Dear Friends,
I am writing this from my hotel room in Hong Kong. I am here to attend two trade shows, the China Sourcing Fair and the Hong Kong Electronics Show. Tomorrow I head to Dongguan and Shenzhen to visit some of the factories that make our products and some new suppliers. I will also be meeting with our contact and friend in China, Simon Liao, who helps with product sourcing, design and packaging as well as logistics.
I will take the train to Dongguan where Simon will meet me and Jason Wu from TekServe, who is my traveling companion on this trip. It is good to have another set of eyes looking at potential new products as we wander the trade show floors. My feet are very tired from cruising the aisles.
We had dinner last night with Steve Bain from another excellent Apple Specialist in Utah, Simply Mac. We talked a lot about business and compared notes about the products we were seeking. Steve mentioned that he had gotten a custom suit made and handed me the tailor’s card. The tailor’s name was Happy so it was essential for Jason and me to check him out!
Yup, we ordered some custom clothes. Jason got a couple of suits and I got a blazer and a leather jacket. They measured us up and told us to come back in two hours for a fitting and that the clothes would then be ready in two days. I hope they fit in my suitcase. Now that Happy has my measurements, I just have to send him an email and he can make me whatever I may need.
It has been a pleasure traveling with the iPad. There were many vendors with all sorts of iPad cases and a few peripherals such as batter backups or aluminum stands for the iPad. I was a bit surprised that even though the iPad has not yet been released internationally, many of the exhibitors had iPads at their booths.
I watched a movie, played Plants vs. Zombies and read a book on my iPad on the 18-hour flight to Hong Kong and I still had 50% battery left. Keeping in touch has been easy with the iPad, both with email and instant messaging. While I really like my instant messaging app, IM+, I cannot give it an unqualified endorsement yet. As of this writing, they have not yet fixed the bug that makes Apple Jabber servers and legacy SSL not function. Once they complete that, I would say it is an ideal IM program with support for just about every IM protocol. It also has a built-in browser so if someone chats you a link, you can open it without having to leave the program.
Email is very functional and with the Apple bluetooth keyboard, I can rapidly answer email from my hotel room. While I am pretty fast on the built-in virtual keyboard, the small Bluetooth keyboard syncs easily and I am faster on that. I know the mail experience will improve with iPhone 4.0 software in the fall with integrated mail client, but managing my email load is just about as fast as with my MacBook Air.
I think as a traveling companion, the iPad makes a lot of sense. With Pages and Numbers, I have access to word processing and spreadsheets, the Safari browser is fast (although I miss tabs) and you cannot beat the iPad for reading, movies and games!