iPad By Davis: “Christmas Day customer activity showing Apple is crushing it, Android strong, Microsoft toast.” plus 9 more |
- Christmas Day customer activity showing Apple is crushing it, Android strong, Microsoft toast.
- Best paid iPad apps
- How to find places on the map and get turn-by-turn directions using Siri
- SEC filing discloses date, proposals, for Apple shareholders meeting
- Hubble Space Telescope Discoveries: Excellent New Free eBook for the iPad
- iPhone 5 launches in more countries
- Notable New Apps: Obstacles XRT
- And the Mobile Nations 2013 CES Experience in Las Vegas winners are...!
- Apple iWatch rumors surface again, this time with Intel attached
- Best paid iPhone apps
| Christmas Day customer activity showing Apple is crushing it, Android strong, Microsoft toast. Posted: 27 Dec 2012 07:23 PM PST Christmas Day is a huge day for mobile device activations, obviously. Once we finish unwrapping our gifts and scarfing down a big breakfast, we all become children and want to immediately play with our gifts. For smartphones and tablets, that means activating your device on a network, and downloading a slew of apps. Once we install these apps (like Twitter), we start telling followers about our new device. Two pieces of research hit my radar today. They're both quite fascinating and paint a picture of Apple dominating the scene. The first is from analytics firm Flurry, who posted a little something on their blog revealing just how big these activations were this year. Flurry estimates that iOS and Android sales were more than 2.5x larger on Christmas Day in 2012 compared to last year's equivalent. A whopping 17.4 million devices were activated this year versus only 6.8 million last year. Tablets are also growing in popularity big time. Perhaps because many of them don't come with cellular connectivity (and therefore don't have data plans), they are easier gifts. But 51% of device activations on the 25th (among iOS and Android devices tracked) were tablets. Compare this with 20% tablets for the days leading up to Christmas. I think these data points tell us the tablet market is on fire, and not slowing down anytime soon. Interestingly, the Flurry study makes no mention of Windows Surface or the heavily discounted BlackBerry Playbook.I'm not surprised on the Playbook side of things - it's now an old tablet, and will be obviously updated in 2013 when BlackBerry 10 comes out. But the Surface is brand new. If it was going to make a move, you'd think Christmas would show some results for team Microsoft, eh? Another data point, if I can call it that, aggregated tweets from people writing "first tweet from (device name)". The image showing the results (below) comes from Andy Biao and @axian, and it looks like a completely unscientific (but very interesting) graphic detailing the search results. For whatever these results are worth, iPad crushed everybody else. And to check if these results could be trusted I did an informal search of my own, looking at similar tweets over the last few hours. I got comparable results (just looking at the rough split). Maybe iPad users like Twitter more than everyone else, or people who like Twitter gravitate to iPads, and the fact that almost nobody tweeted from a Microsoft Surface could be driven by the lack of an official Twitter app. But it's not like the web version sucks. It uses HTML5 and works pretty well. I have to think it's just not selling very well. Image to use: http://i.imgur.com/cg6O5.jpg 
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| Posted: 27 Dec 2012 05:50 PM PST The App Store is flooded with apps, both good and bad, so it can be overwhelming to decided which apps you're going to spend your hard earned cash (or gift cards) on. Stress no more! We've gathered up some of our all time favorite iPad apps that we believe to be worth every penny. 1Password 41Password is not only one of the best apps for your iPhone, but one of the best for your iPad, Mac, and PC as well. With 1Password, you can say goodbye to using the same, insecure password for all your logins all over the internet and instead give each login its own individual secure password yet only need to remember one password to gain access to them all. 1Password is not just extremely useful and practical, but it's very well designed and gives the perfect combination of functionality and beauty. Calendars by ReaddleApple's built-in Calendar app on the iPad is great and all, but if you yearn for something different, Calendars by Readdle by be just what you're looking for. This full-featured calendar app will sync with Google and iOS Calendar and has a great design. Calendar has support for custom repeating events and feature special keyboards for different entry elements to make it quick to enter events. You can also swipe between screens (something that you surprisingly can't do with the built-in Calendar app) and the week and day views feature a visual/spacial design that many users consider a must-have. TweetbotTweetbot has been one of our favorite Twitter apps for quite some time, now. It's perfect for the power tweeter, with useful features like intuitive gestures, granular notifications, and flexible mute filters all wrapped up in fun sounds and a great design.
Camera+One of the great advantages to the iPad over the iPhone is that it's larger screen is awesome for photo editing -- especially on the Retina iPad. Camera+ was originally an iPhone photography app that focused on taking better photos, but it's come a long way since then and now includes great tools and sharing options for the iPad. And if you use an iPhone, your photos will seamlessly sync between Camera+ on your iPhone and iPad.
iMovieThe iPad is a great device for editing videos and creating movies, but with the restrictions of simply shooting video and trimming clips, the built-in Camera app doesn't give you much flexibility, but iMovie does! iMovie is a fantastic video editor because it's super easy to make fun videos in just a matter of minutes. Videographers may yearn for more, but for everyone else, iMove is an excellent video editor for the iPad.
