Japanese iTunes Store Receives Improvements

Apple has significantly upgraded the Japanese iTunes Store today. Now, our Japanese friends can download items over 3G Networks (previously restricted to Wi-Fi), with the added introduction of iTunes Plus, Ringtones, and Complete My Album. All of these features have been available in the US store for some time now. However, a new worldwide feature introduced today called “Mastered for iTunes”, which features songs and albums that have been specifically remastered for the digital format. [Read More]

Apple’s First Dutch Retail Store to Open on March 3rd

Apple’s amazing-looking new store they have been building in Amsterdam has been rumored to be on the cusp of a grand opening for some time now. Today, Apple announced that the store will open on March 3rd. The race to cover the globe is underway. [Read More]

Report Claims Next-Generation iPad to Launch on March 23rd

A report has surfaced claiming that the forthcoming, next-generation iPad will be set loose on March 23rd in Germany. This suggests that the US launch will occur on or before this date. Remember, it has been all but confirmed that the introduction for the new iPad will be held on March 7th. [Read More]

Apple Confirms Plans for New Data Center, to be Located in Prineville, Oregon

Only a short time after Apple’s massive, new data center in North Carolina came online, the company is now announcing plans for a second data center. This new facility will be built in Prineville, Oregon, which is also home to a Facebook data center. Apple is dead serious about the cloud, and is positioning it to be the cornerstone of their products for the coming decade. [Read More]

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lolo, one of my favorite exercise app developers, has done it again. This time it’s Easy Arms. The email arrived yesterday, and I immediately added to my ongoing lolo collection of health-related apps.

According to their email, the features of Easy Arms include

• Strengthen and tone your arms, chest, back, and shoulders quickly and easily.
• Fits your schedule. Select 5, 10, or 15 minute workouts so you can get a great workout anytime.
• Workouts customized for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced exercisers.
• Over 100 unique exercises. Each one includes a video and audio description to help you perfect your form.
• Works anywhere! If you don’t have access to equipment, Easy Arms will serve up challenging push up workouts to keep you on track towards your fitness goal.
• lolo’s beat-sync technology perfectly matches the tempo of your music to your workout (available on iOS version 4.1 or better).
• Completely interactive. Swap out exercises to personalize your workouts. Increase or decrease the intensity at anytime and your trainer — and your music — will respond!
• Share your successes with your friends and family through social media.

As a frequent lolo user (Beatburn and Easy Abs), I highly recommend lolo’s approach to using your music with their remarkable beat-sync technology to gradually build endurance and results.

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Last week I was presenting to about 60 people and everything was going swimmingly. Keynote, which rarely fails, was spot on; the music playing through the bluetooth connected Supertooth Disco I had selected was perfect for the audience; it couldn’t have been going better. That was until the music stopped playing through the impressive wireless speaker and began playing through the tinny sounding speakers on my 15″ MacBook Pro.

Nearly all of us know of the finicky nature of Bluetooth, so I turned the speaker off and on, hoping a quick re-pairing would occur. But I was without luck. Even entering into pairing mode did not recover the connection. So in the remaining time I had during break, I looked at the bluetooth icon on the MBP. A strange new icon had replaced the when-connected regular icon. And when I selected it expecting to see this:

[image thanks to tech.ifelix.net]

Instead I simply saw the dropdown box read:

Bluetooth Unavailable

What?! I’ve never had that happen before! And, as you might expect, there was no time to solve it during break either.

Later that night at home, I’d hoped by rebooting the MBP, my bluetooth problem would abate, but nothing changed. Fortunately, I did discover a solution thanks to our friends at Mac-Forums!

If your bluetooth service is suddenly not available on your Mac, here is a fix:

01. Click on “Finder” in bottom left of your screen in the Dock
02. Click on your “Home” icon on the left (picture of a house)
03. Double-click on the “Library” folder
04. Double-click on “Preferences” folder
05. Delete file named “com.apple.Bluetooth.plist” (also delete any other item with “com.apple.Bluetooth…”, if any)
06. Shutdown your computer
07. Unplug all USB and Firewire devices
08. Unplug power cord
09. Remove battery (if it’s a Macbook or Macbook Pro)
10. Wait 1-2 min
11. Hold down power button for 10 sec with the battery out (if it’s a Macbook or Macbook Pro)
12. Insert battery (if it’s a Macbook or Macbook Pro)
13. Startup again
14. It should work!

I found two com.apple.Bluetooth… references so I deleted them both. And I am back to happily playing my tunes for my audiences.

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The panel itself has no major changes from the component used in the iPad 2. The whole for the home button is still round, and there remains an opening at the top for a camera lens. The biggest difference is the size and orientation of the ribbon cable.

The report goes on to note that the previously leaked A5X chip photo was real, and that the chip itself will support Siri functionality. The new iPad’s back camera will also be capable of shooting 1080p footage, and the iPad 3 will ship with iOS 5.1 installed. They also note that the US launch will be in mid-March, with France, Germany, Japan and UK rolling in April. Other market will see the device for sale sometime before June 1.

As for the back casing, more images are beginning to surface (via MICGadget) just showing the difference between the design of the iPad 2 compared to the iPad 3. In short, the iPad 3′s edges are more gradually tapered than the iPad 2′s, making the iPad 3 casing ever-so-slightly thicker.

This report, like others, also notes that the camera hole on the back casing is “noticeably larger”, which suggests a better camera. Some reports have pegged the new camera’s quality at 8 Megapixels. We’ll see if this pans out in time.

A solid image of what the next-generation iPad is going to look like, is beginning to form. In the next few days, as more information trickles in, I hope to report my thoughts on this matter.

Photo courtesy of Sina Weibo and MICGadget.

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As of today, you can purchase ringtones of songs from The Beatles in iTunes. There are over 25 Beatles songs (or 30 seconds worth of them) now available as ringtones.

That’s right, for just $1.29 you can have 30 seconds of Pop glory as your default ringtone on your iPhone. When I first got wind of this I thought ‘I really don’t like that many Beatles songs’, but I thought I’d take a look anyway and write a quick post about it.

About three minutes later, I had three new Beatles ringtones on my iPhone 4S – Can’t Buy Me Love, All You Need Is Love, and Ticket to Ride. And honestly, I was tempted to grab a few others too.

What do you all think? Will you be buying any Beatles ringtones? Oh, and if your answer is yes – you can find links to them right on the iTunes home page on the iPhone.

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I haven’t gone quite as case crazy with my iPad 2 as I have with my various iPhones, and while I very much enjoy using the Adonit Writer 2, my tablet still spends a good 80% of its time with just a Gelaskin on the back and a Smart Cover on the front. That black leather Smart Cover, which ended up arriving a tantalizing week before my actual iPad 2 last year, has turned out to be an incredibly useful purchase.

I often use my Smart Cover in much the same way as other users (as a screen protector, quick landscape keyboard stand, and landscape viewing stand), but I thought I’d write about two other neat cover positions I’ve discovered over the last year.

Knee Deep In Text

The first position has to do with those moments where you’re reclined on the couch and simply want to read. The 1.3 lb iPad 2 is light, but not so light that it’s effortless to sit and hold for hours, so I’ve taken to folding the entire Smart Cover behind the device and using the friction from the micro-fiber interior to plant the tablet right on my pant leg. The position looks a little precarious, but it feels quite natural after a little while, and the soft interior of the Smart Cover really keeps the tablet from sliding right down the slope of my leg. The only conceivable downside is that you have to be wearing pants to do this, which is understandably a showstopper for some.

