tablets

Our tour of the Macworld | iWorld show floor continues, with a video demonstration of the iKeyboard, a special adhesive keyboard that attaches to the iPad.

In an email to Apple employees, Apple CEO Tim Cook says he is "outraged" by a series of New York Times reports alleging worker mistreatment and neglect at Chinese factories that assemble the company's iPhones, iPads, and other devices.

Office 2 HD's developers say that the app offers the best document editing on the iPad, second only to Pages. But the company still thinks its own app is the better choice.

The Daily – the first iPad-only newspaper – has had another update this week, to Version 1.2.3.

The details for this update state that once it’s applied ‘the app experience should be faster’. Here’s the full change list for it:

• Increases speed by deleting old data. • Biggest fix: crashes! Increased stability of the app. • Increased reliability of newsstand downloading. • Fixes app in newsstand so you’ll see the most current cover. • Fixes the issue with the new content (green) banner getting stuck.

Happily, the app does seem to be performing a little better following this update, at least for me thus far. The progress bar for new issue downloads zips along much faster than it used to. This latest update comes with some (familiar looking) notes on how to get best results from it:

ALERT: The first time you use this version you may experience slowness while the app is performing background maintenance. FOR BEST RESULTS please delete your current version of the app before updating. Once you’ve updated it should take about 1 minute until an issue is fully loaded.

I know we have quite a few readers of The Daily here. If you’re one of them, let us know in the comments what you think of this update and performance following it.

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© patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: iPad Apps

From Horace Dediu’s Asymco post on the second Year of the iPad in a row.

The iPad has out-sold the Mac since inception and is now about three times the volume. However, the growth rate in the Mac has not changed much.

The new data shows that the iPad alone would be the largest PC vendor and Apple with iPad and Mac combined is selling 5 million more units (or 30%) than the top PC vendor.

Selling three times as many iPads as Macs at a time when Mac sales continue on a nice upward trend is impressive – but that last bit that I’ve bolded above is the truly amazing part. The new data (latest quarterly results) shows that iPad alone would be the biggest PC vendor if it was considered a computer.

Maybe the Post-PC era that Steve Jobs talked about is not so far off.

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© patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: iPad numbers, iPad sales

If if the iPad's going to survive (wait for it...), it'll have to learn some things from Android. (This story is viewable exclusively by Macworld Insider members.)

A new line of storage cabinets from Anthro can charge up 40 tablets or smartphones.

The iPhone may have opened the door for Apple in the enterprise, but it was the one-two punch of the iPad and revamped MacBook Air in 2010 that really did the trick, an analyst said today.

Pocket Informant HD – one of the leading calendar and task management apps for the iPad – is on sale right now for $9.99 – 1/3 off its standard $14.99 price.

The sale is a Macworld / iWorld Expo sale, so presumably it will run from today through January 28th – as the expo does.

Pocket Informant HD is a rare app that offers both calendar and GTD-based task management. It’s a very capable and feature-rich app. Here are just a few of its notable features:

❖ Today, Month, Week, Column Week, Agenda, Task, and Search views ❖ Swipe between Months, Days, and Weeks ❖ Easily jump to any date in any calendar view ❖ Timebars to show your free/busy time at a glance or show mini-text on the month cells instead ❖ Icons for Events and Tasks ❖ Event Location Mapping ❖ Calendar Filtering: Filter tasks and events by one or more calendars ❖ Templates for Events and Tasks ❖ Support for sub-tasks ❖ Tags and Tag Filtering ❖ TextExpander support in most text fields ❖ Expanded detail view to see events and tasks on any day ❖ Tasks integrated with the Calendar Views ❖ Task Grouping and QuickSearch/Insert ❖ Full Search of Contacts, Tasks, and Calendar items ❖ Send Appointment Meeting Requests

Here’s an App Store link for Pocket Informant HD.

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© patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: iPad Apps

I generally use the Mail app on the iPad in landscape mode, because I like that it shows both the Inbox (or whichever mailbox is selected) message list (as a sort of left sidebar) and shows an individual selected message content, in the right portion of the page.

This morning I found a nice tip for making the Mail app on iPad nicer to use in portrait mode – an easy swipe gesture to pull up the Inbox message list when you’re in portrait mode. Here’s how:

All you have to do is swipe left to right to see the message list as a popover on the left side of the page. Swipe right to left to hide the message list again.

When you do the left to right swipe to bring up the message list, you can then swipe again in the same direction to show the list of all your mailboxes and folders.

Although you can accomplish the same things by tapping on the Inbox and Mailboxes buttons, using gestures feels far easier and faster to me. It makes using Mail app in portrait mode a whole lot nicer I think.

Hat tip to Mac OS X Hints for sharing this hint, which I’ve expanded on a bit here.

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© patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: gesture to see Mail Inbox on iPad, iPad Mail app, iPad tips

The iPad is an amazing and versatile device, and this week is providing plenty of evidence of the amazing numbers that back that up. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, has also offered up some thoughts on why the iPad is such a huge success and how huge its potential is.

