The iPad might only boast a 10-inch (or so) touchscreen display and a 0.5-inch waistline that would make any Hollywood actress green with raging envy, but don’t let the tablet’s seemingly dumbed-down looks fool you. With enough tweaks and hacks, you can turn your lowly little Apple iPad into an almost-suitable computer for your desk. The video you see here shows that a little bit of hackery, a keyboard, and a Bluetooth mouse is all you need to use the tablet as a desktop computer (a fairly dumbed-down desktop computer).
Apple has already endowed the iPad with the necessary skills to connect with a Bluetooth keyboard right out of the box – they even sell a dock that attaches a keyboard to the iPad. With its touchscreen, the tablet can already serve as a lightweight replacement for your laptop. But, add a Bluetooth mouse and the iPad magically transforms itself into something that might fool some into thinking that you just bought a paper-thin computer that you can toss in your purse and take with you wherever you go.
So, how do you this to your iPad? It’s actually fairly simple. First, you’ll have to jailbreak the iPhone OS-powered tablet with the recently released Spirit jailbreak from none other than the iPhone Dev Team. Then, you’ll want to open up Cydia and download/install the BTStack package. From there, go to your iPad’s settings screen and connect your Bluetooth mouse via the “Mouse” pane. You can find the Spirit jailbreak here. More detailed instructions on setting up BTStack can be found at RedmondPie.
We think this is geek-tastically awesome. What say you, dear reader?
[Via: RedmondPie]