Mini Portrait Mode Lectern

The Smart Cover generally does a great job of supporting the iPad in landscape, but it can also do a great job of propping the tablet up in portrait mode on a flat surface. Simply take the Smart Cover off and then position it on the table, hinged-side facing you. You can then lay your iPad 2 in portrait mode right on the top of the cover so it ends up looking like a really unfair see-saw (the kind where the loser gets stuck up in the air, waiting for that horrible drop). I find this position is perfect for situations where I want to read at a table or desk, as the whole screen is tilted a little higher than it would be in landscape mode.

Those are the two Smart Cover tips I wanted to share today, but I’d be delighted to hear about more in the comments, if you’ve got any to share.

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Mountain Lion Deprecates More Carbon APIs, Drops X11

Apple is getting rid of some of the cruft in OS X with the introduction of Mountain Lion. This means more Carbon APIs are being deprecated, and the X11 windowing system will no longer be bundled with OS X. Seems fair enough, considering these technologies were mostly used as crutches in the transition from OS 9 to OS X. [Read More]

Mountain Lion Drops Support for Some Macs with Integrated Graphics

Reports are surfacing noting that some 2006-2008 Macs with integrated graphics do not officially support OS X Mountain Lion. However, some developers are installing the developer preview of the OS on some late 2006 iMacs just fine. Your milage may vary. [Read More]

Messages App Will be Mountain Lion Exclusive When Beta Ends

It has come to light that OS X Lion will not indefinitely play host to the Message app currently in beta. So, expect the beta to come to an end when Mountain Lion is launched later this summer. If I had to guess, Messages will follow the pattern set by the FaceTime beta of last year. That is, Messages will go on sale in the Mac App Store after the beta, for user who do not upgrade to Mountain Lion. [Read More]

iPhone 4S Coming to China Telecom on March 9th

As had been rumored for some time, China Telecom has announced that they will begin selling the iPhone 4S in mainland China starting on March 9th. Remember, that China Unicom has been the sole iPhone service provider in China for several years now. China is a big market, and Apple is quickly trig to grab as much as they can. [Read More]

Apple Once Again Delays Deadline for Sandboxing of Mac App Store Apps

Apparently developers are having problems scrambling to meet Apple’s new sandboxing requirement seeing as the company has extended the deadline to June 1st. Apple had previously extended the deadline from last November to March 1st of 2012. So, it seems Apple is not doing their part to help developers make the transition.

Sandboxing is a new regulation set in place that requires all apps to sandbox themselves from the rest of the system, thus preventing a misbehaving app from taking down the whole system. This is why iOS apps never take down the whole system. [Read more]

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Today is one of those days that sometimes felt like it would never come. I’m talking, of course, about the announcement that the Things Cloud Sync is now in public beta. This has been a while coming.

Things Cloud isn’t iCloud syncing through Apple, but it works beautifully. You simply create an account with Things Cloud and the Things clients across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac will then be able to sync with one another via the Internet, and not through the Mac and your local wireless network (which is how the retail version currently works).

I’ve been using the beta for a few weeks now and have been nothing but pleased with it. It’s fast and does a great job of “just working”. The ability to sync tasks whenever I have a working Internet connection has really empowered the Things iPad app, which works really well, but has been handicapped by the current local syncing solution. Until the beta, it always made more sense to simply use the iPhone and Mac versions of Things to keep the syncing process as simple as possible. I’m really happy that this is no longer the case and that all three Things clients now feel like they’re all on the same level in terms of utility.

The only caveat is that task importing isn’t ready quite yet, so you’ll have to start with a totally fresh database. But if that doesn’t scare you off and you’re aching to have your copy of Things catch up in the syncing game, you can check out the Things Cloud public beta details post.

[via @culturedcode]

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The Daily even has a photo of the software running, in which they claim the version show can create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files locally and online. Very cool.

The report goes on to note that app will be submitted to the App Store for approval in the near future. They also note that a version for Android is “not in the works”. So there’s that.

I think this is the prefect opportunity to point to an article by Patrick Rhone, wherein he suggests Microsoft’s reluctance to develop Office for other platforms from the outset, has proven to the world that they do not need Office to get work done. Food for thought.

Image courtesy of The Daily.

[UPDATE] The New York Times follows up with a statement issued by Microsoft in which the company outright denies the existence of the project. After Microsoft made that statement, a flood input on behalf of The Daily and Microsoft (via other news agencies) began to surface both countering each others claims. Microsoft continued to deny the project, The Daily doubled down. Who knows what’s going on.

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I have owned my MacBook Air for a little over two months now. My previous piece regarding the matter sung the praises of the device. When I originally wrote that piece, the device was brand new to me. So, after living, working, and playing on the machine for a couple of months what do I think of it now? I still think it is a great machine. I use it for nearly everything I spend waking hours on– I write with it, I do design with it, and every now and then, manage to get some entertainment out of it.

Work

Currently, I am a design student at a local university, and I heavily use my Air in all of the classes I am currently enrolled in. It’s wonderful to just carry your own machine around instead of using the lab computers, and having to transfer work from those computers to my own at home. It’s all right there in one small package I can lug around all day with comfort. That’s something I cannot say about my MacBook Pro when I was carrying that backbreaker around.

Besides school work, I occasionally do design work for clients. In both cases it’s wonderful to use a computer that quickly launches the Adobe Create Suite apps. This isn’t as indicative of a faster processor, as it is the solid state storage. I no longer need to keep the Adobe apps open and in the background sucking up precious system memory. If I need to get to one of the apps quickly, it launches within four seconds or so. It’s wonderful.

Of course, I do most of my written work on the Air as well. In fact, the very words you are reading, as with most words I write, come from the Air. As I’ve stated before, it’s not so much that I can’t write with my iPad, as it is habit to write with a Mac. It’s an ingrained habit, but not etched in stone. That’s a tale for another day however.

Lastly, I found that I can comfortably get somewhere between seven to eight hours of battery life depending on what I’m doing. That is, if I’m doing something light such as web browsing and writing an article, battery life is phenomenal. If I’m doing something more processor intensive such as design work, battery life is still good, but drops to around 5 hours when starting with a full charge. This is great considering I’m at school for twelve hours two days a week; I can get through most of the day, on a single charge.

Play

During the school year, I do not have much time to do the things I find enjoyable. Things such as video games, watching movies, experimenting with software, and other extremely nerdy things. However, I did have time over the Christmas season to play on my MacBook Air, and as with my work, it handled the things I love to do better than the MacBook Pro it replaced. For instance, rapidly aging games such as Half-Life 2, Counter Strike Source, and Doom 3 played beautifully on the Air. Considering the age of those games, that’s not a hard feat.

Throwing a new game such as Duke Nukem Forever* at the machine makes for quick load times (again, due to the SSD), but the built-in Intel HD Graphics 3000 can’t quite keep up with a game like Nukem at maxed out settings, but can hammer through nonetheless. In short, it depends on what your personal level of acceptable graphics performance is considering the size limitations of the device.

Watching movies on the MacBook Air is an odd, if not outright frustrating endeavor. Sure, renting, or even buying a new movie from iTunes is cheap, and convenient enough, but what about the years of backlogged DVDs I have laying about? I’m certainly not going to buy all that stuff again. Sure, I could rip the DVDs and save the images on my Air. This takes up a lot of storage space, the rip quality is suspect, and it’s a hassle to do this for every single DVD I own. I could buy Apple’s external SuperDrive, but I’m tight, and after spending quite a bit of money for the machine, I would feel nickel and dimed. Plus, it’s another dongle I would have to lug around.

