Think about it, when the iPad was released it was to fill a gap between the iPhone and a laptop. How do you position the watch? So the workflow would go watch – phone-tablet-laptop-desktop? The cell phone has effectively taken the place of the pocket watch.

That being said, I can find some uses for a “smart watch” for example telematics. If you were a jogger, using it to monitor your heart rate and so forth, that might be a good idea. There is another school of thought that the current phones are too big and need to be made wearable.

If you were to buy a Smart watch what features would you want? If you got those features, would you ditch your cell phone?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Along came the Pinlo Concize Metal Case for iPhone. It is light, aircraft grade aluminum, so it is light, protects my precious and slides easily into and out of my pocket. I would highly recommend this case for an office worker if you do something in the construction field I would recommend something a little more ruggedized. Luckily, this isn’t the only case they have. You can find many more here.

The bottom line: This is the second case I have looked at for MobileFun. Both cases have been outstanding. I would recommend that if you are planning on a case for your device, check them out first.

The bottom line: 2 BIG thumbs up! MobileFun has some really great cases at reasonable prices. I am sure that anyone can find a solution for their case needs at their site.

Podcasters – The key to doing a good podcast is a good Mic. I would recommend a good USB mic. That way the input to the computer is already in digital format and the computer won’t have to do any additional work to convert your audio to digital. Now for software, if you are using a Mac, you already have a pretty impressive podcast studio pre-installed. Garageband. GarageBand can record your podcast, add effects to you voice, provide you with sound effects and so on. Now if you don’t want to be the sole talent and want to have guests on, and they aren’t able to be in your “studio”, you can buy a copy of Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack pro for $32.00 US and record from Skype or Google+. Once your interview is done, you can then import it into Garage band for your post-production, to add your effects and so forth.

Bloggers – Depending on the platform you are using, be it Blogger, WordPress and so forth most of these have really good web interfaces and make it easy for you to create your content. But if you would rather use a local client I have one for you. Ecto the blog editor for OSX. This one is a judgement call. If you are happy using the web interface, continue to do so, Ecto is $19.95 US. It isn’t a bad alternative, but personally I work using the web interfaces.

Video Editors – Editing video is a fun and with the low prices of pretty decent video cameras, video editing is more affordable than ever. iMovie, which ships preinstalled on a Mac is a very capable video editor. With built in pro style tools to reduces camera shake and so forth, I would recommend anyone that thinks they want to start editing video, I would highly recommend using iMovie. Once you feel that you have outgrown iMovie, you can “graduate” to Final Cut Pro. The good news is the new version of Final Cut Pro is $299.99 US. Previously the only way to get Final Cut was to buy the Final Cut Suite which as about $1200.00 US. Most of the transitions and so forth are available in iMovie, but you are only allowed a single video track and editing with multiple cameras is difficult, (Not impossible but a lot more work). If you are planning on being the next Peter Jackson, I would recommend Final Cut Pro.

Photographers – This is one category where you can spend a lot of money on tools. Apple installs iPhoto on every Mac, and iPhoto is sufficient for family photos or “snapshots” that you have taken and it does a great job cleaning up the pictures by boosting levels and so forth. But if you are planning to be the next Annie Leibovitz, you may be better served using an application like Adobe’s Light Room for $149.00 US or Apples Aperture for $79.00 US. There are also countless photo editing apps for your smartphone and there isn’t enough room here for me to discuss them all.

Graphics Designers – There are many graphics applications, but the Grand Daddy of them all is Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop has been around for a long time and is a VERY intense application. Starting at $699.00 US, this isn’t an application that I would suggest to someone that wasn’t really sure if they would really be interested in it. A more affordable option could be Adobe’s Fireworks, that starts off at $299.00 US. Which is still more than I would pay if I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I would suggest starting off with a free graphic application like Seashore free for the Mac or Gimp. Both are free and while they may not have all the bells and whistles as some of the more expensive applications, you will still be able to find out if you enjoy doing this type of work before sinking a lot of money into something you are unsure of.

The bottom line – While the applications mentioned here are some of the more popular, there are many, many many, more. Some are more expensive, some are open source. I would always say to try the open source or free applications before spending a lot of money on something you don’t know you will like.

Are there any good tools I left out? Let me know about them in the comments.

Pandora – (free) http://www.pandora.com This was really one of the first web based radio players. Pandora allows you to create your own radio station. The first thing you do is provide Pandora with a song, then Pandora creates your station based on the seed song, and will play songs that are by the same band and similar bands. Not a bad proposition, but Pandora tends to quit playing, to see if you are still listening, which can be annoying.

Slacker – (free) http://www.slacker.com Slacker radio is another web based player. Slacker is more like a traditional radio station in that you select the genre of music you want to listen to and it plays. Pretty much no frills, but they do have many popular bands. Not bad if you are looking for a quick and easy method of getting background music, while you are working or gaming on your computer.

Songza – (free) http://songza.com Songza is a little different than most music players. Songza lets you choose music, based on your mood. When you first go to the site it will ask if you want a playlist based on the time of day, or on the activity that you are doing. For example some of the choices might be, Sunday afternoon then catagories for that time of day such as relaxing at home, doing housework, brand new music, saving the world, or reading. Then based on your choices you are given a choice of playlists. It’s a pretty cool concept, to choose your playlist based on mood.

iTunes Match – ($25.00/year) This really isn’t internet radio, but it is still streaming music. iTunes match requires that you use iTunes but it gives you the ability to have your ENTIRE iTunes library at your disposal. Additionally it allows you to share your playlists, not only with your computers, but also with your iOS devices. After you upload all of your music, anything that is in the iTunes store, you can download a high quality MP3 on any of your iOS devices or computer. I am a fan of iTunes match for the price and ease of use.

