Apple Time Machine - a disaster waiting to happen?

[Word]

I'd have to agree; the only thing that would possibly work would be to restore all the old versions of the apps to iTunes from a Time Machine or equivalent back-up, manually replace the newer apps on the iPad with those old ones then restore the iPad back-up on top of that, but even if you were to have all the necessary pieces it would still be a long shot.
(I know that apps and music aren't included in a standard iPhone/iPad back-up, on the assumption that you already have copies of those on your computer or iCloud, but I had assumed that under normal circumstances app data would be.)

On the 'retina' front, I have been totally seduced by Apple's high DPI displays.
In some respects it seemed to be the least revelatory on the iPad as I was already happy with the iPad 2 display (and the weight, which is noticeably less for the '2' than that of the '3' or the original one), but text *is* much sharper and books and, to an even greater extent, web pages look so much better and subjectively feel less likely to cause eye strain.
Similarly on the MacBook Pro - I had delayed getting a new laptop waiting for the launch of the 15" retina model and now wouldn't want to go back to the old standard display. What's surprising is that even the scaled resolutions (1680x1050 and 1920x1200) look great, though I prefer to stick with the optimal 1440x900. (There are plenty of third-party widgets that allow you to run it at 2880x1800 but that's just silly :)).
It will be interesting to see what Apple do with the iMac as the benefit on larger displays, typically viewed from a greater distance would be significantly diminished.

[Dave2002]

Thanks for the positive comments re the retina displays. Pity in a way, as one model I've been thinking of buying - the MacBook Air, doesn't have that yet. For weight and convenience reasons the Air is probably going to win out, even if it doesn't have the retina display and the extra connectivity of the MacBook Pros. I probably won't wait to see if a Retina Air comes along.

Re the iPads and backup, I still feel that the lack of a sensible filing system is a problem, though others tell me that many people who can't cope with (won't be able to understand? - sounds patronising!) filing systems, hierarchical or otherwise like tablets because they find them easy to use. Files and data must have come from somewhere, unless they were generated on the iPad (notes maybe, otherwise unlikely), so simply having an inventory of the data would be a big help. Then it would be easy to see if any data needs to be emailed or otherwise saved back on to another device.

Of the three apps I have mentioned, Pages is (for me) the most useful, though even though I'm not a fan of MS Word, it's a pity there are so many compatibility issues. Numbers I find more or less useless and really hard to use. Keynote seems quite good, and very likely is more stylish than Powerpoint, but even so, most people will still use Powerpoint, if only because it's so ubiquitous. Apple try to be different, and sometimes that's a good thing, but in some areas it just ends up kicking its users in the proverbial teeth e.g the Flash business. Flash may not be a good thing (I'm not sure), and Steve Jobs may really have thought he was doing everyone a favour by not having it on his machines, but even now so many videos etc. use it that users will wonder what kind of firm it is that dictates that some tools are not accessible to them. Also Jobs may simply have been waging a war against Adobe, and taking it out on his users in the process - http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

[Resurrection Man]

Dave2002 - you really do seem to have a 'thing' about Apple and the way that they do things. So why not buy a Windows PC if Apple is that bad? The whole point of Apple's philosophy is to buffer the 'average' user from things like file systems. I find Numbers perfectly adequate and easy to use...I really think that it is a mindset issue. If you go 'with' Apple's way of doing things rather than trying to fight it then you will get the benefit from it.

But if you really do like files and all that stuff then, as I suggested, go Windows or Linux.

With regard to Flash - it has had many security vulnerabilities and is one of the most targetted by hackers etc. I'd trade security vs being able to watch some daft clip on a website anyday.

I get frustrated with iTunes as it is so pop-oriented but given, for me, the many many other benefits of running a Mac, these problems get lost in the noise.

[Word]

Hopefully the next revision of the Air will have a 'retina' option, though given the power and weight implications associated with the need for increased backlighting it'll be quite an achievement if they manage to offer it without compromising the amazing portability.

I think Apple's hiding of the filesystem on the iPad is part of what allowed it to be so widely adopted. That's not to say that the approach is perfect and the ability to share data between apps does appear to be something of an afterthought. iCloud and DropBox (or services with some overlapping functionality such as Evernote) aren't always appropriate and otherwise you're left with relying on the links and APIs provided by the developers of individual apps.
Overall it doesn't affect me as I tend to use the iPad to consume information, only occasionally making notes on existing docs in GoodReader, Pages, etc., but I can see how it would jar if you prefer to work with a document-centric view (ironically popularised by the original Mac :)).
There are apps that'll allow you to browse the iPad filesystem from a Mac or PC (even on non-jailbroken devices) but you don't get to see anything interesting so I doubt they'd be of much use to you (a series of app folders with app-specific folders under each, if I recall correctly).

(As for Flash, I'm firmly with Steve Jobs. I think things have improved but on the PowerPC Macs it really was a steaming pile of *** and is all too often used for those annoying animated adverts (with associated user tracking & monitoring). I'd strongly recommend the ClickToPlugin extension to anyone who uses Safari.)

[Dave2002]

Dave2002 - you really do seem to have a 'thing' about Apple and the way that they do things. So why not buy a Windows PC if Apple is that bad?

Hah! I dislike PCs even more!

[Frances_iom]

:...
Hah! I dislike PCs even more!

try a flavour of Linux - eg Mint

[Dave2002]

try a flavour of Linux - eg Mint

I do use Linux from time to time - usually Ubuntu. It's useful for doing things like formatting drives and setting up disk partitions. I'm not sure that I'd prefer it for regular use though. I've not tried Mint, but I'm willing to give it a go. Apart from not supporting either MS or Apple is there really advantage in using a Linux or Unix flavour? OK - useful for batch processing - though that's possible via Terminal in Mac OS X, and can be done using .bat files in MS, even though that's pretty clunky.

I use whatever is available in the hope that I can get things done. For example, today I wrote/edited an article using OpenOffice, and converted to PDF using Preview for sending to a printer tomorrow. I also edited an image file which I was sent in Word - this time from another Mac, but I don't think it would really have mattered whether it came from a Mac or a PC. I adjusted the arrows in the diagram, tried to remove a spurious character using Word - but looked as though the image was corrupt, so I moved the image slightly relative to the odd character, then displayed it large size on my display and used Grab to get a good copy. Then used Appleworks to put a rectangular patch to cover the unwanted character, finally exporting to a gif file. I may have used Preview to do a file conversion along the way as well..

I also used Notpad++ on PCs at work to create and edit some xml and xsl files, and Filezilla to move files to a web server, plus Blogger to set up a blog page. I just do/use whatever it takes. I like the Mac hardware - it doesn't sound like a jumbo jet taking off, unlike most of the PCs I have access to. I also watched some YouTube videos (Panufnik piano trio) and listened to some music for a short while using Spotify. Fairly typical day, really.