My last option for watching movies is Netflix (which makes me pay for the same content again), and is my current solution.**

In a semi-perfect world a nice solution to this problem would be to use Apple’s Remote Disc software for more than software instillation. Currently Remote Disc does not support DVD or CD playback. Remote Disc of course, allows the MacBook Air to “borrow” another computer’s optical drive for installing software from a disc. It works beautifully for software. If I had to guess, Apple couldn’t include DVD or CD playback due to licensing issues. Plus, Apple is making a push for digital distribution, and has a vested interested in that path becoming the dominant form of distribution.

In an absolutely perfect world, it would be great if Apple released a version of iTunes Match for movies. Scan a DVD’s barcode and let Apple handle the rest. From there, a user could download or even stream a movie down to their computer. This will never happen however- it would be a licensing nightmare for Apple, and something movie studios would never agree to.

In other words, prepare to lose your DVDs when buying the MacBook Air. This should go without saying, and I suspect most people have moved farther past DVDs than my household has anyway.

For me the MacBook Air has been a mostly a step up, and not a step down. I now have more storage than my MacBook Pro ever did (256GB compared to 160GB), a more-pixel dense screen, faster storage, and greater portability. All of this matters to me. With the exception of DVD playback, I have not been pinched by the lack of optical drive. I was amazed at how little I actually needed it.

The MacBook Air is a great little machine. My experience with the device so far has exposed few shortcomings. That said, if you are someone who needs nothing more than raw processing power, look no further than the MacBook Pro.

*Duke Nukem Forever is a very pretty game, but it is terrible to play. The only thing to find here is 90s nostalgia.
**It is not expensive, but still irks me that yet another content industry has found another way to squeeze money out of me for the same thing I bought years ago.

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This is a team post discussing cases, or the lack thereof, in everyday iPhone and iPad usage. Some people, like our own Alex Jordan, are purists when it comes to appreciating Apple’s hardware designs and don’t want to cover any part of the original design. Then there are those who drop their devices so often that cases are really the only way to keep the purchases intact for more than a day.

Below are takes on the case vs. naked debate from various members of the iSource team. They’re a cool peek into how different people think of their smartphone and tablet investments, and there are also a few product recommendations thrown in for good measure.

Brandon Kosal

I’ve owned an iPhone from just about the day it was released to the present day, with the exception of a seven-month fling I had with BlackBerry.  (For you kids out there who don’t know what a BlackBerry is, just Google it.)  And since that day, I have, almost exclusively, gone caseless.  Sure, I tried a few here and there, and I even used a holster case for almost a month at work. But, sooner or later, I go back to the naked iPhone.  It’s how I rock it now and most likely always how I’ll use it.

I think one of the phone’s best features is its form factor.  It has such a unique feel, with a gorgeous screen to boot, that I feel like a case would hide its true beauty.  I understand that I risk certain damage, including scratches on the screen.  But I must say, and not to jinx myself, that I am pretty careful with my electronics, so it’s never been an issue.  For that reason, I prefer to let my iPhone just be itself.

Alex Jordan

As I have noted in the past, the iPhone 4S is my first iPhone. I do not carry it in a protective case. In the past, my family has had several iPods – none of which have been carried in a case, either. The main reason I carry my devices without a case – and this may sound kooky to some – is for the design aesthetics. I choose to carry my iPhone in the manner it was intended. Plus, the design student in me gets all hot and bothered regarding things like this anyway.

Plus, the device is rarely not on a completely flat surface, safely in my hand, or in my pocket. If it were to fall and break, I would eat the damage. That’s how confident I am in not breaking it. If it were to sustain enough damage while in my pocket that it broke, a case wouldn’t have helped it anyway. An extreme example such as a bad traffic accident comes to mind.

In short, I’m not above carrying an iPhone in a case. I just choose not to, and I’m comfortable with the consequences of doing so.

Rob Renk

I, like many of you, have owned every iteration of the iPhone.  In the beginning protection was never really one of my main concerns.  I just enjoyed my iPhone naked, and I tried my best to be as careful as I could.  As a result, it was not common for me to be seen carrying my iPhone around all covered up in a case.  That changed for me after I sold my 3GS.  I bought my iPhone 4 with the proceeds, and protection immediately became a top priority for me.  It was actually an unfortunate necessity that I constantly struggled with.

The iPhone 4 was the sexiest phone I had ever used, and covering it up really seemed to do it a disservice.  So it was an on-again-off-again relationship where I often let my daily activities dictate whether or not a case was needed.  In addition, after selling my 3GS, I discovered I could sell my iPhone a month-ish before the expectant launch date of the next iPhone iteration, and make enough to cover a new, upgraded iPhone and even an accessory or two.  The better protected my iPhone was, the newer it looked, and the more money I could eventually sell it for.

How much protection is enough?  For me, I started with the full body skins. With a skin I could protect my iPhone and still enjoy it without the bulk of a case.  This worked fine, but I just couldn’t leave the skins on for long periods of time.  I wanted to be able to use it and show it off the way it was intended to be–naked of course.  That pretty much led to the revolving door of cases.  I was never really satisfied with any of them for long periods of time.  Recently I’ve settle into the mykase by BodyGuardz, and for now, I couldn’t be happier.  Lightweight, strong, and easy to remove, the mykase currently fills the self-imposed layer of protection that is there when I need it, and removable when I don’t.

Brandon Steili

I guess in the case vs. naked discussion…. I’m a bit of a boxers guy. Let me explain that stance. On my iPhone 4s I have a BodyGuardz Dry Apply full body skin. The device isn’t fully clothed in jeans and a hoodie, but it’s protected front and back. Boxers. My iPad however is in a Marware CEO Hybrid case (Thanks Patrick). I would love carry the iPad around in boxer mode but the big problem is I tend to toss it into my backpack with tons of other stuff and boxer mode wouldn’t protect it enough. If you’ve ever worn boxers outside in the winter – you understand that sometimes they’re enough – sometimes they aren’t. So, there’s my case vs naked. Boxers all the way.

Patrick Jordan

OK, if we’re going with all the undergarments comparisons I guess I’m a bit of a thong guy. Whoa, that doesn’t sound right at all.
I’m a guy who likes his iDevices to wear thongs. Yikes, getting worse. I’ll start over.

I’ve always been tempted to let my iPads and iPhones cavort around naked, but I’ve very rarely done it. I tend to like a minimal amount of basic protection for them, though. In the past I’ve used an Incase slider that provided back protection and some minimal impact coverage for the screen, along with a screen protector, for my iPhones. On the iPhone 4S I have so far not applied a screen protector and am using just a basic snap-on back cover that was an Xmas gift from my daughter – so the iPhone is a little step closer to naked.

With the iPad 2, my current and long-time favorite ‘outfit’ is the Apple Smart Cover (dark blue leather model) and just an ultra-slim Gelaskin on the back. I’ve got a few very good sleeve and folio style cases that I’ll use if taking the iPad 2 out into environments where it may be more at risk of damage.

James Rogers

For me, a case has been an absolute necessity for all of my PDAs and smart phones, all the way back to the Windows CE days (yes, I know I am dating myself). So cases are about two things for me.

First, I always want to protect the value of the devices that I own. 99% of the time, I am selling my previous device to upgrade to the next model. The better the condition, and the better quality the case that comes with it, the more I get in resale.

Second, and even more important, is that I tend to work in some environments that are very inhospitable to electronics. From mechanical and electrical rooms, to rooftops exposed to the weather, I need to make sure that my phone has basic protection from the elements and from short drops. I use it for several things besides just phone calls in the course of my daily work, so making sure that it’s protected is vital to my being able to do my job.

Also, because I use the phone so much during the course of my day in ways and places that aren’t always friendly to battery life, I also prefer a battery-powered case. I have been using the Mophie Juice Pack Plus Outdoor Edition since I reviewed it late last year, and I absolutely love it. The extra size is absolutely worth it for me for the ability to do pretty much anything I need to do during the day without ever having to plug my iPhone in.