These are just a few and there are many more out there. Now comes the part for audience participation, what do you use? One of these or something differant all together? Let us know in the comments.

We all managed to get a glimpse at the all new slimmer, lighter and sexier iMac back in October. Apple wanted to get people excited about the latest iMac’s 45% thinner profile, measuring just 5mm this is the thinnest to date according to the company. The other feature that really has many people excited is the latest Fusion Drive, which incorporates the performance and speed boost of an SSD drive with a traditional disc based hard drive, many tests showed that the new Fusion Drive was capable of superior performance but we (the people) have yet to put it through its paces.

For $1299 people will be able to purchase the 21.5 inch iMac with a 2.7 GHz quad core i5 Intel processor featuring Turbo Boost, capable of raising the performance of the processor to 3.2 GHz and the latest Nvidia GeForce GT 650M. For $1499 you can purchase the 2.9GHz version which can boost speeds up to 3.6 GHz and also features the same Nvidia GeForce GT 650M.

The 27 inch iMac will also come in two flavors i.e. with the 2.9GHz Intel i5 processor which has built in  Turbo Boost and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M for $1799. The other version will cost $1999 and feature a 3.2 GHz Intel i5 processor with Turbo Boost capable of boosting speeds up to 3.6 GHz and utilizes the latest Nvidia GTX 675MX.

During the unveiling of both these iMacs’ Apple had promised that the 21.5 inch version will start shipping later in November and the 27 inch model could be available sometime in December, probably just in time for Christmas. However, with the announcement back on Tuesday it seems that Apple is keeping their promise. It will also be interesting to see exactly how well the 21.5 inch version performs in real world tests and gaming.

Speaking of playlists, the new way of creating playlists is pretty cool. First you create the name for the playlist, then switch to your music, then it is a drag and drop. I know it doesn’t sound like much but it is pretty cool.

One of the new features is “Up Next”. So let’s say you are listening to your playlist, and suddenly you have need to listen to Free bird. It used to be that you would have to either wait until the current song was over or if you are impatient (like me) you would just double click on Free bird  and when it was done go back to your playlist. Up Next allows you to queue up songs without stopping your playlist. Another cool feature is that once you add the song to up next, you can drag them up and down and reorder your up next playlist.

iTunes 11 gives you multiple views to sort and explore your library. You can sort by Song, Album, Artist, Genre, Videos, Playlist and Radio. You can use this to “stumble” around your library to find music you forgot you had, are experience it in a new way.

Apple also used this opportunity to completely redo the iTunes store. Which is cool in itself. with rotating artwork of featured bands. (To be honest my description leaves much to be desired, I suggest you head right out and download iTunes 11 to see what I am talking about. A picture is worth a thousand words and what not.)

By far this is the best version of iTunes I have ever used. In fact, I’ll take it a step further, this is the best music player on a computer that I have ever used.

Have you installed iTunes 11? Let us know what you think in the comments.

New 13″ MacBook Pro with “Retina” display. The display is AWESOME with over 4 million pixels crammed into a 13″ monitor is very impressive. On the low end  ($1699.00) it has a 2.5GHz Intel duel-core i5 processor, 8 GB of 1600MHz Ram, 128GB SSD drive. AND WEIGHS LESS THAN 4 LBS!

A new Mac Mini was released. But the price stayed the same, ($599.00). It is 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches high. 2.5 GHz i5 processor, with 4GB ram and a 500GB (5400 rpm drive).

A new iMac was also announced, and it looks gorgeous. Starting at $1299.00, the new iMac comes with a 2.7 Quad-core processor, 8GB of ram, and has a 1TB 5400 RPM hard drive.

**One other thing worth mentioning with the new iMac, there is an option for a 1Tb fusion drive. The fusion drive is a hybrid hard drive that has part flash memory and part spinning drive. Mountain lion will move applications based on use into the flash portion of ram so that they will run much faster.

Then there is the announcement everyone was expecting. The iPad mini. With a viewing area of 7.9 inches diagonally, it has the same resolution as the iPad 2, so developers won’t need to recode their apps. The starting price for the 16GB iPad mini is $329.00.

My thoughts, most of the hardware announcements  were very welcome and good looking updates. The only problem I had was the introduction of the iPad mini. When Steve Jobs was alive, he was asked about a smaller iPad and he said at the time nobody would want it. I think he was right. Don’t get me wrong the iPad mini is cool looking, at the same time it looks like you ran a full sized iPad through a dryer and shrunk it a bit. When iPad was released, it was supposed to fill a market between your iPhone and desktop. A satellite device the was lighter than a laptop, but ‘Almost” as functional. The iPad mini is tough for me to wrap my head around. I think that their won’t be much of a demand for the mini as there was in the iPad. I don’t think Apple should have created a 7′ iPad, just because someone else did. Apples strength has always been innovation. That’s what they need to return to.

Steve will forever hold a place in Apple lore, however that doesn’t mean that he is not missed.