FoldifyIf you own a printer, Foldify will make it fun again. If you don't own a printer, Foldify will make you seriously consider rushing out to get one. The reason for that is Foldify's ability to project itself from the iPad, where the app runs, to the real world, where the app's results live. The idea is remarkable simple -- draw one pre-defined templates, then print them out, fold them up, and enjoy real, touchable, arrangeable models of what you made. The execution is even more remarkable, because the developers managed to keep the app as simple as the idea, and that's no easy feat.
Weather 2xWeather 2x is an absolutely gorgeous weather app for both the iPhone and iPad. The included gestures are perfect and intuitive and the information is displayed and organized in a very elegant manner. If you're in the market for a full-featured weather app that includes everything under the sun, then Weather 2x isn't for you, but if you're looking for a beautiful, minimalist weather app that brings the most important information to you in an elegant package then Weather 2x may be exactly what you're looking for.
InstapaperInstapaper is one of the most popular read-later services on the web and iPad that saves web pages and articles for offline reading and is optimized for readability on your device's screen. It offers a distraction-free text only environment with the ability to adjust fonts, text sizes, line spacing, and margins to truly satisfy your specific reading needs. You can save articles to Instapaper via a bookmarklet that you save in Safari or from one of the many Twitter, reading, and social apps in the App Store.
ReederIf you use Google Reader, you want Reeder - plain and simple. It's an RSS reader that will sync with your Google Reader account and present your feeds on a beautiful and clean interface. You can also choose to sync with Fever and Readability and Reeder allows you to share to nearly every social service out there.
InstacastInstacast 3 is the all new version of Vemedio's popular iPhone and iPad podcasting app. With it, Vemedio has switched out a lot of old methods for newer technologies like automatic reference counting and Core Data to make Instacast better and faster. Alongside these fancy new technologies is Instacasts new Cloud sync. Instead of using Apple's iCloud to keep your podcasts in sync, the folks at Vemedio put in a lot of work to create their own. All you need to do to use it is sign-up for a free account and all your data will be seamlessly moved to the cloud. If Apple's free Podcasts app isn't up to your needs, give Instacast a whirl.
BywordByword is a text and Markdown editor that focuses on being simple, distraction free, and beautiful. It's available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac and can keep all your work in sync via iCloud or Dropbox. It also features a special keyboard with a swipable row at the top that includes selective word and character counters, a tab key, smart paring characters, and undo key, Markdown helpers, and more.
NotabilityNotability is a full-featured handwriting app that you can use to take notes, annotate PDFs, and more. The inking in Notability is quite beautiful and taking the tiniest of notes is a breeze with the zoom window or by simply pinching-to-zoom into your document. In addition to handwritten notes, Notability allows you to add text and record audio notes. It also feature a convenient auto-sync feature with Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or WebDav so that you can be assured that your notes are always backed up and accessible from anywhere.
Scanner ProSome people poke fun at the idea of taking photos with an iPad, but Scanner Pro offers an unarguably awesome use for the iPad's camera -- the ability to scan documents and store them as PDFs. The resulting scans look just like a job done by a scanner, not a camera. Scanner Pro features an auto-edge detector that is very accurate and will help fix any distortion that you may have capture by not taking the photo from directly above the document. It also syncs with iCloud, Dropbox, and more to ensure that your documents are accessible from any device. iWork: Pages, Numbers, and KeynoteWant to create posters, write papers, design spreadsheets, and create presentations? Apple's iWork suite consisting of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote has go you covered. All three of these apps are universal for both the iPhone and iPad and sync over iCloud with their Mac counterparts.
Your favorite paid apps for iPhone?This really is just a short list of fantastic apps out there, and we know there's some other great ones that have been left out. That's where you come in! What are the best paid apps you have installed on your iPad and use regularly? Let us know in the comments below! 
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| How to find places on the map and get turn-by-turn directions using Siri Posted: 27 Dec 2012 03:04 PM PST Complete guide to Siri commands for maps and turn-by-turn navigationSiri isn't only your digital assistant, it can be your digital co-pilot as well, helping you find where to go, how to get there, and what you can do along the way. That includes local businesses, points of interest, and complete voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation. And when you're done, if you ask nicely, Siri will even show you the way home.
How to find places with SiriIf you're looking for a local business or point of interest, just ask Siri.
  How to find local businesses with SiriYou don't have to know the exact name of ar business to find it with Siri. You can also search based on category.
