iPad - page 209

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The Fling controller from TenOne Design (soon to be reviewed) is a great way to add a physical to your iPhone or iPad, just by suction-cupping it onto the screen. This means that it works with any game on your iOS device that uses an on-screen “joystick.”

The downside is that it moves at the worst moments: I have wiped out in more than one GTA car chase this way. But designers at the Keio University in Japan have come up with another idea. A joystick which uses the iPhone’s camera as a controller.

Apple’s stock price has continued to rise at an incredible rate for months, leading one analyst to predict that its shares will reach $1,000 by 2014, making it the world’s first trillion-dollar company.

Readdle has released a major update to PDF Expert, its flagship PDF Expert app for the iPad, introducing high-resolution Retina support for the latest device, and a number of handy new features like document thumbnails and support for embedded media.

Apple and Google, sitting in a tree, f-i-g-h-t-i-n-g. We know that the Apple/Google relationship has gone from best friends to hate/hate, and that Apple has done its best to distance itself from its former lover. Apple has already bought mapping company C3, and is using OpenStreetMaps in iPhoto for iOS. But the Apple-designed map tiles are a little hokey. What the Maps app needs is these beautiful CC licensed tiles from Stamen Maps.

Apple has updated the Investor Relations page of its website this morning to announce its second-quarter earnings call on April 24 at 2 p.m. PT.

Avatron has released a new version of its popular Air Display iOS app that allows the user to view OS X Lion in hi-res HiDPI mode on the new iPad’s Retina display. Air Display turns your iPad or iPhone into a secondary display for your Mac, and the latest update takes advantage of the new iPad’s 2048×1536 screen resolution by exploiting a super hi-resolution mode in Lion called HiDPI.

Barefoot Books World Atlas ($8) is a kind of digital globe for children, giving them easy access to a simplified cartoon overview of the whole world.

From the orbital view (for want of a better word), you see the globe peppered with hundreds of colorful icons. Spin the globe and zoom in. The little icons grow and become tappable controls. Each one reveals a snippet of information in text and audio form (read aloud by the UK’s favorite TV geographer (yes, we have those), Nick Crane). There’s also a photo to look at for each fact, which is often much more informative than the icon was to start with.

When Cliff Weitzman emailed me about his Black SMS iPhone app, I was impressed by the pitch alone. An App Store app that encrypts text messages and emails between iPhones and iPads? Sign me up!

Black SMS accomplishes a task that I haven’t seen anything from the App Store come close to replicating. It does indeed encrypt your texts and emails so that they are unreadable without the Black SMS app and an associated password. CIA agents and paranoid boyfriends should take notice of this one.

The official Facebook for iPad app has finally been updated with Retina graphics for Apple’s third-gen iPad. Version 4.1.1 of the app is available now with offline chat mode, photo bug fixes, added language support and stability improvements.

After years of tweaking and improvement, ioShutter is finally here. ioShutter is a simple cable that connects your iPhone to your camera and allows you to control it using an app. Remote shooting, time-lapse sequences and even photos triggered by sound can all be programmed in easily using the free companion app. And best of all, no fancy dock connectors are required: ioShutter connects through the headphone jack.

As a gamer, I’d love nothing more than to see a proper physical controller for my iOS devices. Sure, the touchscreen works great with titles like Angry Birds or Words With Friends, and accessories like the iCade work well with retro games. But for first-person shooters, soccer sims, 3D platformers and the like, nothing beats a physical controller with real analog sticks and real buttons.

Google’s Android operating system already supports external game controllers, and that’s one of the few things it has over iOS. But maybe not for long. According to one source, Apple is working on a physical controller of its own that will make iOS gaming even more incredible.

Well, here we go again. Despite the crowing of many “journalists” looking for a click, or so-called consumer agencies which have dumped objective reviews to chase page views, the public loves it some new iPads. According to a survey by ChangeWave, fully 82% of respondents said they were “very satisfied” with the new iPad. And adding in the numbers for “somewhat satisfied,” (16%) we get a 98% satisfaction rating. Not bad, right?

Breaking free from the mold of conventional apps like Tweetbot and the official Twitter for iPad, developers Adam Bell and Miles Ponson have created a unique Twitter app for the iPad called Crest. Priced at $1.99 in the App Store, Crest isn’t a power user’s tool for digesting vast amount of tweets. Instead, it’s a fun, leisurely way to view your Twitter stream from the comfort of your new iPad’s Retina display.

No one likes a thief who gets away with stolen items and especially not 8 year old Landon Crabtree. After a burglar broke into his family’s house to get away with the family’s iPad and a few other items, the family got insurance money for the lost goods. But Landon wasn’t going to stand for someone else having his iPad and used Apple’s free Find my iPhone to recover the iPad. However, that’s not the only thing police found.

My friend Chris Herbert has released another wallpaper pack, and this time he’s made 200 beautifully minimal designs for the new iPad’s Retina display. His new collection, Subtle Papers II, is available for free now, and you’re sure to find at least one wallpaper that suits your fancy. A lot of sweat and love when into this collection, so be a kind soul and share it with your friends!

