TextExpander from Smile Software is a wonderful tool that turns text strings and images into tiny little shortcuts, saving you time and effort every time you type. It’s a little like the Shortcuts feature Apple built into iOS 5, but a million times better. You can currently find it in the Mac App Store, but we’d advise you not to buy it there.

Why? Because the Mac App Store version is the older version 3.4.2 release, and Smile Software has chosen to depart Apple’s marketplace for version 4.0. It turns out that the Cupertino company’s strict sandboxing rules, which went into effect on June 1, don’t allow some of TextExpander’s core features.

CloudOn is one of the more interesting options for working with Office documents on the iPad. The company offers a cloud-based version of the core Microsoft Office apps plus Adobe Reader. Unlike a virtual desktop solution, CloudOn provides just the applications and not a full Windows desktop. When it comes to creating and editing documents, CloudOn’s app relies on popular cloud storage options: Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive.

As a startup, CloudOn has seen strong growth since it launched its service earlier this year. The company announced a new round of funding this week ($16 million) and used the opportunity to tease users with details of its upcoming plans, most notably support for group editing and collaboration as well as expansion beyond the iPad and Android tablets. 

Laptop bags are all well and good, but sometimes, they just can’t fit what you need to carry: groceries on the way home from work, a change of clothes for the gym, a picnic lunch on a nice day or a bag of books you picked up on the way home. And while a well-made laptop bag might be very fashionable on a man, on a lady, it might not be nearly as chic.

One of our favorite bag companies, Waterfield Designs, has just outed a new bag that address both issues: the Outback Tote. And it’s a beauty.

Satechi’s Portable Energy Station is the backup battery you need if you have a new iPad aka iPad 3. Why? Because its 10,000 mAH battery is almost as capacious as the 12,000 mAH (45 watt-hour) battery in the iPad 3 itself.

The downside to buying a new Mac with a 2880 x 1800 display is that it’s not easy to find content that matches such a high resolution. All of your old Charlize Theron wallpapers you found on Google Images are going to look blurry and pixelated and just awful.

Fortunately for you, we’ve put together a gallery of high-resolution NASA images that look terrific on the new MacBook Pro’s Retina display.

One of the ironic twists about the anti-trust lawsuits against Apple and the major publishing companies is that Apple’s entrance into the ebook market actually broke Amazon’s virtual monopoly on the ebook business. In the process, publishers gained the ability to control ebook pricing, which can be seen as actually encouraging competition in the industry.

While the U.S. Department of Justice and attorneys general from many states are pursuing lawsuits around the matter, not every country would see the situation in the same terms as the U.S. government. In France, for example, publishers can legally control pricing and are protected from booksellers undercutting their business as Amazon had been doing with its power over the ebook market. It’s even possible that France’s laws protecting publishers may have served as inspiration for the agency model that Apple used in building the iBookstore.

Magnets. Even if we’ll probably never know how they work, you gotta love them. They let us pin notes to fridges, they lock and unlock your iPad’s screen and now they can even stick your your iPhone to any metal surface. If only they didn’t do that pesky trick of wiping your bak cards, magnets would be pretty much perfect.

Ever since it first debuted in January 2006, Apple has jealously guarded its MagSafe technology from being poached by the competition. Patented up the wazoo, Apple doesn’t allow knock-offs and goes after companies that try to rip it off, even going so far as to sue companies that make MagSafe compatible accessories that use official recycled MagSafe connectors.

It’s through being so aggressive about its MagSafe IP that, to this day, none of the competition has anything like it. That’s about to change, though: the new Microsoft Surface tablet has a MagSafe-like connector. Prepare for a legal showdown.

Do you find you spend too much time hunting around inside your apps for specific actions? With Launch Center Pro for iPhone, you can skip this process by launching the action instead of just launching the app. For example, instead of loading up Twitter and then tapping the new tweet button, you can just setup a shortcut within Launch Center Pro that takes you straight to that new tweet window.

You can also add shortcuts to new text messages to specific people, Instagram’s camera, Google searches in Safari, and lots more. The idea is to make a fast dial for all the actions you might use on your phone.

Apple is generally known not just for the minimal design of its products, but also for the minimal design of its packaging. But when it comes to the new MagSafe to MagSafe 2 adapter, the box is not only huge in comparison to its payload, it also consists of a frankly ridiculous number of individual parts. And Paul Kafasis, boss of Rogue Amoeba software, has the photos to prove it.

There are two main reasons to move your iMovie files to an external storage drive. One is that video files take up a LOT of space, and the non-destructive editing that iMovie does can also add to the file load on your main hard drive (or SSD, in the case of a MacBook Air). The other is organizational – you might want to put all your stuff in one, easily accessed place for later retrieval and further editing.

Lucky for you, then, iMovie makes this pretty easy. Here’s how.

Gameloft’s Asphalt series has been one of the most successful racing titles on iOS, and its latest addition promises to the “newest, fastest, most visually stunning” edition yet. It’s called Asphalt 7: Heat and it’s available today on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for just $0.99.

For that you get the chance to race over 60 cars — including a DeLorean! — over 15 tracks, in both single and multiplayer game modes.

Remember SlideWriter, the innovative iPad text editor that turned one impressive keyboard concept into a real app, which we told you about back in May? Today it’s finally available to download from the App Store for just $0.99 for a limited time.