     How to get turn-by-turn navigation with Siri
   How to find your way home with SiriSiri also makes it easy to return home from any unfamiliar place you might have visited (or in the event you get lost). Before Siri can do this, you'll need to make sure that you have your home address programmed into your contact card and that you've got it linked up with Siri.
   How to view famous landmarks with Siri
    How to get more help with SiriIf you still need help with setting up or using Siri with your iPhone Contacts, or any other Siri feature, head on over to our Siri Forum and ask away! 
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| SEC filing discloses date, proposals, for Apple shareholders meeting Posted: 27 Dec 2012 02:20 PM PST In a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, Apple has revealed that its next annual shareholder's meeting will take place at their Cupertino headquarters on February 27, 2013, some minor shareholder proposals which, as always, will almost certainly get voted down, and the huge surprise that Apple blew past the financial targets needed for execs to trigger bonuses. On the matter of Cook's compensation, while last year Cook's compensation was listed as $378 million, most of that was in stock awards that Cook will earn over the course of a decade. His compensation this year is his salary of $1.36 million along with a $2.8 million incentive plan, for a total of $4.16 million. For perspective, his compensation last year minus his stock awards was just north of $1.8 million. When it comes to the proposals at the meeting in February, Apple shareholders have been advised by the board to vote against the creation of a human rights committee because the board feel it would be redundant. Additionally, all board election is expected to see the return of all eight current board members including Chairman Arthur Levinson, Tim Cook, and Al Gore. So, pretty much exactly what anyone following APPL would expect. Which is a good thing. Source: SEC 
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| Hubble Space Telescope Discoveries: Excellent New Free eBook for the iPad Posted: 27 Dec 2012 11:54 AM PST  I've written many times here about the great free apps that NASA have created for the iPad, one of the most recent being NASA's Space Place Prime. Over the last couple days I've been enjoying their latest bit of stellar free content for the iPad – the Hubble Space Telescope Discoveries eBook on the iBookstore. [...]         Related Stories
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| iPhone 5 launches in more countries Posted: 27 Dec 2012 10:19 AM PST The iPhone 5 has launched in several new countries recently, predominantly in Africa. The phone launched on December 21 in Botswana, Camaroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, St. Lucia, St.Vincent & the Grenadines, Tunisia, and Uganda, along with the islands of Barbados, St. Lucia, and St. Kitts. The iPhone 5 also went on sale in Vietnam. Source: CNN Money 
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| Notable New Apps: Obstacles XRT Posted: 27 Dec 2012 09:50 AM PST  Obstacles XRT is an interesting looking new fitness app for the iPhone. Yes, I did say iPhone not iPad – an iPad version may be on the way and in the meantime this sort of app looks just fine to me in 2X mode on the iPad. Here's a bit of the App Store description [...] Related Stories
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| And the Mobile Nations 2013 CES Experience in Las Vegas winners are...! Posted: 27 Dec 2012 08:31 AM PST Alright folks, it's time to announce the 6 lucky people that will be joining NVIDIA and Mobile Nations at CES 2013! We would like to say a huge THANK YOU to all of the members that submitted an entry. We really appreciate all of the time and effort everyone put in, and the response was quite overwhelming. So, getting down to business... after much debate and discussion, we have selected 6 stand out entries. These folks will join the Mobile Nations and NVIDIA crews in Las Vegas for CES 2013! Congratulations to... *drum roll* Robert Brown Marques Brownlee Rich Cermele Michael Colvill TJ Hardin Martin Reisch Congrats to Robert Brown, one of the 6 stand out entries we received! We're ALL looking forward to meeting you, hanging out with you, and doing all sorts of other fun stuff at CES. We will be in touch with our 6 lucky picks shortly to arrange all of the travel, hotel and CES pass details! Congratulations again to our selections! We will see you in Las Vegas! 
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| Apple iWatch rumors surface again, this time with Intel attached Posted: 27 Dec 2012 06:52 AM PST The Apple iWatch smartwatch is the subject of renewed rumor and speculation this morning, with Intel of all companies now being attached to the project. Low power Bluetooth 4.0 is along for the ride as well, of course, so it can instantly pair with an iPhone or iPad, as well as a 1.5-inch display, and a supposed release window pegged at the first half of 2013. In other words, soon. All this according to TGBUS (Google Translated):
The Intel angle here is interesting. While Apple's Mac computer lines currently all still have Intel inside, Apple hasn't done anything significant with Intel on their iOS device line. Likewise, the OLED display rumor, as Apple has thus far eschewed that technology for LED. Rumors of an iWatch, while not as persistent as iTV television rumors, began picking up speed when Apple announced the square, more iOS-looking 2010 iPod nano and Steve Jobs quipped that board members wanted to wear them as watches. Speculation immediately leapt to a future filled with light, wearable iOS devices, piggy-backing off the more powerful devices in our pockets and bags, passing on Siri instructions and getting back our notifications and other data. Many watchband accessories and flights of fancy later, the iPod nano finally gained a Bluetooth radio in 2012... just as Apple changed its shape back to a far less watch-friendly rectangle. That could be a sign of Apple moving away from wearable iOS devices, or just shifting the nano away from wearability to leave room for something else. (Also, head fake.) Apple is increasingly seen by financial markets, and the media, as a hit-driven business, and the moment they announce one new product, questions immediately spring up about "what's next?!". The iPad mini has shipped, so TVs, watches, and all manner of other products are ripe for the research notes and rumor mills alike. Given the popularity of the nano-as-watch, and of other connected watch-style devices, like the television, it's hard to imagine that Apple doesn't have a project or prototype or several in the labs. Also like the television, that's a far cry from going to market with an final, polished product. But it does raise the question -- do you want an iWatch from Apple? Source: TGBUS via Tech.163, The Next Web. 
