One of the biggest criticisms of virtual keyboards on a touchscreen display is that they offers users no feedback, making them more difficult to type on than a traditional keyboard. Designers have attempted to provide solutions to this problem with third-party accessories that clip onto your display, but Apple may be working on its own solution using coded magnets and ferrofluids that could be built into future iPads.

When’s the last time you went shopping at JC Penney versus the Apple Store? The venerable retailer, overshadowed by the cheap-chic of Target, is looking to reshape itself by putting the iPhone maker’s former retail chief in charge. Ron Johnson, a 10-year veteran of Apple’s retail effort, explained the retailer and Cupertino, Calif. tech giant share much in common.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 — The Neat Company has long been known for its scanning devices, like NeatReceipts and NeatDesk. Those devices let you take your paper receipts, documents and business cards and scan them into your Mac so that you can organize them in a way that makes sense to you.

But here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, The Neat Company is focusing on their latest venture: conquering the digital realm. The thrust of what they are presenting here is all about the cloud. NeatCloud and NeatMobile, to be specific.

Sometimes within an OS X application you might want to search and replace all single tabs with two tabs, for example, or remove double carriage returns. However, if you type a Tab or hit Return in the search field of an app, it won’t have the desired effect. There’s a simple trick that can be used.

Earlier this week, we confirmed that Pixelbit is set to launch a successor to its popular top-down arcade racer Reckless Racing. The title is set to hit the App Store next week on February 2, and just in case you weren’t already excited enough, its developers have released a second teaser trailer.

Following a lengthy New York Times report published earlier this week, detailing the harsh reality behind the mistreatment of Chinese factory workers, Apple CEO Tim Cook has responded to his staff with an email that brands the report “patently false and offensive.”

Cook revealed he is “outraged” by the report, and reassured his team that “we’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers.”

Here’s a quick look at AppCubby’s $0.99 Launch Center app, a very cool and useful app launcher that’s like Automator for iOS.

The app allows you to set up all kinds of actions and schedule them. Version 1.1 adds actions to iOS’s Notification Center. Take checking your Facebook messages, for example. This normally takes several steps: searching for the Facebook app, launching it and finding the messages tab. In Launch Center, you can set it up to check your messages every morning from just one finger-tap on the Notifications screen.

The app can be configured to work with a ton of apps and perform pretty complex actions, like calling your mom every week or adjusting the screen brightness down every night. Today’s update has prope and is already in the App Store’s Top 100. Here’s the app’s creator, David Barnard, showing how it works.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — The inaugural edition of the Original iPhone Film Festival (OIFF) gave out awards to small-screen Steven Spielbergs.

OIFF founders Corey Rogers and Matt Dessner were on hand to talk about common iPhone filmmaking problems, like getting release forms and copyright snafus. (If you want to take your iPhone videos from crappy to snappy, check out our exclusive interview with some great tips from Dessner.)

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 — It’s one thing to have your favourite photos sitting on your iPhone or iPad, giving you the chance to show off your kids or places you’ve been with others quickly and easily. Snaptotes is taking that one step further — by letting you put them on the cases and bags that you keep your devices in.

Snaptotes has a small booth at Macworld/iWorld 2012, but they made an instant impression with me when I saw the photos of kids making up part of their display. I’m on the road and I miss my kids, so I decided to check out what they had to offer.

Whale Trail is a popular sidescroller that originated from the Apple App Store. The game can best be described as Tiny Wings meets Angry Birds on acid. Whale Trail is a colorful, charming, quirky and addictive game — not to mention one of my personal favorites.

As we’ve already told you, Whale Trail recently launched on the Android Marketplace. I got to sit down with the head of the company behind Whale Trail to talk about the pros and cons between developing for Android and iOS. 

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — As you walk the exhibit floor here at Moscone West, there are the much larger booths that make up the bulk of what you’ll see. But there are also some of the smaller booths — known as “pods” — that a lot of the mobile apps are housed in. There’s plenty of iOS apps being featured in this area of the hall, and plenty to discover.

One of my favourite apps I’ve found here is called — oddly enough — FavorIt, an app that lets you and your friends share what their favourite apps are with one another.

It looks like Valve threw a few extra coals into their engine after hearing about the 3rd party Steam app that was released earlier this month. They were not going to let any other app take their steam and so they have now released the official Steam app onto both Android and iOS. I’d like to say users are ecstatic, but there seems to be a catch.

The hope of a new Apple product on the horizon tends to make tech blogs a little fanciful, sometimes even delusional, so it’s hard to fault Techno Buffalo too much for their “exclusive” report that an Apple-made OLED HDTV with Siri functionalities — the much talked about iTV — is coming out “this April, or possibly May at the latest.” Hey, we all get carried away from time to time.

