IPad 2 Xmas questions

ashatron · 25 Dec 2011 at 21:21

Merry Christmas chaps!

I'm very very lucky and have received an iPad 2 for Xmas and have a few questions.

Is there a file browser for non jailbroken iPad 2's
What's the best media player?

Also I try and download rar files from emails but naturally the iPad doesn't support rar files. It seems to download them but nothing happens. Where have they downloaded to? Is there any way to do this?

Anyone know of a good download manager for rapid share sites etc

I'm loving this little charmer and feel free to recommend any other apps!

Merry Christmas all hope you've had a delightful day!

Alpherah · 25 Dec 2011 at 21:45

ashatron said:
Is there a file browser for non jailbroken iPad 2's

No, you won't need it for non JB'd iPad's

What's the best media player?

The two (One audio, one video) bundled with

Also I try and download rar files from emails but naturally the iPad doesn't support rar files. It seems to download them but nothing happens. Where have they downloaded to? Is there any way to do this?

Afaik if it can't do anything with the file it just deletes it.

Cant answer the rest

Glaucus · 26 Dec 2011 at 02:41

Alpherah said:
No, you won't need it for non JB'd iPad's

Why answer if you don't know. There are loads of file apps as well as ones which will let you download and view a hole host of files, including PDF, Rar, zip, h264 and the rest. As for which one, I'm not sure, did have one but lost it in a reset.

ashatron · 26 Dec 2011 at 22:09

Thanks guys.

Hopefully someone could point in the right direction, hope you're all having a fun boxing day!

Glaucus · 26 Dec 2011 at 22:26

I've asked for it to be moved to apple software, you'll get far more replies in there. Apple and android users had to be separated.

Alpherah · 26 Dec 2011 at 22:28

Glaucus said:
Why answer if you don't know. There are loads of file apps as well as ones which will let you download and view a hole host of files, including PDF, Rar, zip, h264 and the rest. As for which one, I'm not sure, did have one but lost it in a reset.

Honestly, i had no idea. I did look for one at Ipad2 release, but a) couldn't find one and b) couldn't imagine why one would be needed anyway

Glaucus · 26 Dec 2011 at 22:30

Alpherah said:
Honestly, i had no idea. I did look for one at Ipad2 release, but a) couldn't find one and b) couldn't imagine why one would be needed anyway

So you can download files and open them.
Just doesn't work with drm protected files. But allows it for most other stuff.
You only have a small hard drive capacity. So downloading films or other files canbe useful.

Which is why I deleted it, I was only interested in it for iTunes movies, but becuase they are drm protected the inbuilt viewers/players in the app can't play them and apps can't save to the file allocations which iTunes and other standard apple apps use. Basically you can only open and view the files within the app you downloaded. Other than photos, they can be saved normally.

Glaucus · 26 Dec 2011 at 23:37

"Downloads lite for iPad" seems to do what you want and if it works can spend the little bit to get the full app.

ashatron · 28 Dec 2011 at 17:48

Glaucus said:
"Downloads lite for iPad" seems to do what you want and if it works can spend the little bit to get the full app.

wow thanks so much galactus, sorry for the late reply, thats very helpful, cheers!

I'm just wanting to be able to download files and play them happily. Like open Rars / zips and play movie files that are other than mov + mp4.

That app looks great cheers.

randal · 28 Dec 2011 at 17:52

There's one I'm looking to get call FileBrowser. IIRC it does local as well as SMB/CIFS shares.

ashatron · 28 Dec 2011 at 19:18

randal24 said:
There's one I'm looking to get call FileBrowser. IIRC it does local as well as SMB/CIFS shares.

Does that work on non-jail broken devices? I'm on 5.0.1 iPad 2 with no jail break you see.

cokecan · 28 Dec 2011 at 19:37

FileBrowser is quite useful, however it needs to 'download' any file you want to open to the iPad first before you can open it. It does have a handy 'Open With' option that lets you open certain supported filetypes in other apps.

I do wish sometimes that there was a global documents folder on the iPad just to store a few files in rather than having each app completly sandboxed in. But as with most things you do learn to either live with it or find a way round

As for video player, AVPlayerHD is by far the best video player I've found. It supports most of the more well known codecs and filetypes. 720p x264 mkv files play without issue on it which was my main requirement. it will happily play avi, mpeg etc

Also worth a mention if you are a guitarist or similar....I've just discovered Garage Band and have to say I am blown away at how powerful and intuitive it actually is on the iPad! I honestly just assumed it was a gimicky app and never really looked into it until now.