Microsoft Office for iPad Review from Paul Thurrott.

The rumors are true: By the time you read this you should be able to download Office for iPad, the first full-featured version of Microsoft Office for a mobile platform. As I had expected, Office for iPad fills a useful niche between Office Mobile for smart phone handsets and the more full-featured Office we see in Windows and on the Mac. But Office for iPad has been written from the ground up for Apple’s device. And the only thing holding it back, really, is Apple’s antiquated mobile OS.

Finally.

Award-winning apps, up to 60% off for Christmas! Some great stuff in there, most of them I own already.

This iPad Air Speed Comparison vs Every iPad Ever Made will tell you what you knew already.

New stuff is faster than old stuff.

The 6 Ways Apple Should Copy Google

Really I didn’t make this up or anything.

Some Great iOS Apps, Currently Free has a great list of iPhone and iPad apps that don’t suck and are normally in the $1-$10 (or more) range.

Included are some good stuff like Day One, Infinity Blade II, and Tiny Wings. Go forth and download.

Adobe gives sneak peak of Lightroom-style app for tablets

A Nice story to make Alan Squee….

The team that creates the excellent iPad to Lightroom sync App PhotoSmith (app store link) blogged today that they are looking for beta testers for the next version of the app. This app is going to bring some huge changes which will make long time users happy and new users even happier.

So… we are asking you, dear readers, for 10 volunteers to help us really work the app over hard and smash it to bits to make sure it’s really as solid as we think it is.. To be clear, this isn’t a chance to play with new goodies for free like our Adobe brethren are able to do. No, we are asking for volunteers dedicated to helping make sure this app works no matter how crazy your workflow is.

There’s a beta signup link. If you are a lightroom user and looking for a great syncing setup for your iPad, and want to help out, give them a look.

I am a huge Evernote fan. Huge. They just released two huge updates this morning.

First up is Penultimate 4, a sketching / handwriting app that’s been around a while with Evernote integration, but now it’s improved:

• Now free
• Has full evernote sync, search integration, and a new UI.
• Also looks like you get a month of Evernote Premium just for running it. If you don’t want the Evernote integration you can also continue to use it as you have.

Evernote Penultimate app store link.

Second is a favorite app of mine, Evernote Hello with a big update. I’ve written about Hello before in the context of how I use it, but the new update has taken it to the next level.

• New UI (I kinda prefer the old one to be honest, it’s still pretty nice)
• Integration with LinkedIn, allowing you to pull down user information from LinkedIn to avoid having to enter it all.
• Better pulling down of information about a person based on an email in a calendar entry or a business card
• Speaking of business card scanning, Premium users get free Business Card scanning, though it’s free for everyone for a couple of months.
• A ‘find people nearby’ called “Hello Connect” which is similar to Facebook’s ill fated ‘find friends near me’, allowing you to easily transfer your profile information with others Hello users (anyone remember the Palm Pilot “Beam” contact info feature?)

Evernote Hello app store link.

All in all a huge day for the @evernote team. Congrats!

Evernote has updated their Food app to Evernote Food 2.0 and it’s gorgeous.

iOS only at this point, but if you’re an iPhone or iPad user you’ll enjoy some of the nice new features:

• Universal app (works on iPad too)
• Great new layout and look
• Integrates places so you can explore just the places you’ve been
• A “My Cookbook” section
• Exploring restaurants (powered by foursquare) with a great map view on iPad, as well as saving favorites
• Nice updates to the traditional “save pictures of my food” part of the application

It’s not perfect, there is some confusion (at least on my part) as to how a recipe is tagged as a recipe for the my recipes section.

Does this mean that web clipper will magically know if it’s a recipe? Is it pulled in by tag or notebook? I’m sure that it’s easy to figure out though.

I take it back, the next paragraph says it’s all magic:

To make the My Recipes section work, Evernote analyzes the text of each note in your account to identify the ones that are recipes (no special tags or notebooks necessary), while filtering out your travel itineraries and work projects. A really cool side benefit of this process is that you can now author recipes and Evernote Food will recognize them and magically display them next to everything you’ve clipped.

End result, it’s a gorgeous app from my favorite web company, so go out and get it now.

Foldify is the perfect example of how a 50 second video can sell an app (and I’m sure they did a lot of this thanks to the link from Daring Fireball.

Personally I’m going to get it the second I get back upstairs it’s available (the 13th).

iMore has gone and done some Copy editing on Amazon’s Kindle Fire vs. iPad mini ad.