In the course of a single work day, I may use GPS, tether my iPhone to my laptop or iPad, make extended phone calls to customers or tech support, research parts and pricing information using battery hungry 3G, or spend time in low or no-signal areas that tend to really kill your battery fast. All this, and I always use a headset, so Bluetooth is enabled 24/7/365. Thanks to the Juice Pack, I never have to worry or think about doing any of this anymore. When my initial charge gets low, I flip the little switch on the side, and my iPhone 4S just keeps on going.

For those like me that need function over form, it’s hard to make it without a good iPhone case.

Joe Tomasone

As a data hungry road warrior (but not yet part of the 5%!), I find that I am often in need of a little extra battery to make it through the day, and just as often not in a practical place to plug in.   Therefore, my solution is the Mophie Juice Pack Air, which can ressurect your iPhone from the brinks of red-battery death and into a nice, healthy, mostly or fully charged state with which you can further abuse AT&T’s apparently grossly oversold network.

The one downside to the Mophie – as I’m sure you can imagine – is that it removes every single trace of Ive-imbued sexiness and svelteness that makes the iPhone 4 such a joy to hold and behold. Every so often, when I take the case off for cleaning, I am reminded of how much I miss my sleek slab of glass and metal… But then I remember that I love using it much more than admiring it (well, okay, a little less) and realize that the Mophie must go back on.

Jay Roth

I was a hardcore case kind of guy when I got my 3GS – my first iPhone. Of the few cases I tried, I loved, loved, loved the Case-mate ID credit card case. With a single grab while leaving the house, I had my iPhone, my ID, and a credit card. I never went without that iPhone, so it actually meant I never went anywhere without an ID. I even squeezed a paper health insurance card and a $20 bill between the phone and case. Some may say that I was at risk for losing my identity since everything was packaged so neatly in one bundle. Although it was an initial concern of mine, I found I actually kept better track of my ID and credit cards instead of fumbling over locating a wallet and a phone.

Fast forward to the iPhone 4S two years later. Now I prefer the svelte glistening feel of the iPhone in its naturally nearly-nude form. I currently protect it with a full BodyGuardz protector and find the weight and feel to be enticing. There’s just something magical about holding this device au natural.

(Now where the heck did i put my driver’s license?)

Thomas Wong

I don’t think carrying a 4S around “naked” is necessarily a bad idea. My 4S had its first drop (from a coffee table) recently, and despite landing on its side and then the screen, it’s fine. So there’s definitely a little bit of impact resistance in the core product.

However, I do think that the anti-case crowd can be a bit too dismissive. Cases aren’t just for drop protection or extra colours any more – sure, there are a lot of sinfully ugly wastes of plastic out there, but there are also a lot of functional designs, as has been pointed out above. Cases can turn the iPhone into wallets, into battery powerhouses, and sometimes into penguins. That shouldn’t be easily discounted.

One of my personal favourites is the TwelveSouth BookBook, which really transform the iPhone into something different. It does cover the glass-and-metal design, but it’s also lovely having both my iPhone and my wallet in one place, and it’s so quaint keeping a hardcover book in your pocket.

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The display is the same 9.7-inch size as the displays used in the previous two generations of the iPad. However, when viewed under a microscope, it is apparent that the new display has 4×4 pixel clusters as compared to the earlier 2×2 clusters in previous iPad models. The math works out to the previously rumored 2048×1536 resolution, which is double the current iPad’s 1024×768.

MacRumors is one of those news sources I trust, as they do not break news themselves unless they have proof. So bank on a Retina display coming to the new iPad in March.

Next up is a forum post from the Chinese site WeiPhone, which plays host to to a supposed image of the next-generation iPad’s logic board. More interestingly, is that the main processor on the board is not identified as the “A6″ (following the iPad and iPad 2′s respective “A4″ and “A5″ chip naming scheme) which was the expected moniker, but rather as the “A5X”.

Information such as the number of cores or the clock speed of the cores cannot be sussed from the part, but one piece of information, the date code, suggests that the board was manufactured in mid-November of 2011. So there’s that.

Lastly, NextMedia is reporting that the new iPad will have a more tapered edge than the iPad 2, and will also sport an improved camera. As it turns out, the part that this report brings to light, has been seen before. However, poor lighting in the original photo over-exaggerated the definition of the curvature of the case. Now, in the new photo, the tapered edge is much more subtle.

The report also suggests that the next-generation iPad will have a much nicer camera than the iPad 2′s crummy 1 Megapixel sensor. In fact, the images seem to show a much larger hole in the iPad 3′s casing for a larger sensor. In all, they claim the new camera will have an 8 Megapixel capacity.

So it seems that the forthcoming iPad will have a Retina display, an “A5X” processor, a slightly more tapered case than the iPad 2, and an 8 Megapixel camera. Not bad at all.

Images courtesy (in order) of MacRumors, WeiPhone, NextMedia/Apple Daily.

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For installment number two in my iOS On The Road Series, I want to take a broad look at the iPad as a tool for the mobile professional. The root of this this topic goes all the way back to the original announcement of the iPad, and the ongoing discussion of what exactly it is and what it does that has gone on ever since. If you were paying attention back then, I’m sure you heard the tech media mantra “It’s just a big iPod Touch.” Fast-forwarding to today, we don’t really hear that one too much anymore. I think even the biggest detractor of Apple’s signature iOS device has realized that the iPad goes well beyond those boundaries.

So, if the iPad isn’t just a larger screen iPod Touch, then what is it? What sets it apart? Considering that, other than a few tablet-oriented extensions, it runs the exact same OS, it’s hard to say. Well, until you get one in your hands, that is. It is the screen size that truly defines this device, but in a way that transforms it into something quite different from Apple smaller handheld devices, and the OS along with it.

While the bigger screen certainly helps you to enjoy watching movies and reading books more easily, you could argue that the experience isn’t much different beyond the larger screen size. However, with most of the other stock iOS apps, the experience is far different than on the iPad’s smaller screen siblings. The increased screen real estate necessitated redesigned versions of Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Safari and Photos that took advantage of all that extra space, making them far easier and more enjoyable to use.

Now with iOS 5, we even have gesture control for faster switching between apps, which adds a real element of polish to the stock experience. Where the comparison of the iPad to other iOS devices really breaks down, however, is when you enter the App Store. I don’t know if Apple made the pixel doubling full screen mode for existing iPhone and iPod Touch apps available because they knew it would look hideous and drive devs to make iPad-specific apps, but that seems to have been the end result. All I can say is and emphatic, Thank You Apple!

Whether it was on purpose or not, iOS users have benefited from an ever growing catalog of apps that have pushed what the iPad can do, and stretched our definitions of what it is. Of course, third-party developers got a pretty good taste of what was possible from Apple’s own retail apps. As good as the initial stock iOS apps were, it was the mobile versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote that really set the tone at the launch of the original iPad.

Apple then threw down the gauntlet in a big way this past year at the unveiling of the iPad 2, with the release of tablet versions of iMovie and GarageBand.

While the iWork apps were certainly very capable and polished, productivity apps rarely capture the imaginations of consumers. Fun and creative apps such as iMovie and GarageBand, however, are a different ballgame entirely. These apps are fun and functional. They are powerful, but still retain a simplicity and elegance that keeps them approachable in the eyes of novice users that the iPad is so squarely aimed at. All this for $4.99 each? Are you kidding me? Like Mario and Zelda have sold Nintendo consoles and handhelds for years, iMovie and GarageBand were classic system sellers. At both of the iPad launches Apple provided the initial sizzle to help sell the hardware.