That said, TechnoBuffalo’s report isn’t too be trusted. In fact, it’s total bullshit. Here’s why.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWorld 2012 — At the media preview last night at Macworld/iWorld, VIPOrbit Software had a ton of news to offer.

First, they unveiled a new version of VIPOrbit for the iPhone. The latest version has new features requested by its users, an improved user interface and an enhanced Dashboard.

Then they debuted VIPOrbit for iPad, bringing signature features from the initial iPhone app to iPad users.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — Talking on stage about her love of technology and gadgets, New Yorker writer Susan Orlean rhapsodized her iPad, and told how she converted her husband to Apple technology.

A self-confessed geek, Orlean told how the iPad solved all the problems she had with working and traveling with technology. She had a Danger Sidekick, but would go nuts taking notes on it. She finds her MacBook too heavy to carry all day.

She also not afraid of losing or damaging her iPad. “I can it take with me to take notes but it won’t have my life on it if it gets lost or stolen,” she said. “It solved all of my problems.”

And her favorite app?

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — If your iPhone videos are so lame that even your loved ones won’t watch them anymore, we’ve got some advice for you.

Cult of Mac talked to Matt Dessner, co-founder of the Original iPhone Film Festival (OIFF),  about choosing a subject, keeping it steady, getting enough b-roll and what he calls the Golden Tip of Editing.

The OIFF is about to announce 2012 winners here; with a little practice you might win next year’s competition and a MacBook Air.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — There are no shortage of iPhone cases being showcased here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, but only one grabbed my attention at last night’s media preview. It was a case called Flygrip, and it promises to keep your iPhone in hand so you can do other things without worrying about dropping your valuable device.

Macworld/iWorld marks the launch of FlyGrip, and I was given a unit to test out.

Ever wondered how you take a screenshot on your iOS device? It’s actually a lot simpler than you may think, with no need for third-party software or unauthorized tweaks.

In fact, this is one of the simplest tips we have. But seeing as though yesterday’s simple tip went down so well, we thought another one wouldn’t hurt. Here’s how to take screenshots on an iOS device.

The march just continues on for Apple’s entry into the enterprise. New numbers show 46 percent of large companies now provide Macs to staff with more than half of those companies planning to support the iPhone. As for Android, well, we’ve already heard that story, right?

As a bit of a productivity nerd, it was great to see a couple of apps that revolve around that niche having a presence at the Macworld/iWorld media preview. One of these apps was Pocket Informant, which looks both elegant and compelling. And its available for both the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. For those looking to get a little bit more productive and want a pleasurable-looking experience while doing so, this might just be the app for you.

Pocket Informant fully integrates your calendar, tasks, notes and contacts into one spot, which allows you to focus on everything you’ve got going on in a day. This is a bit of a departure from other productivity-type apps in that they tend to put the emphasis on your tasks and let everything else fade into the background. Pocket Informant keeps everything close at hand and visible so that you don’t miss out on somewhere you’ve got go, someone you need to get in touch with or something you have to do.

We all love our tech, and manufacturers spend millions of dollars making sure we get excited about it through commercial spots. Unfortunately, they don’t always hire the best voice-overs to dub these commercials, and we’re about to see what happens when Samsung goes out on a limb to hire a sailor for their latest Samsung’s “It’s Time To Tab” commerical. Be warned, this is not safe for work, or anywhere else that crude sailor mouthed language is prohibited.

The App Store is a morass of to-do list managers, but there’s reason to perk up your ears about Clear. It might seem like just another to-do list manager from another new studio, but it’s neither. Clear is something special.

Is it time to retire game consoles? That’s the question buzzing around in the wake of Nintendo announcing its first yearly loss, forcing a downgrade of the 3DS future. The creator of Super Mario said it lost $575 million (45 billion yen), surprising experts forecasting a $52 million (4.2 billion yen) deficit. The unspoken push over the precipice: the iPad and iTunes App Store games.

One of my favorite developers, Spacetime Studios, has announced yet another great project they are working on. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re the guys behind the hit cross-platform MMO Legend Series. From Pocket Legends to Space Legends, they have done everything right in the realm of true cross-platform gaming, and are pioneers in what I believe will be the future of gaming. Their latest project falls in line with the Legends series, and is entitled Dark Legends.

You know that moment when your iPhone slips out of your hands and begins its slow tumble to the ground? Time slows down, as it does in the milliseconds before any horrific accident, and you absolutely freeze with a sort of full-body shudder of anticipation at the shattered glass screen you just know will be the end result of its 32 feet per second per second fall towards the concrete.

In a recent episode of Fred Armise and Carrie Brownstein’s Portlandia, they did a skit that documents the internal monologue of such a reverie. The end’s a bit surreal (and a little weak), but as an iPhone owner myself, I can relate. Looks like it’s time for Brownstein to buy a bumper.