If you hadn’t heard, Amazon’s front page has a front page ad comparing the Kindle Fire to the new Apple iPad Mini, obviously slanted towards the Kindle Fire. iMore’s interpretation shows just how silly comparisons like this are, almost like they’re just thinly veiled lies to prove whatever point the marketer is trying to make.

White iPad mini sells out in 20 minutes.

Pre-orders began at 12:01 AM PT and within 20 minutes, the ship date for all versions of the white iPad mini slipped from “Delivers 11/2” to “Available to ship in 2-weeks.”

Not bad for what I was told last night by a Windows Guy was a “complete flop” that “nobody wanted”.

In preparation for the Apple iPad Mini (probably) announcement at 10am PST today, here’s Apple Keynote Bingo.

If you’re prepping for the rumored iPad mini event on October 23 then you’ll want to check out The Joy of Tech’s Apple Event checklist. Looks pretty much accurate.

Carmageddon delivered, as promised, the Carmageddon for iOS today. It’s free today, $2 tomorrow, so grab it while it’s hot.

The game is the exact same as the classic game from 1997, same (as far as I can tell anyway) game engine, sounds, etc.

There goes my day…

Again with a complete lack of surprise, Apple announces iPad mini media event for October 23rd.

Apple has officially announced a media event for the much rumored iPad mini scheduled  for October 23rd. Apple today sent out invitations to the press as noted by The Loop. The event will kick off at 10:00 am PT and will be held at the California Theatre in San Jose, opposed to one of Apple’s usual venues. An October 23rd unveiling of the new 7.85-inch iPad would likely signal an early November launch and international rollout leading up to the holidays. Earlier this month The Wall Street Journal reported Apple’s supply chain in Asia has kicked mass production of the iPad mini into full swing.

Cool stuff, Tap Tap Tap has announced Camera+ for iPad, which is basically a blown up version of their great Camera+ app for iPhone (but done properly for the larger real estate. It also incorporates iCloud sync so that you can take images with Camera+ and have them magically appear on the iPad for editing (so you don’t end up on the People Taking Pictures With iPads site).

The iPhone app has also been updated for compatibility with iOS6, the larger screen size of the iPhone 5 and with tweaks and goodies like facebook sharing using single sign on and iCloud sync.

The rumor mill keeps on heating up about the possibilities (or depending on who you read, certainty) that Apple will release a 7” iPad (or iPad Junior as @danbenjamin wants it to be called), and I wanted to throw a couple of quick links out to people interested in this.

First of all, John Gruber weighed in at Daring Fireball, working through what is it, why Apple would or wouldn’t do it, the fact that Steve Jobs famously said that Apple would never make a 7” tablet, cost factors, etc. A well thought out piece.

If you want a comparison of what it would look like (hint, it’s not a 7” tablet) you can check out Trojankitten’s mockup comparision of tablet sizes. Fairly illuminating as to how when people talk about the ‘7 inch iPad’ you shouldn’t picture an Kindle Fire or Nexus 7 with an Apple logo slapped on.

Interesting video from Mozilla talking about how they are developing a new ‘Junior’ browser for the iPad. The video is a bit long (21 minutes) but it’s worth going through to see some of their new ideas and how they’ve gone about implementing their vision of a web browser.

So while you’d think that there’s nothing new that can be done in the area of iPad Twitter apps, you’d be wrong. Catching fire tonight is the Quip Twitter app from Glasshouse Apps. While it might not be what you would consider a “full featured” app like TweetBot, doing everything under the sun, it’s caught up the imagination of the twittersphere by being not only a solid overall twitter app, but having a couple of great hooks:

• Conversation View: A splendid and amazingly simple implementation of conversation view that rivals all competitors both in the simplicity of how it works and how gorgeous it is. Tweet replies are threaded into a conversation, with icons of the avatars presented under the tweet. Touch them and the tweet re-jiggers itself into the full thread of the conversation. It’s a bit like how the Twitter website works, but much, much nicer.
• Photo Viewer: A great photo viewer for images from people, taking some of the ideas of other apps (in the vein of “view all photos on twitter viewer apps”) and implementing it nicely into the UI. Touch a instagram, twitpic, etc photo from the timeline and it pops up in a simple (and very fast) viewer. Touch the images “stream” link on the left hand side and you get a big gorgeous view of all the latest images that have flowed through your twitter stream.