While Apple has set the tone, what keeps the iPad avalanche rolling ever faster downhill is the wares of third-party developers and the inexpensive excellence that can be had with a simple click of the App Store icon. Any time users get a little bored with their iPad, they can easily find a cheap fix to breath some new life into it with any number of very creative, useful, and most of all, fun apps. There are so many out there, with so many more being added every day, that there are several web sites and apps whose sole purpose is just to sift through the chaff to find the best of the bunch. Now that’s a perpetual motion ecosystem that is currently leaving the competition in the dust. In fact, according to a recent report from Businessweek, despite the rapid proliferation of Android smartphones, there are three iOS apps released for every one for Android.

So, Apple created the first truly compelling and easy to use tablet, and leveraged their App Store advantage to give it an instant ecosystem. Awesome. Now what do you do with it besides surf the web, check email, read books, or watch movies? As it turns out, there’s quite a bit with the right apps and accessories. So much so, in fact, that what I originally intended to be a single article on useful tools that have helped me be more productive with my iPad will have to be stretched over three or four. There is just too much out there that I use, often on a daily basis, to cover in one sitting.

Let’s start by taking a look at easily one of the most popular and most crowded areas of the App Store- notetaking apps. The iPad’s form factor and instant on capability make it ideal as a notetaking device in the boardroom or the classroom. Unfortunately, while the built-in Notes app leaves a lot to be desired in terms of features, third party developers have given us a plethora of useful apps to choose from. Some are for general-purpose use and are very broad in their focus, while others cover very specific applications. Here are some of both types of notetaking apps that have made it into my regular rotation.

Swiss Army Evernote

Evernote may not be my favorite app for the iPad (it’s close, but not quite number 1), but I probably use it as much or more than any other. The iPad has an absolute embarrassment of riches in the category of notetaking apps, and I have tried several of Evernote’s main competitors. I have even like a few of them well enough to keep them on my iPad long-term for one reason or another. However, I have never found one that is as powerful and versatile as Evernote, while managing to remain easy to use.

If you aren’t familiar with Evernote, it is sort of the Swiss Army Knife of notetakers. Like Dropbox, it syncs with a free (or more feature packed premium) cloud-based account, making your information available everywhere. You can get to your notes from the web, from dedicated desktop apps for Windows and Mac, and also from mobile apps available for all of the major tablet and smartphone OSs. They aren’t the only service provider to offer this type of service, but in my humble opinion, they do the best job of pulling it all together into a seamless whole.

Because of this versatility and the ease of access to my information, I find myself using it all the time, for all kinds of different tasks.

First of all, because I have my information everywhere, I take all of my notes for different work projects that I work on in Evernote. I am often bouncing between 4 or 5 at any given time, so it is really easy for all those little details to run together after a while. Because of this, I have found that having a single running note for each customer is a great way to keep all of those loose thoughts and ideas in one place. Inevitably, I am going to have to go back to a job site and answer questions, make warranty and service calls, and hopefully do even more work in the future, so having a searchable document that keeps their information accessible is invaluable. The fact that I use a bluetooth keyboard (several actually) with my iPad makes the process of taking notes a breeze, and it turns the pairing of it and Evernote into a perfect notetaking workhorse.

This search capability is another one of Evernote’s killer features. In fact, it is a big reason that I came back to the app after trying it briefly when I first got my iPhone 3G. Not only can Evernote search the text of your notes, but it can also search the text of scanned and photographed documents.

This is another one of the features that I use extensively. Evernote allows you to organize your notes into categories and apply tags to aid in searching, but the ability to type in “Exxon” and pull up copies of all of my scanned gas receipts without any extra effort is a killer feature.

This feature makes Evernote the perfect home for handwritten documents and notes from other iPad apps, or anywhere else for that matter. Then their text will be fully searchable from any device, anywhere. If my memory serves, this feature was originally only available from the web or the desktops apps, but now it works directly in the iOS versions, as well, making Evernote a great way to store important documents without having to have tons of tags and detailed titles to remember why you put them there.

Thanks to this feature, I keep receipts and lots of document scans and photographs in Evernote. I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking full advantage of their storage and search capabilities if it weren’t for the fact that Evernote is proactive about security and privacy. They are very up front about the fact that, even with their free service, they don’t use or sell your personal information. Also, while encryption and enhanced security features used to be one of the selling points for a premium account, this is now a standard feature that everyone gets access to automatically. You still have to make sure you are using a password that is secure and difficult to crack and that you are encrypting notes and text that you want protected, but as long as you do, you can trust that your data is safe from prying eyes. Many fremium service providers (Google, cough, cough) could take a lesson here. Just sayin.

The other big feature that sets Evernote apart, and makes it so useful, is their open API approach. Again, like Dropbox, Evernote has become ubiquitous in the iOS world by allowing developers to tie apps directly into their service. For example, one of my high traffic iPhone apps is JotNot, which is one of several designed to photograph and enhance documents and receipts for storage on a number of cloud services.

Evernote is just one of the many services JotNot integrates with. This app is so very helpful, because it allows me to record important information that I need while on the go, without having to carry a portable scanner, or worse yet, wait until I am at home or the office to record them. I am on the road so much that neither is very practical. Now, I could just take the same picture of a document in Evernote itself, or upload one from my Camera Roll. However, JotNot has several image editing and enhancement features that make it easier for Evernote to scan and search the text of the end result.

Apps like JotNot aren’t just for receipts, either. For example, I work with blueprints all the time in the course of my daily activities. While getting a clean copy of an electrical, mechanical, or control print onto my iPad or laptop isn’t an problem, one of the issues I come across quite often is getting all of the notes, highlights, and markings that men in the field make on job site copies. Often times, these notes will reflect important information that I will need to do my programming or interface work, or that I will need to add to the As-Built prints at the end of the job.

The combination of the high quality cameras in both the iPhone 4 and 4S, JotNot and Evernote has made my life so much easier in this regard. Now, I don’t need to hand copy the notes, take the prints somewhere to be scanned, or bring my digital camera to the job. I just use my iPhone, and in minutes, I have clear and legible copies of what I need uploaded to Evernote that can then be searched as needed later on.

So, Evernote does all of this for me, and I use it multiple times a day on both my iPad and iPhone. It actually does a lot more than what I have described, as I do most of my article drafts for this site in Evernote on my iPad, and also keep several personal odds and ends in there, such as my genealogy research notes. Evernote’s staff touts it as a digital memory assistant, and I would have to say that is very accurate. It can hold so many different kinds of information, while still keeping it all organized and easy to search.

You may have noticed my mention of Evernote having free and premium levels. This is certainly nothing new, as most all cloud services have some kind of fremium aproach with a premium service fee structure. What is unique about Evernote is how little they charge for their premium services and how much they give you for free. First off, where most cloud storage services will start you off with somewhere between 1 and 2 GB of free space, Evernote never puts any limits on the size of your total storage. Instead, they cap the amount that you can upload in a given month at 60 MB, and your maximum number of notes at 100,000.

Now, that isn’t a huge amount of data in today’s terms, but it is perfectly adequate if you are just taking text notes and uploading a few document scans and photos. However, if you start clipping web sites, taking pictures, or uploading full documents and go over your monthly allotment, you can pay their low $5 fee to upgrade to premium for a month. This gives you 1 GB of uploads, and increases the maximum size of a single note to 50 MB. It is a recurring payment, so you will have to remember to cancel to keep from being charged again.

