keys.

Where be-eth my arrow keys? I searched online and found a few forums with people arguing for and against arrow keys (why do you need them on a touch-based system, people argue), but I would really, really like some arrow keys. It's annoying to have to zoom in and out when you want to move the cursor one or two letters, especially when the autocorrect has done something stupid and you want to fix just one letter. I've since found that if you touch and hold, a little magnifying glass appears and you can move the cursor easier, but I still would like my arrow keys. Fingers are too big to move the cursor quickly. Apple should add some arrow keys.

Ooh! Or maybe they could ship tiny pet fairies with the device, and you could get the fairies to move the cursor. I think if Apple could do that, I would be happy.