There are other nice touches as well. Swipe right to left and a subtle timeline bar pops up along the right hand side of the screen, giving you a clear look at how caught up (or out of date) the tweets you’re viewing are. Landscape and portrait work great, and the left hand column has a nice set of pre-set streams such as conversation mode, lots of retweets, and the aforementioned photo view in addition to the standard home/mentions/messages/search icons.

The app is not perfect however. List support is missing, there are a couple of odd UI choices (pinching an viewed image will put it back into the grid view (you know what I mean if you use flipboard at all), but “un-pinch” (or whatever it’s called) won’t open up an image, and blocked users don’t get hidden from your timeline to name a couple I’ve found in the couple of hours I’ve been playing with it).

Overall this app gets a solid 4/5 from me and a recommendation to go forth and buy it now from the app store for the low price of $0.99 (CDN/US anyway). While it may not replace your main twitter client, it’s definitely something you’ll want to use more and more as a different and logical way to view your twitter stream. The dev team at @getquip seem responsive and forthcoming about new planned features and fixes which will no doubt eliminate my above minor quibbles.

Yup, you can get Coda 2 and Diet Coda for sale now (50% off till the end of Thursday) on the Mac App and iTunes stores.

Cool look at Rethinking the iPhone’s App Switcher over at The Verge.

Hat tip Brooks.

The Verge goes through the The best stylus for iPad and gets a nice list of hits and misses. I finally decided on the Wacom CS100K Bamboo, but it was a tough call compared to the Adonit Jot Pro.

Great stuff from 500px (the awesome photo sharing site) today. First of all they have released the 500px Android app for both phone and tablet, giving android users all the loving of a full on site browsing and if you log in, all the voting, sharing, etc goodness from the site.

Secondly the iPad app has been updated with retina display graphics for the 3rd generation iPad (both for the UI and images, which got a 30% bump in pixel density), new UI and native twitter sharing.

Great stuff! As always you can find my portraits up on my account on 500px.

Not so hot: New iPad heat levels comparable to Android tablets:

Despite all of the media attention over the iPad’s (and other tablets’) operating temperatures, the issue seems to be overblown. None of the four tablets we tested ever get so warm that I could detect screen discoloration, of the type that some users of early units of the iPhone 4 reported. Given that the new iPad’s battery has an mAh rating nearly double that of the batteries on the other tablets here, we would expect it to run at least a few degrees hotter than those units.

Translation: Can we please stop talking about this now? The fact that this is an Apple product seems to be the reason (once again) that this is an issue (and it’s not an issue).

So the idea of unboxing videos of the new iPad is silly, and luckily Inspired By Apple is ready for you.

(They are silly of course because the most obvious part of the new iPad is the screen, which you can’t really seen on a video anyway (showing a retina screen on a non-retina screen is kinda a no go) and other than that the outside and presumably packaging is going to be exactly the same).

Sadly the entry is empty, but I’m hoping for a high volume of snark as soon as UPS trucks are rolling.

iPhone in Canada has What You Need to Know from today’s Apple iPad event.

So we’re about 20 minutes from the start of the next Apple Keynote where (we all assume) the iPad 3 will be released. Looking through the iPad 3 rumor round-up I can be sure of two things:

• Apple will release something
• People will bitch, complain, and be disappointed

Just like every other Apple announcement.

I’m a bit behind today but it seems like a lot of reviews out of Windows 8 and the comparisons to Windows 7 and the iPad seem to be coming out in droves. On Daring Fireball Gruber has accumulated a few of them. 512 Pixels has a charge of iPad Usage basically saying “use a tablet when you don’t want to use a computer”, ie: iPad is awesome because it’s just an iPad, not the “no compromises” platform that Windows 8 is.

I don’t own an iPad or a Windows 8 tablet, and have only ever used Windows 8 on a VM (not the best experience I’m sure). However, I have to come to Microsoft’s defence here, at least in a way. 512 Pixel’s point, noted from Jim Dalrymple is valid of course, but I can see where microsoft is thinking.

“Wouldn’t it be great if you could just have your ~~iPad~~ tablet device and when you need to, plug in a keyboard and mouse and boom, you have a fully working computer.”

I think it would be great, too, if you could do it well. I think that it’d be awesome to have an iPad that when I needed to I could just dock or plug in some how and get access (native, not a VNC solution) to my mac desktop. I don’t know how it’d work, if it would look something like what Ubuntu has done for Android, or an always running (kinda sorta but not on ARM unless you are Microsoft using these 5 applications) solution that Microsoft has. I don’t even know if it’s feasible, though the power available in tablets is increasing rapidly.