As I already mentioned, Evernote only charges $5 per month for their premium level of service, or an even cheaper $45 if you want to pay for a year in advance. This is FAR below what most other cloud services charge. Sure, Evernote is different, as it isn’t just a web drive that you can create a folder structure in and do massive backups to. However, with their premium level, you can upload documents other than just text files and photos. Premium members can upload pretty much anything, including Office documents and PDFs, and then have the ability to open those documents from anywhere, and on pretty much any device. Not too shabby for $45 per year.

However, the coolest thing to me is that Evernote approaches premium services the RIGHT WAY. The free account isn’t just a taste to get you hooked. It is fully functional, and will be perfectly adequate for most people that use it. They don’t ever penalize you for not going premium, which is evidenced by the fact that you can easily upgrade for a month, and then drop right back down to free again without worrying about being locked out of notes or functionality. THAT is the way to do business and keep your customers happy. It makes me WANT to be a premium member, rather than feeling like I need to be to get anything out of the service.

Sometimes simple is better- Simplenote and iA Writer

For those who want the text and nothing but the text, I would have to say that both Simplenote (pictured above) and iA Writer have a lot of appeal. While I don’t tend to use these two fine apps nearly as much, they are definitely worth a mentions, as they cover a couple of bases that Evernote does not. First of all, nothing is more portable than a basic txt file, and that is what both of these apps save your writing in, making your files useable by any OS, and pretty much anywhere you need them. While I have copied my note text in and out of Evernote on plenty of occasions, the notes themselves are not in txt format, and can’t be natively opened with anything else.

Another big advantage for many users is that both of these apps allow you to sync your files to Dropbox for storage and use on other platforms. Evernote is very effective at being its own, self-contained little ecosystem, but for those users who are already invested in using Dropbox for cloud file storage, these apps make a lot of sense as primary writing tools. One caveat to note is that Simplenote does require a premium subscription for Dropbox sync, but it is available for a very reasonable $19.99 per year. Their free level does offer sync, but it is with Simplenote’s own servers. However, your files are made available on their website, simplenoteapp.com.

As simple and elegant as Simplenote is, iA Writer actually manages to do it one better. It is an exercise in absolute simplicity. and in this case, that is a good thing.

As with some other notable iPad apps like Instapaper and Reeder, iA Writer includes all the critical features that you need, without cluttering the interface with things that you don’t. Couple this elegant interface with a custom keyboard designed specifically for the needs of a writer, and you have a powerful combination.

This isn’t the only trick under IA Writer’s sleeve, either. Not only does it include Dropbox support with the ability to use nested folders, it also has iCloud sync support thanks to a recent update. And if you prefer more simple methods, you can also e-mail your plain text documents to yourself or others. So, no matter how you prefer to sync and store your documents, iA Writer has you covered.

Ink In Sync- Noteshelf and Notes Plus

I can remember listening to Evernote’s CEO and head technical guy talking about how much sense it made to include ink support in their new iPad version during one of their podcasts, and how that feature would be coming soon. Fast forward almost two years, and unfortunately “soon” still hasn’t arrived. Thankfully, however, in such a rich and competitive ecosystem, developers don’t let niches sit unfilled for long. Such is the case with using ink for notetaking on the iPad, as several worthy competitors have emerged that allow you to create, share, and store notes that make use of digital ink and drawing, as well allowing you to use text, photos, and in some cases, recorded voice entry.

I reviewed Noteshelf several months ago, just after it was released. Even with its more limited initial feature set, I came away very impressed. The developers have been quite busy since then, filling out that feature set with great additions such as a zoom box for more natural handwriting in ink mode, and automatic font sizing to help in lining up typed text. Noteshelf doesn’t include voice recording capability, but does allow ink, text, and photo entry, and integrates them together very nicely.

The feature that really sets Noteshelf apart, however, is the inclusion of so many different kinds of papers to write your notes on. From business oriented task lists, to student oriented assignment and class note pages, to music staff and guitar tab, this app gives you a wide variety of backdrops on which to take your notes. For iPad users who come from a paper organizer background, this is the perfect “gateway drug” app for you. As a former private music teacher myself, the ability to crank out quick lesson handouts without either having to hand write them on staff paper and keep up with them like I used to, or invest in a very expensive piece of notation software really got my attention. I’m not teaching presently, but if still I was, I would use this feature a LOT.

For those looking for something a little more focused on taking class or meeting notes, Notes Plus is another app that is definitely worth a look. This has been my go to tool in situations where I needed to take ink notes or drawings in a formal situation, and I have found it to be quite powerful. Where Noteshelf gives you more variety in terms of backdrop and style, Notes Plus has a more straight-laced ruled notebook paper look and feel, but adds some power features that can take your ink notes to the next level.

First, it is possible to draw a circle to select and move sections of either ink notes or sketches, which gives you the freedom to change things up while you work.

Notes Plus can also recognize shapes that you draw, and convert them into a single image that can be moved, manipulated, or resized.

And if you don’t feel like drawing your own, Notes Plus also has a selection of six shapes that can be added to your drawings.

While for some it may seem like a step back to the late nineties, for those who prefer to kick it old school, Notes Plus offers the ability to perform handwriting recognition on any ink notes that you choose. Retro chic does come at a price, however, as it will take a $1.99 in-app purchase to unlock this feature. It works reasonably well, but I personally haven’t had any use for this feature since I left Windows Mobile behind long ago. I prefer to just stick with Evernote’s search capabilities at this point, but this is a nice inclusion for those that do prefer to covert their ink to text.

Last, but certainly not least, Notes Plus offers you the opportunity to record sound during your note taking, which is perfect for preserving all or part of a meeting, presentation, or class that you need to keep track of.

You can record multiple files under one note, and you even have the option to name the separate tracks individually to help keep track of what each one covers. You could certainly do your voice recording separately with a stand-alone recorder, or with an iPhone or other smartphone, but using Notes Plus to do your voice recording inside of your note keeps everything organized and accessible in one place.

Both Noteshelf and Notes Plus offer multiple ways to export your notes for backup and use on other platforms. Notes Plus offers manual export to Google Docs, as well as the ability to email your notes as either image files or PDFs. Even better, once you link your Dropbox account, Notes Plus offers background sync of all your notes and voice recordings. As good as Notes Plus’ sync options are, Noteshelf does it one better with integrated Evernote export.

Evernote’s advanced search capabilities make this an absolute no-brainer for ink-based documents, which makes its absence from Notes Plus’ options conspicuous. You can always email your notes to your Evernote account, but Noteshelf’s built-in export allows you to designate a notebook for your notes, and also transfer any tags that you have already designated in Noteshelf directly to Evernote. In either case, you have plenty of options for exporting and syncing your notes to use them however and wherever you need.

So there is a not so quick look at a few of the iPad apps I use for my notetaking needs while on the road. This list isn’t meant to be any kind of “be all, end all,” by any stretch, as there are plenty of very worthy cloud syncing, plain text, and ink note apps available in the App Store. These are just the ones that I have found the most helpful in my daily work and personal life. If you agree, disagree, or have other apps that you would like to recommend, I would love to hear from you about it.

If you still doubt that the iPad can be a production device, and downright serious work tool, stay tuned. In the next few iOS On The Road installments, I will go through some of the full document production and design tools that I use, as well as some remote access, desktop extension utilities, and hardware accessories that make my work a little easier while I’m away from home.

Do any of you out there use Evernote, Simplenote, iA Writer, Noteshelf, or Notes Plus? If so, what do you think of them? Do you have another iPad note taking app that you swear by? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments. And, as always, if there is anything else you would be interested in me covering in future installments, I would love to hear from you. Now, if you will excuse me, the road quite literally beckons again.

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VLC 2.0, the traffic cone-iest open source media player ever made, is now available for download on your Mac. There are a ton of technical highlights of the 2.0 features on the VLC homepage, but I’d actually recommend reading this VLC 2.0 MacStories post instead, which sums up the more accessible aspects of the update, and also includes an interview with some of the minds behind this release.

