The F5 Guy

Like a lot folks around the country I pre-ordered a 32 GIG iPad a few weeks ago and have been waiting eagerly to check out the new device.  I already have two Apple branded products in the house, so it was easy for me to drink the Kool-Aid and purchase another .

However, I was very disappointed with Apple on the day that I finally received my iPad.  I had updated my MacBook the night before and ensured it was ready to go, only to have my hard drive crash moments before I was able to sync up my new iPad!  There I was sitting in my cubicle at work shaking my fists in the air and screaming “NOooooo!!!!” In my mind anyways…

Well all was not lost and I do mean that literally.  I had my data backed up, but I did have to send the MacBook in for repair.  Thankfully I was still covered under my Apple Care plan.  As it turns out, I also received a new logic board, heat pipe assembly and top case replacement.  Evidently the now three year old MacBook had more wrong with it than I had guessed.

I decided it would be fun to post the User Agent String for the iPad and to list a few of the apps that I have enjoyed using so far.  I aimed the iPad over to a BIG-IP 6400 with an iRule that logs out the User Agent String and this is what was returned:


Mozilla/5.0 iPad U CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X en-us AppleWebKit/531.21.10 KHTML, like Gecko Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B367 Safari/531.21.10

At least it mentions “iPad” in the User Agent String! This will make it a bit easier for traffic direction via an iRule if your company has a site that hosts content specifically for the iPad.

I have had the opportunity to check out a lot of different applications and games as well.  Some of my favorite applications so far are:

Plants Vs. Zombies HD – Addictive game
Fieldrunners – Nice tower defense game
Netflix – Great for streaming movies
Fargoal – Old School Dungeon Crawler
AirVideo – Great for streaming movies “Backed Up” on my Mac
TouchTerm – Decent for SSH
WinAdmin – Great app for Windows RDP functionality
MochaVNC – Decent app for Mac RDP functionality
Dragon Dictation – I was surprised by this one.
GoodReader – Hands down one of my favorite apps. I was able to pull down a lot of F5 BIG-IP manuals using this app!
The Weather Channel – You have to know what it is doing outside after all.
Citrix Receiver – Proven to be great for connecting to the Citrix Farm at work.
Backgrounds – A nice app to grab new backgrounds for your iPad.