I’m just saying I can see what Microsoft was wanting to do. I don’t know if they did it right, or if Windows 8 will be a complete flop for “real” users (vs the “omg look at the pretty computer in best buy” users), but I can see where they were going with their design ideas.

Daring Fireball has a good look at the Fun With Numbers you can have in relation to tablet sales numbers.

I took a statistics class in University and the only thing I remember learning in it was that never ever ever ever trust statistics. You can literally make number say anything to support whatever point of view you have, and can do so convincingly. Whoever is tabulating the numbers is in control of the conversation. I can find you perfectly believable numbers that "prove" that Android is #1. I can also find the same numbers to "prove" that iOS is. Or that Ford is number 1. Or Chevy. Or really whatever my bias is. This is the same reason that you have to read the fine print on that late night infomercial that has reports and surveys for their "lose 10 pounds a week all bacon diet".

Of course, Gruber and Daring Fireball is obviously pro-Apple, so you can take that into consideration here. If you're a pro-Android person (and are still reading this) you'll simply dismiss his whole article as pro-Apple bias and that is has no bearing on reality anyway :)

Minimal Mac has an awesome post called Disruptive, all about the "tablet effect", the iPad, and HP getting out of the PC market.

Oh, Google, sit down and shut the eff up because I'm talking to you too. You are the company that names your beta builds after candy, ice cream, and sugared cereals. Apple names their betas after things that will eat your things along with the tasty human wrapper that eats that crap. Do you honestly think anyone can take you seriously?

Cool concept app that could let you create a iPad 2 Virtual Window. Just an idea for now, but definitely something nifty to check out.

Yes, there's some sort of Apple thing today, if you want to look at the liveblogs like a nutcase you know where to go, if you don't but are interested you'll probably not be able to avoid the news and/or rabid fanboys at your place of work, if you don't care, well, I haven't put any links or extra details here for you to get annoyed at :)

If you needed an excuse to get an iPad, you'll be happy to know that Old Sierra On-Line games are now available on iPad via the web thanks to some pretty cool resource extraction and logic conversion to javascript.

Now who has an iPad I can have, I want to see if I can get Larry to take that girl's clothes off....

Title pretty much says it all. The latest version of iOS for iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad will be released today, and it will be including a free version of 'Find My iPhone', previously only available as part of the $99/year Mobile Me. They of course waited until my account just renewed before releasing this of course, because find my iPhone is one of the only 2 reasons that I pay the Apple Tax for this service.

If you don't know what's coming in 4.2, well, google is your friend here, search it. Course, the short answer is feature parity for iPad with iPhone, plus a few minor little things. The press release with details is here (thanks @johnkoetsier).

9-5 Mac has a video of a iPad-Playbook comparison from Blackberry (so you can take the results for what you want). It's cool to see that the Playbook actually exists in real life.

A nice walkthrough for those of you with iPads (lucky buggers) wanting to know what you get with iOS 4.2.

Sounds like Old Sierra games are coming to iPad as unofficial web apps. Personally I think this is awesome, I'd love to play Space/Police Quest again. Hope it's not just iPad though.

Thanks Aryk for the link to this Gizmodo Ultimate Tablet Showdown, comparing the specs of iPad vs. PlayBook vs. Galaxy Tab vs. Slate.

Two points:

• The iPad appears to be last in all but the most important categories (IMHO), price, battery life, and applications. -- me
  
• "it's the only thing that actually exists in real life :)" -- Aryk
  

The latter point will go away (in theory) in time, but the former is fairly normal for Apple... the iPod's list of features is going to come in pretty much last compared to any other mp3 player, yet it dominates, even without expandable memory, an FM tuner, OGG playback, etc. I don't think the iPad will "lose" because of this though. On that note, Apple, you guys still haven't contacted me to send me a review unit.... time to get on that mmmkay? :)

Wired has a nice list of 10 Stellar iPad Apps That Will Blow You Away, shared out by my buddy @introdus who insists on taunting me with great looking apps for a device I don't have :)

This article is one of those "one ad-filled page per app" things, which begs for the new Safari "reader" feature which strips ads and combines these stupid multi-page articles into one clean page.

Apps like Google Earth were why the iPad was made. Looks awesome. Now to get a GPS in that puppy and mounted in your car dash....