I can’t comment any more on how the release feels because my Mac is currently significantly out of arm’s reach, but it’s an easy recommendation for a download. VLC has always played everything I’ve thrown at it, and I’m curious to see whether this update — in particular its new one-window design — will make it more of a viable music player for me.

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I reviewed the Waterfield Travel Express a few months ago, but I wanted to post a quick update and say that this little iPad bag is still performing beautifully. At full capacity, the TravEx can house an iPad with Smart Cover, Apple Bluetooth keyboard, a folded pair of Sennheiser PX-200 IIi headphones, and charging cables — all without showing any unsightly bulges.

This is one of the coolest compartmentalized bags I’ve ever owned. It’s always easy for me to reach right into the TravEx to remove a pair of headphones or a cleaning cloth, and I never have to worry about other contents spilling out. I also really love the zipper, which unzips horizontally along the top, and then vertically down the side. Opening the bag all the way allows me to fit larger items, like the Apple BT keyboard of the Adonit Writer, without having to fidget with or jam them in inch-by-inch.

The outside of the bag has also remained spotless, thanks to the black nylon. I’ve sat this bag down on dirty Subway seats and accidentally bumped it against the peeling wooden planks at construction sites, bu it also goes back to looking brand new after a quick pat down. I’ve also inadvertently tested the impact protection by banging the bag right into a streetcar pole while I swung into my seat. I didn’t do this on purpose, but I’m very glad that the two plastic inserts did their job and shielded the iPad from impact.

The only wish I have at this point is that Waterfield saw fit to add a very minimal handle to the bag. I love the suspension strap and I never use the Travel Express without it, but a very minimal nylon handle near the bottom would be appreciated for keeping the bag steady during rush hour sprints. It would also make the bag a little easier to pick up.

But those are pretty minor complaints in the scheme of things. I’m terrifically happy with this little bag, and it has held up beautifully through daily use. This San Francisco company has a reputation for making some very sturdy, well-designed products, and I think the simple $69 Travel Express is some of their best work yet. If you decide to pick one up, definitely make sure to also purchase a strap on your way to the checkout. The Travel Express really shines as a standalone bag.

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I know we’re all pretty used to crazy numbers from Apple. iPhone revenues that exceed all of Microsoft’s revenues last quarter, Apple worth more than Microsoft and Google combined, more iOS devices sold last year than Macs sold in 28 years, over 550,000 apps in the App Store, and on and on. But still …

25 Billion.

The App Store is closing in on hitting the 25 billion downloads mark. That’s Billion, with a B. And that’s in less than four years, and less than two years since the iPad came out and pushed momentum among developers even higher.

Just an incredible number.

Oh, and as with other similar milestones, Apple will be awarding a whopping $10,000 App Store gift card to the lucky person who makes that 25 billionth download. You can watch the countdown widget at the Apple.com home page.

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Software Update to Become Part of Mac App Store Staring in Mountain Lion

It appears that, beginning with Mountain Lion Software Update will be moved to the Mac App Store. I thought this was odd when Apple first introduced the Mac App Store, that they also supported Software Update alongside it. Two is too many places for the common consumer to check for updates in my opinion. [Read More]

An Explanation of iCloud Documents in Mountain Lion

As of right now, getting documents from your iPad to your Mac is a pain in the ass. Starting with Mountain Lion, it looks like applications on OS X will be able to tap into Documents on iCloud. This is what I’m most excited about in Mountain Lion. [Read More]

We Have Seen the Last of ‘Mac’ in ‘Mac OS X’

It seems today, with the introduction of the Mountain Lion developer preview, Apple has completely wiped the “Mac” from “Mac OS X”. This only significant due to habit; after all the company has been calling Mac OS X for over ten years now. [Read More]

Apple Lowers iAd Buy-In Fee Again

This is one of those perfect examples that demonstrate the fact that not everything Apple touches glitters like gold. The company has reportedly lowered the buy-in price for their iAd program once again. Remember, that Apple started the program at a $1 million buy-in. Over time that price dropped to $500,000, to $300,000, and as of today, now $100,000. It shows that developers are going elsewhere for their ads. Good thing this isn’t a major business initiative for Apple. [Read More]

Apple Seeking to Sue Bankrupt Kodak

Remember a while back that Kodak had filed suit against Apple for patent infringement? Since that time Kodak has filed for bankruptcy protection, and Apple is now seeking permission from the bankruptcy court to sue the dying Kodak. If Apple were to win, it would be a finishing blow for the once-great Kodak. [Read More]

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As of today, developers can download and run a preview of OS X’s next version, Mountain Lion – as Alex reported earlier.

I’m still getting used to Lion, so I’ll pass on the developer preview for now. Here’s one bit of newness from Mountain Lion that I’ve already adopted though – that handsome Galaxy wallpaper image shown above. 9to5Mac have got a nice direct download for it, and it looks just swell on my Lion desktops.

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There are a number of great features headed to OS X Mountain Lion. Notification Center, Messages, and AirPlay are all going to play prominent roles in the Mac desktop experience later this summer, and that is nothing if not awesome. But when I read this morning’s announcement, I actually got more excited about certain desktop features coming right back to iOS later this year.

In particular, I’d love to see the new universal address and search bar in Mountain Lion’s Safari (as seen on the Verge) come to Mobile Safari on iOS. It’s encouraging to see Apple clean up Safari’s look on the desktop, and it should just be a matter of time now before we see the change make its way to iOS. I really love the universal address bar in Grazing Browser, and I’ve also heard of a few jailbreak tweaks (like UniBar) that provide similar functionality to Mobile Safari, so it would be lovely to see Apple catch up in this regard.

The other change I’d like to see is much more basic. The Messages beta on the Mac sends messages when you press the return key, and I think this behaviour should be replicated on the iPad, if not also on the iPhone. There are some arguments to be made for being pressing return to add line breaks to a text or iMessage, but I think the whole messaging process would be a lot smoother if return were replaced with a send key.

Not only would this make Messages feel like most other instant messaging apps out there (where enter/return is the standard for sending a message off), but it would also make Messages on the iPad a lot more compatible with hardware keyboards. It’s ridiculous to me that I can type messages to a friend on my Bluetooth keyboard, but that I still have to reach for the iPad’s screen to send them. A simple key press would be so much simpler. But this really isn’t a new kind of rant for me. If you follow iSource, you may have seen me rant about the lack of hardware keyboard support on the iPad before.

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Gatekeeper has two new ways to verify applications to make sure they are not malicious in any way. The first path is to only allow applications to be installed via the Mac App Store. The second is for developers who choose to distribute their applications outside of the Mac App Store. They will be able to register with Apple and receive a certificate that they can associate with their applications. This will give Apple a way of tracking software and pulling the plug if anything nefarious begins to occur.

It is being reported however, that Mountain Lion’s default setting will only allow apps to be installed from the Mac App Store. This can be changed in Gatekeeper’s settings, with three options being offered: “Mac App Store”, “Mac App Store and Identified Developers”, and “Anywhere”. Here is how the Macworld report describes each of these features:

Anywhere: This choice uses the same set of rules as every previous version of Mac OS X. If an app isn’t known malware and you approve it, it opens.

Mac App Store: When this choice is selected, any apps not downloaded from the Mac App Store will be rejected when you try to launch them.

Mac App Store and identified developers: This is the new default setting in Mountain Lion. In addition to Mac App Store apps, it also allows any third-party apps that have been signed by an identified developer to run.

If you use the default Mac App Store-only installation process, it can be easily bypassed the first time the application is launched by right clicking on the app, and selecting the “open” option. Once opened, Gatekeeper no longer has control regarding that specific application.

