Project your iPad2
Quick Mac Tip, 15 May 2011

For the first time I used my iPad 2 plugged into a projector to run a Keynote presentation and demonstrate some iPad features. What I learned may interest or help you too. Read about mirroring, the built-in laser pointer, quick activation, and some brilliant interactive books.

The other day I spent an hour with the excellent people attending the REAP Aotearoa NZ Conference:

REAPs exist to provide lifelong learning support to their communities through multiple work streams, including early childhood, working with schools and adult and community education.

New iPads for each organisation

My job was to give them some ideas about current technology (in general) and to introduce them to iPad 2.

In theory there were to be 13 brand new unopened iPads available to be handed out to the 60 or so attendees from 13 REAPs — one per REAP.

In the session we would need to activate the iPads and I’d provide some quick demos and hands-on experience in working with them.

In fact, on the day there were only 3 actual iPads available, but that’s the kind of thing that always happens in such technology training.

I mirrored my iPad via the projector

Apple VGA Adapter for iPad.

I bought an Apple VGA Adapter and Keynote for iPad and created a brief presentation:

Use the Apple VGA Adapter to mirror whatever’s on your iPad 2 screen — apps, presentations, websites, and more — on your VGA-equipped TV, display, projector or other compatible display in up to 1080p HD.

Watch slideshows and video on the big screen in up to 720p by connecting your iPad, iPhone 4, or iPod touch (4th generation) to a television, projector, or other VGA-compatible display.

The Apple VGA Adapter connects to your iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 4, iPod touch (4th generation), iPad Dock or Universal Dock via the dock connector and to your projector or display using the VGA adapter.

After plugging in the cable it took a few moments for the projector to recognise and show my iPad’s screen. I pressed a few buttons on the projector, but I think it just needed time, as it eventually worked, in spite of my random presses.

From that point on almost everything worked fine, but there were glitches:

Star Walk.

1. Star Walk, a magnificent astronomy app that I think would ‘sell’ anyone who wasn’t already sold on the iPad, let me down. I didn’t capture the message as I was presenting at the time, but the iPad screen went black, with a text message to the effect that only the projector screen would display the glorious visuals. That made it almost impossible for me to demo the app. I now note the manual says this should have worked.
2. For some of what I was doing I needed to pick up the iPad and use it — for example, showing taking photos and videos. Several time this caused the dock connector to slip slightly out of the port, and we lost the image on the big screen.
3. As I moved the iPad around I managed several times to accidentally press the Home button and pop out of the app I was showing.

Things worked best when I simply left the iPad alone, only touching it to advance a slide or open an app.

There’s a built-in laser pointer

From time to time I would move to the projector screen to point out something on the iPad screen. Once I even caught myself tapping on the projector screen to open up the photos attached to a map pin in the photo album. That didn’t work, of course. ☺

I wish I’d read Presenting with the iPad before I did my interactive session:

A nice extra in Keynote for the iPad is a “laser pointer”: Touch and hold on the iPad’s screen to show a red dot, which moves with your finger on the main display. Lift your finger and the dot disappears. This is very useful when you want to call attention to a particular area of a slide.

The Activation problem

One of the silliest things I can think of is that you must plug an iPad into iTunes on a computer before you can do anything at all. There doesn’t seem to be a way around this.

While I was planning my session I was concerned about how we could activate 13 iPads quickly, and without using up the precious 75 minutes allotted for the session. I wasn’t expecting the attendees to either have a laptop with them or to necessarily already have iTunes installed or an account set up.

After some unfruitful Googling, I posed this question to the knowledgeable folks at TidBITS Talk.

Johan Solve provided the answer, with a link to a PDF that would tell me how to put iTunes in “Activation only” mode:

Quickly Activating Devices with iTunes

Before a new iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad can be used, it must be activated by connecting it to a computer that is running iTunes. Normally, after activating a device, iTunes offers to sync the device with the computer. To avoid this when you’re setting up a device for someone else, turn on activation-only mode. This causes iTunes to automatically eject a device after it’s activated. The device is then ready to configure, but doesn’t have any media or data.

To turn on activation-only mode on Mac OS X:

1. Make sure iTunes isn’t running, and then open Terminal.
2. In Terminal, enter a command:
   • To turn activation-only mode on:
     defaults write com.apple.iTunes StoreActivationMode -integer 1
   • To turn activation-only mode off:
     defaults delete com.apple.iTunes StoreActivationMode

In the end I needed to activate only 3 iPads, but all-up it took less than a minute, using the above instructions.

Enchanting interactive iPad books for kids

While I did some last-minute preparation for my session I came across some enchanting interactive books for kids from Kiwa Media. If I had kids I’d absolutely want these books. Some have free samples available, so take a look yourself.

The Wonky Donkey.

I downloaded the free samples of The Wonky Donkey (English) and Monkey Biz (English, Simplified Chinese and Spanish). What I really wanted was one of the books that has Māori language available, but unfortunately Kiwa Media don’t make it easy to figure out those things. I’ve now discovered that One Day a Taniwha offers Māori, but there’s no free sample.

Oddly, the iconically Kiwi Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy is only available in British English, read by David Tennant of Dr Who fame.

These books allow users to choose a language for text and voice, to colour-in the pictures, to read along, to sing-along, and to record your own narration.

Even if you’re not into kids books I recommend taking a look as these are fun, and a very cool use of the technology.

What’s been your experience of projecting the iPad2 or hooking it up to your HDMI-capable TV? Tell us in the Comments at the website.