Apple and Samsung have been duking it out in court for quite sometime now, with Apple claiming that the Korean electronics giant has been “slavishly” copying its iOS products to use in Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets. In its case against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Apple has leaned heavily on two specific patents for its defense, both having to do with the exterior of the iPad.

As if to point out the absurdity of Apple patenting the exterior of a tablet, Judge Koh, presiding over the case, notably held up both the Galaxy Tab and iPad side-by-side and asked those in the court to tell which was which from a distance. It took lawyers on both sides of the aisles a few seconds to answer the question correctly.

The judge’s point seems simple. Sure, the Galaxy Tab may look like the iPad, but Apple can’t patent that appearance… and to prove her point, she made note that in 1994, a television network portrayed the look of a tablet much before the iPad or Galaxy Tab came on the scene. If true, this could seriously destroy Apple’s case.

Many schools in the U.S. haven’t even had their spring break yet, but school administrators are already planning for the next school year. For public schools that means determining how best to allocate scarce financial resources and trying to determine how far they can push their budgets before the residents and homeowners in their district will vote them down. School IT departments meanwhile are beginning to consider what major projects and upgrades they’ll be doing over the summer recess.

Although this decision-making process tends to run like clockwork for most schools and districts, this year there’s a new factor to consider: Apple’s iPad-based iBooks 2 e-textbook initiative (as well as the iPad itself).

The recently-updated version of GarageBand — Apple’s popular music-making app for the iPad — finally turns it into a serious tool for bands rather than something limited to solo artists and their session collaborators. With a shared connection, up to four band members can play or jam to a piece of music, be it a pop song or a classical overture. For the first time, it brings live performance to the iPad app.

For every American male, every stage of your life can be marked by what magazine you are subscribed to. When you are in your thirties, it’s The Economist. When you’re in your late twenties, it’s The New Yorker. When you’re in your mid-twenties, it’s Playboy; your late teens, Maxim.

And what magazine subscription kicks off being twelve? Harvey Kutzman and William M. Gaine’s eternal paean to grade school parody, Mad Magazine, which is now coming to the iPad.

Apple introduced Find My Friends ahead of iOS 5 last year. The iOS app allows you to see where your friends and family are located around you. Apple pitched the service as something for a family to use at Disneyland, but honestly, it feels more like a tool for digital stalking.

My colleague John Brownlee highlighted a major issue with Facebook privacy earlier today, so it’s only fitting that we take a look at another app from the same vein. Although you won’t be able to stalk random women with Find My Facebook Friends, you will be able to see your friends on a map. The only difference is that Find My Facebook Friends takes user privacy pretty seriously. If only the app was less buggy.

We’ve already seen some pretty crazy uses of the iPad and iPhone in spy movies, but it looks like iOS is getting an official nod of approval as a mobile operating system worthy to be used in spy games. The Australian government just approved iPhones and iPads to be used for the storing and sharing of classified documents, meaning Ethan Hunt wannabes Down Under can look even more bad ass in their espionage attempts.

BYOD may be the poster child for the consumerization of IT (CoIT) movement, but employee-owned mobile devices are just one of the consumer technologies that are steadily making their way into the workplace. Consumer cloud services are another big headache for IT.

Consumer clouds represent a way for data to easily leave office and the office network. Files can be placed in a consumer cloud very easily and often without IT even knowing about it. Despite that big security concern, cloud services like Box and Dropbox are popular with workers because they’re an easy way to ensure access to files and documents while out of the office and/or while working on a mobile device.

While blocking specific cloud services is a possibility, it’s little more than a stop-gap measure. Truly solving the problem means addressing the underlying need – users needing mobile access to data – in a secure way, which enterprise file management company Accellion aims to solve with a new Secure Mobile File Sharing service and sync capabilty dubbed kitedrive.

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The Woodero is a slightly different take on the wooden iPad case. Instead of a solid sleeve (like several Bamboo cases we have seen) or a Moleskine-like book (like the baltic birch-frame Pad & Quill), it works like a cross between a pencil case and a desk drawer. It also looks rather impractical.

Earlier this Box launched its new OneCloud feature, the goal of which is to integrate a range of iOS business and productivity apps around Box’s cloud storage. The biggest advantage to OneCloud is that it neatly sidesteps the lack of file management in iOS, essentially functioning almost like cloud-centric iOS version of the Finder.

Box isn’t the only company looking to get around the iOS file limitations while also connecting users to the cloud. Quickoffice this week announced its new Connect solution, a dedicated app and cloud service combination that aims to make it easy for users to access, edit, share, and sync files and documents across all their devices as well as across a range of third-party cloud services.

Ever since the first iPod, Apple has had problems with squatters sitting on top of Apple-related domains, trying to scam people. Here’s another one. It is now seeking to take ownership of the Applecom.com and ApplePrinters.com domains and protect its trademark after filing a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on March 29.