The stock one stinks.

The power cable which comes with the iPod could hardly be more chintzy. It has a hard to grasp connector at the iPod end and the little ears you press to disconnect it are …. missing. No more captive connectors from Apple, it seems.

To add insult to injury, the cable is a miserable 3 feet long. Hey, Apple, I understand profit margins as well as the next guy, but I also do not particularly enjoy a kick in the crotch after blowing $650 on one of your products.

Anyway, the answer is both simple and inexpensive:

It comes from Cables-to-Go via Amazon, is five feet long, uses far sturdier cable, has a properly designed captive connector which works and the other end can be plugged into your computer or into the iPad’s power transformer, which is the fastest way to recharge it. Finally, the ‘up’ side is ribbed so you don’t have to search for that microscopic logo Apple imprints on the poor stock design. It works as well with the iPhone as with the iPad. And at $9, what’s not to like?

Disclosure: AAPL long stock position has appreciated 27.5 32gB iPads since iPad Day, 4/3/2010, of which I have blown 2.0

A useful drawing tool.

The Pogo Stylus for the iPhone and iPod Touch works just fine with the iPad. In the picture it’s shown attached with the provided clip to my 3G iPhone, where it adds value if you have difficulty pecking away at the minuscule keyboard. But with the iPad it really comes to life.

I have been experimenting with an iPad drawing app named ArtStudio which lays low those unthinking statements from ‘experts’ that would have it that the iPad is an information recovery tool only. It’s a creative tool which will only move to strength over the next few quarters.

One thing I have wanted to do for a while is to create an app logo for this blog, PPP, which can be added to your desktop/laptop/iPhone/iPad home screen by simply clicking the ‘+’ sign in the Safari Menu Bar. Thereafter, when you need a fix and desire to read the best, commercial free writing on photography on the planet, with pithy asides at no additional cost, you simply invoke the desktop and click the logo. So that was my first creation using ArtStudio on the iPad and after a few swooshes with the Pogo stylus the thing was done:

Icon design for PPP

Yeah, so I like ballet, couture and art, but I also like my meat rare and my motions up and to the right. And I hope to jump on my old motorbike and run over some elderly ladies later today, in case you have any doubts about my orientation. So thrusting up and to the right it is.

Now I have to figure out the arcana of php or whatever the hell that code language is to plug this thing into PPP and make it clickable.

ArtStudio totally rocks – get it, along with a $12 Pogo stylus. You can set the stylus to draw lines offset from its point of contact, by the way, so that you can see what you are drawing.

Logo update:

I figured out how to do this for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Load this site in Safari, hit the ‘+’ on the MenuBar and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’ – renaming the logo PPP. You will see this on your mobile device:

Click on the icon and your favorite photography site now displays in iPhone-friendly format, thus:

Touch the down arrow and you will see these choices – including a link to send me an email:

Finally, touch Categories on this screen and you will see:

Still working on getting this right for the iPad. Grrr!

To foreign banksters, oligarchs and Colombians only.

Given the supply shortage and my natural proclivity to arbitrage every asset I own, I have decided to sell my iPad.

Delivered by overnight mail to any location on earth against receipt of cleared funds (used notes, non sequentially numbered are preferred) the price is a modest $1,999, shipping included. See below for important update. For a small premium to the retail price you can hold tomorrow in your hands today, or at least by Friday, if you get my drift.

Hang on a minute – this just in from HQ:

OK, scrap that earlier price. Yours for $3,999.

May be worth considering.

I have railed before about the terrible economics of most equipment warranties. Terrible, that is, for the buyers, not for the insurance companies which write them. And if there are three words guaranteed to put this taxpayer on guard, they are ‘politicians’, ‘lawyers’ and ‘insurance’. In the case of the insurance industry you have all three. Politicians bought with the legal bribes which pass as campaign donations in the US, lawyers dominating the ranks of insurer and his client, the politician, and of course, underwriters.

A successful insurance company is one which is the most adept at not paying claims – which is why they have armies of lawyers to obfuscate and bureaucratize the claims process – and one of whose worst unintended consequences is that they encourage the insured claimant to engage in fraud, “I’ll get my own back on those crooks” being the prevailing mindset.

So when the nice Geniuses at the Apple Store were through applauding me for blowing $1,300 on a couple of iPads on April 3, the next thing I was offered was – you guessed it – an insurance policy.

There are many slick marketing ways of disguising an insurance policy as something else, every insurer knowing that he and his cohorts are despised. One of the best at this is the American Automobile Association, or Triple A for short. Under the guise of Doing Good (sounds like Google to me) it’s nothing more than an insurance operation fronted for by the local tow truck operator. “We’ll get you out of trouble when you’re stuck” is the sales pitch when the reality is “Good luck getting anything other than a free tow from us, doofus”.

Apple, never one to throw away a good lesson, calls its insurance product AppleCare. You see, they really care about you and your Mac, though not so much when, like most of mine, it fails a few weeks out of the warranty period. That is nothing more than an opportunity for another sale or a jolly good hosing on fixing the old machine.

So I had given the issue of AppleCare some thought before iPad Day and decided against it, primarily because one of the very few Apple devices that actually lasted for me was my 2G iPhone. Given like technology in the iPad, and a general absence of moving parts – the latter limited to a few switches – I reckoned I would take my chances. However, once I started using the iPad (and, equally importantly, once our 8 year old got his hands on it – hey, I have to have someone to blame) I quickly concluded that this is one of the most droppable tools ever made. Slick all over with nothing to afford a good purchase for a one-handed pickup, it’s just asking to be dropped.

AppleCare, however, does not offer accidental damage coverage. I snooped around a bit and came across a business named FairTrade whose core focus seems to be on insuring electronics, cameras and the like. They boast an A- rating from Bests, the insurance rating people, but take no notice of that. These jerks rated AIG A+ right before it blew costing the US taxpayer over $100bn and counting. They must employ the people who didn’t make it at Standard & Poors, Moody’s and Ffitch, the criminal cabal which gave us Triple A ratings on CDO mortgages. But I did take time to scan the hundreds of rating on the web for their service and came away impressed.

Now it’s quite possible that a massive conspiracy at SquareTrade has them writing their own reviews. Remember how revered Enron was just weeks before it collapsed? But it’s a risk I am willing to take because their coverage does extend to accidental damage and is priced much the same as AppleCare which does not. The only catch in the fine print is that you mustn’t drop the thing in the first 30 days of ownership, but thereafter you are covered for 2 years from purchase.

Here’s their blurb:

Are they any good? How would I know? I have yet to make a claim. Which, of course, is the only test of an insurer’s integrity. So I’ll let you know when I do. And I suspect that’s a matter of when, not if, as I come from a family of serial droppers.

Disclosure: Long AAPL and no interest in SquareTrade.