Here are a few of those amazing numbers that have caught my eye, along with some of those thoughts from Tim Cook, and a few of my own thoughts:

– As Alicia noted the other day, Apple sold over 40 million iPads in 2011, and over 15 million in the last quarter of the year. Both numbers are well ahead of all other tablets sold combined. The 15 million sold is also triple the number of Macs sold in that quarter – and it was a record quarter for Mac sales. Tim Cook said in Apple’s earnings call earlier this week that he believes there will come a day when the tablet market is bigger than the PC market.

That day may not be that far off, as highlighted by this comment noted by TechCrunch:

Towards the end of the earnings call, Tim Cook dropped a huge nugget of information: led by 15 million iPads sold last quarter, the tablet market is now larger than the entire desktop PC market.

–  More than 55 million iPads have been sold in less than two years on the market. Among the dozens of supposed rival Android, Windows, Blackberry and other tablets it doesn’t look likely that any of them have even sold 10 million thus far.

(...) Read the rest of More Crazy iPad Numbers and More Thoughts on It from Apple’s CEO (207 words)

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© patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: iPad numbers, iPad sales

It's not all art, music, and fun at this week's Macworld | iWorld exposition: Vendors are releasing business apps for the Mac and iPad, too.

OmniFocus for iPad – the superb task management app – got a minor, maintenance update yesterday.

The update includes a lovely new app icon for the app, shown above. I like it much better than the previous version.

The update improves attachment support with a number of bug fixes and enhancements to the attachment viewer, including these two:

• The built-in attachment viewer now supports viewing Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and RTFD documents. • The built-in attachment viewer can now send attachments to other apps by tapping the Share button.

I switched from Things to OmniFocus – on iPad, Mac, and iPhone – six months ago and I am very happy with that move. The OmniFocus for iPad app is excellent and among my most used iPad apps. It’s one of our selections in the Best iPad Apps of 2011 list as well.

Here’s an App Store link for OmniFocus for iPad; it’s priced at $39.99.

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© patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: iPad Apps

OK, one thing is very clear from this contest: you guys and gals are very, very fond of the Mivizu Sense case for the iPad 2. Thanks to all of you who took part – we had lots of great entries.

Our lucky winner is:

Rafal Jarzabek

Rafal – please keep an eye on your Inbox and spam folders, as I will be emailing you very soon asking for your shipping details.

Look out for more cool contests coming soon, here on the site and also at our Facebook and Google+ pages.

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I was summoned for jury duty. Apple iPad in hand, I reported as ordered. Free wi-fi in the jury assembly room made the interminable wait bearable. Actually… enjoyable! And what a bonus when I needed to find a local eatery during the 90-min lunch break. All doable with an iPhone of course.. but much more [...]

100 Cameras in 1 for iPad – one of the best iPad photo effects apps – has been updated today, to Version 1.2.2.

The big new feature in this update in Instagram support. ‘Send to Instagram’ is now an option on the sharing menu. Oddly, it takes you to a further ‘Open In’ popup where you choose Instagram, but it works.

Here’s the full change list for this update:

➤ Export 100 New Effects directly to Instagram! ➤ Fixed issues with Flickr and Dropbox ➤ Switched to Twitter 5.0 ➤ Memory improvements

I’m a big fan, and frequent user, of 100 Cameras in 1 for iPad. It’s one of the selections in our Best iPad Apps of 2011 list. Having the almost direct Instagram tie-in is quite a nice addition to the already impressive app.

Here’s an App Store link for 100 Cameras in 1 for iPad; it’s priced at $3.99.

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© patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: iPad Apps

Appigo has relaunched its Notebook iOS app, expanding it from an iPhone-only offering into an app that also works on the iPad and can sync its documents among multiple other devices.

Smile Software has introduced an iPad version of its PDF-editing app, along with iCloud syncing of PDFpen documents for both the iPad and Mac versions.

Image Source: Ten One Design

iPad stands are among my favorite accessories for the iPad. My iPad 2 gets a ton of use every day alongside my MacBook Pro – so it needs a good home on my desk. A good stand to sit in when not fully in use.

The Magnus iPad 2 Stand from Ten One Design is the latest one I’ve tried out. Ten One pitches the Magnus as boasting a sleek form factor, elegant Apple-like looks, and using the magic of magnets to hold the iPad 2 in place in the stand.

I’ve been using it for a few days now and of course I’ve got some thoughts on it. The short story is that I’m disappointed with this stand. Hit the break for the reasons why …

(...) Read the rest of Review: Magnus iPad 2 Stand by Ten One Design (601 words)

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© patrickj for iPad Insight, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: iPad 2 accessories, iPad 2 stands, iPad accessories, magnetic stand for iPad 2, Magnus iPad 2 stand

Yet more proof that Macworld | iWorld isn't all fun and games: New tools for recording meetings, presenting on the iPad, and keeping track of your contacts.