Apple must have a hard time thinking of ways in which it can improve the design of the iPhone; after all, it already looks pretty terrific. But this concept design for a transparent device is by far the most beautiful iPhone we’ve ever seen. In fact, it pains me to realize we’ll never see an iPhone like this.

Enterprise security vendor Fortinet decided that the best way to understand members of the millennial generation (or Gen-Y) and their potential impact on IT and security policies was to ask them directly for their views on technology in the workplace. What Fortinet learned will probably keep CIOs and IT leaders up at night.

Most millenials view BYOD programs and the ability to choose the technology they use for work as a right rather than a privilege and have few qualms about outright ignoring policies that restrict that right – even in situations where they know that important data breaches could be the result.

Most worrying for IT leaders, however, is that most young workers feel that device and data security is their personal responsibility even when sensitive business data is stored on or accessed from their personal iPhone, iPad, or other device.

In case you haven’t been counting down the days to Verizageddon, it’s almost upon us. Tomorrow, Verizon will be lighting up and expanding its 4G LTE network in a ridiculous number of markets. Verizon undeniably has the largest 4G LTE coverage in the U.S. and it’ll be years before its competitors catch up.

Earlier this year, we profiled the Mac IT apprenticeship program offered by London-based consulting and training group Amsys. IT apprenticeships offer technology training based around various common IT certifications and real-world IT experience. Apprentices are paid for their time and typically receive career placement services at the end of the apprenticeship.

Applying the apprenticeship model to the IT industry is relatively common in Europe, but rare in America. A new pilot program designed by IT training and certification powerhouse CompTIA aims to change that and bring the IT apprenticeship concept to the U.S. in a big way.

The new 2012 15-Inch Retina MacBook Pro marks an evolution of the Mac: it’s the first of presumably the entire Mac line-up to get a Retina display, just like the iPhone and iPad.

Unlike the iPhone or iPad, however, the new Retina MacBook Pro is not aimed at the mass market. This is a professional machine, through and through, and has a price to match, starting at $2,199.

The beauty of the Retina MacBook Pro’s display can’t be overestimated: it’s like living print. Likewise, the Retina MacBook Pro is the most powerful all-in-one professional notebook you can buy off the shelf: it makes every Apple notebook before it look archaic.

It’s a Mac that has been designed by Apple for the first time as they would have it: completely without compromises, using cutting-edge technology that it will take at least a year for the competition to catch-up with.

But is it the Mac for you?

Thanks to the dual Thunderbolt ports and new HDMI connector in the Retina display equipped MacBook Pro, for the first time ever, a MacBook can power three external displays. Other World Computing today posted this image of a new MacBook Pro powering three high res displays, all at native resolution. This is quite an impressive feat, especially for a mobile video card.

Microsoft unveiled today what will be the future of their phone software, Windows Phone 8. Building upon the foundation of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s newest iteration of its phone operating system brings some new features and enhancements that tie both Windows on the desktop and Windows on mobile devices together. With the introduction of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft laid the groundwork for a new, company wide strategy which closely resembles that of Apple’s.

Many of the improvements and added features to Windows Phone 7 are now making their way back to the desktop, in the form of Windows 8 and Windows RT, the tablet variety. Windows Phone 8 further unifies the operating system structure across all devices, and also brings some new functionality to the table which will compete directly with iOS 6, come fall.

Watching the new WWDC 2012 developer video “Introducing Passbook, Part 1,” we couldn’t help but notice that about three minutes in, one of the example passes Apple uses to show off Passbook’s functionality is for a ticket on Oceanic Flight 815 from Sydney to Los Angeles.

If that fictional airline sounds familiar, it should: that’s the same airline and flight as the one which kicks off the events in the hit ABC television series, Lost.

Using that ticket in real life would see you stranded on a mysterious, time-shifting tropical island in the middle of nowhere, where you would have to wrestle with rampaging polar bears, sexy ladies, malevolent insect swarms and an enragingly stupid sixth season that basically boils all of the mysteries down to “a wizard did it.”

Source: developer.apple.com (Developer account required)
Thanks: Alex M!

Road-trips are tons of fun, but it’s easy to forget that the journey itself is just as important as the destination. Sure, you may be driving across the country to head to a resort or amusement park, but there’s fun to be had along the way as well.

Here are three apps that will help you get off the highway and deeper into the joys of traveling the road this summer.

It used to be that video came to our homes in one of two ways: through the TV, or through a VHS tape. Then came DVD, then came the internet, and then came mediageddon.

Now we can get anything we want, any time we like. That’s the simple part, because now we also have to decide how we want to watch it. Luckily, we have put together a list of neat video hardware that will help you convert and push your media around the home, and even outside.

According to a poll conducted by discount site CouponCodes4u, less than one-quarter of American consumers will consider buying Microsoft’s newly unveiled Surface. The discount site used the poll to study the overall tablet space and to determine brand awareness and perceptions across the U.S. market. It found that only 22% of respondents would consider buying one of the Surface tablets.

The survey, which was taken by 1,578 Americans in the 21 to 35 age bracket, also found high brand loyalty among tablet owners for both the iPad and for Android.

Without a doubt, Tweetbot is the best Twitter client for the iPhone and iPad, putting to shame Twitter’s official app offering. Many have hoped that Tweetbot developer Tapbot would soon bring the experience to the Mac, and it looks like those hopes are about to come true, as Tweetbot for Mac is already within testing at Tapbot HQ.