iPad Camera Connection Kit : more that just SD card reader

The first time I read about Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit, I was like, "what a joke, and who will buy this overpriced pair of dongles just for transferring photos." But now that I have it, I found them amazing. That's mostly because this pair of gizmo does more than just what was advertised.

For instance, I am now typing on a regular DELL USB keyboard. I just plug the keyboard to the iPad, got a "not supported device" message, dismissed it, and also notice that light were turned on on my keyboard. When I enter whatever application that took typing, I found the keyboard just work. That's pretty sweet.

However, since this is not a supported feature, there's quite some gotcha associated with using regular USB keyboard. For instance, if you turn off your iPad while the USB dongle and USB keyboard still hooked up with your iPad, the next time you turn your iPad on, iPad WON'T recognize your USB keyboard anymore. I tried and tried, connected and reconnected, and still couldn't make it work again. The only way to get the USB keyboard working again is by hard restarting the iPad. It's not the end of the world, but still it's a bit inconvenient. Guess that's why this feature is not officially supported.

On the other hand, the SD Carder is more robust. Turning the iPad on and off doesn't affect the ability for the system to recognize the card as additional storage. And using iFile with the SD Card reader is simply awesome, since iFile allows you to open the files on the SD card with a large array of application existing on your iPad. So I can directly import a PDF file into iBook, directly open a divx movie in OPlayer, directly editing a JPEG in photo editing software. In fact, I am seriously thinking of getting a 32Gb SD card so that I can use it to store all the files that I don't want to store in my iPad, but want to be with me "just in case", like apps, videos, games and so on.

Finally, the official features, which allows you to import photos and video you took from digital camera, are actually done pretty nicely. When I got the video imported, I can do some minor video editing like trimming. It's no way close to iMovie on iPhone 4, but still a very neat feature in case you want to quickly capture something, and then put it online in minutes.

Overall, I like what I got. This kit expands the feature of my iPad and make it further more as a content creation device instead of a pure content consumption device.