9-5 Mac has a look at the supposed ultimate iPad newsreader. Gotta say that way of getting news is very appealing to me.

Interface Labs had a look inside the 527mb Wired iPad app and asks Is This Really The Future of Magazines? After reading this I'm a bit scared if this is the best that a major magazine can do. Though to be fair, if you're stuck in the "old" publishing world, this makes perfect sense.

A new jailbreak for the iPhone and iPad called Spirit has been released.

The untethered jailbreak works on activated iPhone OS devices running 3.1.2, 3.1.3, and 3.2, although iPad owners are warned that "all this is still sort of beta" and might require you to restore if things break.

Rogers, O2 tease iPad-specific data plans, via @johnkoetsier.

Gizmodo has a list of 8 Cruel But Completely Justified iPad Wallpaper Pranks which I'd love to do if I knew anyone who had an iPad. Only cause I'm jealous of course.

Dear internet, it's crap like Gizmodo's Essential iPad Apps list that makes me want an iPad more and more. You are all bastards!

If you want a pretty awesome expose of the iPad, Andy from the MacBreak Weekly podcast finally came out from embargo and was able to do a full iPad Reveal podcast, which thanks to the magic of the internet, is now in video on YouTube.

Sadly I suggest you avoid this video, as the more and more that I see iPad information, the more I want one, even though I didn't really want one at the start of the whole thing. I hate you Andy, I really do.

Cool screenshots and thoughts on the design process on the Instapaper Blog.

Apple has put up their iBooks page with some extra details on the (available for pre-order today!) iPad iBooks software. Nice that they have a built in dictionary/wikipedia access, and it also has text to speech. Wonder if Apple has the same (stupid) restrictions on some books allowing text to speech and some not? The Apple Blog has more details on the iPad features.

Put together in a iPad UI Conventions set on flickr. Via Daring Fireball.

For everyone winging about how the iPad doesn't have multi tasking, there's an interesting article on Smoking Apples on Understanding Multi-tasking on the iPad with some clarifications about what it is or isn't, and what you may or may not use it for.

The point that it's not really multi-tasking of running multiple apps that people are bitching about, but the session based "using multiple apps at once" type of multi-tasking that people want. Maybe this is a new paradigm in using the computer that people will either like or not like? My thoughts are that the iPad will be great for some people with some workflows and requirements, and not good for others. Buy one if you want one, I don't care :P

Chris Pirillo asks Are Apple's iPad Shortcomings Real or Perceived? and goes through 10 counter-arguments about some of the common "but it [does|doesn't] X!" complaints about the iPad.

I'm not an Apple apologist, honestly. I don't like everything they've created, I swear. I don't own iEverything (no Apple TV, no iPod, no MacBook Air, etc.). However, in light of the flurry of initial iPad complaints, I just had to counterbalance perceived shortcomings with a modicum of reason.[...]

Apple has produced (finally) the Apple iPad. Short story, a big iPhone with no camera, a wifi + optional 3G, a book store and a new suite of office suite apps, compatible with current iPhone apps.

In a way I'm a bit disappointed that all the "it can't just be a big iPhone" talk wasn't true, and that the system looks and acts like a bit iPhone instead of a small computer with an iPhone-like UI. IE: no video conferencing, no multi-tasking, and most of the other limitations of the iPhone OS.

That said, they basically killed a big chunk of the Amazon kindle market with the "iBooks". If I can transfer my PDF eBooks to it and view in full color, with zooming and panning and page flipping? Awesome. The non-active screen on the kindle will keep some of the more "high end" readers who appreciate the lack of eyestrain, but I'd be willing to bet that most of the good parts of the kindle (with the Apple Book store and it's power) plus all the awesomeness of the iPhone and it's apps will make a compelling argument.

Other stats:

• Low end price (16G storage, wifi only) $499 (great low price)
  
• High end (64G + 3G) $829 (expected it to be that high to begin with)
  
• Available in 60 days (both US and internationally)
  
• International 3G by June
  
• 3G service from AT&T in the US, in two tiers (250mb and unlimited)
  

The product page has more, plus a video. Personally I'm vaguely excited, it looks beautiful and comes with a great Reality Distortion Field, and some of the potential (my own collected eBooks, videos, etc) I can completely see. But replacing my laptop and all it can do with this isn't going to save much weight or space in the backpack I take to work all day. I still want one though :)

Hands on from Gizmodo.