As for the developer certificate route, Mountain Lion will do a daily check against Apple’s servers looking for developers that have been blacklisted for malicious software. If applications from that developer have been detected on a user’s machine, they will be locked down and cannot be opened.

This new identified developer program does not check the developers beforehand. So, certificates are freely distributed without question. However, it allows Apple to link developers to applications, and if a malicious mishap occurs, allows Apple to shut down functionality for that app from a developer who has been up to no good.

[UPDATE] As pointed out in the comments by one of our readers, I grossly misunderstood, and poorly reported on a major fact regarding Gatekeeper. By default, Mountain Lion is set to allow for the instillation of apps from the Mac App Store and apps from developers holding Apple-issued certificates. In the report above I had incorrectly stated that, by default, only Mac App Store apps would be cleared for instillation. My original reporting was wrong. I apologize for the confusion.

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Mountain Lion will also offer greater integration with iCloud, with automatic configuration of services such as Mail, Find My Mac, FaceTime, and thankfully, syncing of iCloud documents (created with apps like Pages) across all devices linked to that account.

Apple will also continue its push into the Chinese market with greater integration with Chinese services such as Baidu. There will also be new methods of input for Chinese users.

It’s also worth noting that Apple released a public beta version of the new Messages app for OS X. This application will replace iChat in Mountain Lion, but for now, will exist on Lion users’ computers and incorporate features from FaceTime, iChat and iMessages.

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Clear for iPhone is a pretty big deal for a buck. It’s a list manager and, as you may have heard, its designers have gone out of their to present you with as little UI chrome as possible. The result is a dead-simple, gesture-driven task manager that strives to rival the simplicity of pen and paper.

This means that Clear purposely ignores many of the more complex features present in other apps like Things, 2Do, and OmniFocus. Investing a dollar in Clear for iPhone will buy you the ability to keep multiple itemized lists, complete or delete individual items, and – oh, wait, that’s about it.

[Well, there are a few settings hidden in the top level of the app, but for the most part, what you see in the video demo of Clear, is what you get.]

The app’s capabilities can be summed up in a sentence, but the arrangement and implementation of those capabilities deserves at least a few more words. Clear reminds me a bit of Microsoft’s Metro interface for Windows Phone 7: it uses basic shades, isn’t overly shiny, and the plain text really is the most prominent graphical presence on screen. Most of the basic features – like the creation, completion, or deletion of tasks – are implemented as gestures. A quick tutorial right at the beginning of the app teaches you to pull on this, swipe on that, and pinch between these two items to stick a new task between them. It looks wordy on a page, but it feels natural in person, and, more importantly, it’s a lot of fun to do.

Clear’s greatest strength is definitely how easy it feels to operate. Items are just as easy to create as they are to complete, and the current lack of any sync means that the app just pops right up and works when you need it to. Clear seems like the ideal home for the simpler shopping and reading lists that always feel too cumbersome to fill out in Things. I can spend a minute creating a shopping list before heading to the supermarket, and when I get to the actual shopping, Clear’s gestures allow me to operate the app one-handed and require far less accuracy than the typical touchscreen checkbox.

Clear is one of those stupidly easy purchasing recommendations. App enthusiasts get a great new interface to play with, and those who prefer to create quick, simple lists will have one less use for pen and paper.

Clear was purchased by the author for review on iSource. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.

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I’ve been blogging, for others or for my own sites, for around 6 years now. When I started out I was using Windows machines and all sorts of different apps or web interfaces to draft and publish posts from. A few years ago I switched to using a MacBook and I haven’t used a non-Mac PC since.

One thing has prevented me from cutting all ties with Windows though. One thing has caused me to run a Windows XP and now Windows 7 virtual machine for years. The lack of a decent blogging app for Mac. I run a Windows 7 virtual machine solely because I want to use the superb (and free!) Windows Live Writer app.

I’ve tried various times to find a Mac app that is comparable with Windows Live Writer (WLW) but never succeeded. In fact, I cannot find a Mac blog editor app that even holds a candle to WLW. Last week my generally awesome MacBook Pro was getting a bit sluggish, and it spurred me to take a look at Mac blogging apps again – in the hope of being able to get rid of my need to constantly run a virtual machine on it.

So I spent the better part of four days looking at the ‘leading’ Mac blogging apps, and for three of those days I kept Parallels Desktop and my Windows virtual machine shutdown.

This is what I found out: there is not a single good blogging app for Mac for my needs anyway, and there’s just a huge dearth of even decent apps in this category. Talk about a gap in the market – this one is as wide as the Grand Canyon.

Here’s why I say this:

– The three leading Mac blogging apps, as far as I can tell from a ton of searching, are MarsEdit, Ecto, and Blogo. Three apps. Blogo does not yet support OSX Lion, and by the sounds of it its developers are stretched to devote any development resources to it at all just now. Ecto also does not appear to have a lot of current support and is erratic and buggy to use to say the least

So that leaves one out of three – the one that is most often named as the best Mac blogging app, MarsEdit. I’ve looked at MarsEdit a few times over the years but last week I gave it sustained try over the course of several days. And it was riddled with problems and shortcomings, including:

– It has a major issue with removing line breaks at random if you use (the well respected and commonly used) Minify feature with handling of line breaks on along with a cacheing plugin. WLW has no issues with this.

– It doesn’t import a site’s template – so its preview mode is more or less useless.

– If you try to split a post (add a More break) the split is never made where you ask it to be made. Not only does the split not ever go where it is intended to go, but once you attempt to split a post you suddenly lose the ability to easily see the text that’s in the latter portions of a post. The app’s developer even admits the UI for this ‘broken’ and not good at all – but has no timeframe at all for when it may be improved.

– I found no easy way to insert video into a post.

Windows Live Writer does everything that these three ‘best of class’ Mac apps fail to do. It makes creating, editing, and publishing blog posts simple and fast. It has a UI that’s a lot like MS Word and is basically just a pleasure to use.

So needless to say after my ‘experiment’ last week, I gave up and fired Parallels, Windows 7, and Windows Live Writer back up. I’ve got my MacBook Pro running like a champ again and I’m happy to be using an app that actually works, doesn’t require dumb workarounds for basic actions, and is a pleasure to work with.

I have to say I find it astounding though that there is so little and such poor choice when it comes to blogging apps for the Mac. If any of you reading this are Mac developers looking for new app ideas, please consider creating a good blogging app. Thanks in advance.

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The Just Mobile Highway in-car charger works with all your favorite iOS devices.  You know it’s a device you can trust because it comes with an Apple Certified coiled charging cable.  Whether you have an iPhone, iPad or iPad you will be able to rapidly charge your device with a USB port that sports a 2.1A output.  In addition, you can rest easy with the piece of mind that comes with knowing you have a built-in fuse to protect your device while it is connected to the charger from power surges.

A simple glance at your Just Mobile Highway charger’s green micro-LED power light let’s you know it’s in use–one more simple but useful feature that owners of Just Mobile devices have come to expect.  It’s hard to believe you can get excited about a simple in-car charger.  However, details like a diamond-tread aluminium head that receives the USB cable showcase attention to detail that is often missing from accessories that we use everyday.  The folks at Just Mobile aren’t just interested in style, they’re committed to quality products that last.  Simply put, after you try a Just Mobile Highway in-car charger you will never want to purchase another in-car charger from anywhere else.

Recent winners of the iLounge’s 2012 Best of Show at CES, the Just Mobile Highway retails for around $35 + shipping.

The Just Mobile Highway in-car charger was provided for review on iSource.com by Just Mobile. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see our “About” page.

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