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| Posted: 27 Dec 2012 01:37 AM PST The App Store is flooded with apps, both good and bad, so it can be overwhelming to decided which apps you're going to spend your hard earned cash (or gift cards) on. Stress no more! We've gathered up some of our all time favorite apps that we believe to be worth every penny. 1Password 41Password is not only one of the best apps for your iPhone, but one of the best for your iPad, Mac, and PC as well. With 1Password, you can say goodbye to using the same, insecure password for all your logins all over the internet and instead give each login its own individual secure password yet only need to remember one password to gain access to them all. 1Password is not just extremely useful and practical, but it's extremely well designed that gives the perfect combination of functionality and beauty. FantasticalApple's built-in Calendar app is great and all, but if you want a superb calendar, take a look at Fantastical for iPhone. This awesome little calendar app lets you simply type your meetings in normal language and it translates them into an appointment for you. For example "meeting with Rene Ritchie next friday at noon" will automatically fill in the appropriate fields to schedule this event. If you're a quick typer, this is typically much faster than adding all the information yourself. Fantastical will make you wish you had more things to add to your calendar so that you can use it more. Seriously.
TweetbotTweetbot has been one of our favorite Twitter apps for quite some time, now. It's perfect for the power tweeter, with useful features like, intuitive gestures, granular notifications, and flexible mute filters all wrapped up in fun sounds and a great design.
Camera+The iPhone's is, without question, an excellent camera, but the iPhone isn't exactly equipped with all the tools to make the most use out of it -- but Camera+ is! Camera+ is a photography app that is useful for both taking photos and editing them. With features ranging from separate exposure and focus points, stabilizer, dozens of effects and borders, different scene modes, and more, Camera+ is sure to help you grow to become the awesome iPhone photographer you desire to be!
iMovieThe still camera isn't the only great camera in the iPhone -- the video camera is also pretty great! But with the restrictions of simply shooting video and trimming clips, the built-in Camera app doesn't allow you to actually make movies, but iMovie does! iMovie is a fantastic video editor because it's super easy to make fun videos in just a matter of minutes. Videographers may yearn for more, but for everyone else, iMove is an excellent video editor for the iPhone.
ClearClear is a task list app for those who don't like task list apps -- a new, gesture-based approach that's manages to be simple without being simplistic. It takes an almost Windows Phone Metro-style approach. It's not a task app for those who want power features or a more traditional interface. But for anyone new to todos, who wants something fresh and fun, who just has a few lists of a few items and finds Reminders far too much of a chore, Clear might be the perfect place to start.
Solar : WeatherSure, the built-in Weather app on the iPhone gets you basic weather information in a somewhat appealing packages, but it's nothing compared to Solar : Weather. This little gem is a unique weather app for the iPhone that offers a one-of-a-kind interactive UI and experience. Instead of simply displaying the weather forecast for you, Solar: Weather will display different information based on gestures. For example, swiping up with scroll through the 24-hr forecast, swiping down will display the 3 day forecast, and swiping left/right will switch between locations. It's actually very fun to use.
Launch Center ProTap an app icon on your Home screen and what happens? The app opens up, that's it. Tap an app icon in Launch Center Pro and what happens? Messages are ready to write. Events are ready to be added. Movie times are there for you to see. And much, much more. That's because Launch Center Pro doesn't just launch apps, it launches actions. Sure, iOS doesn't allow real app-to-app communication yet, but App Cubby, the makers of Launch Center Pro, have toiled away taking what Apple does allow -- the URL schemes that let apps send and receive small amounts of information in links -- and made something not only wonderful, but wonderfully productive.
InstapaperInstapaper is one of the most popular read-later services on the web and iPhone that saves web pages and articles for offline reading and is optimized for readability on your device's screen. It offers a distraction-free text only environment with the ability to adjust fonts, text sizes, line spacing, and margins to truly satisfy your specific reading needs. You can save articles to Instapaper via a bookmarklet that you save in Safari or from one of the many Twitter, reading, and social apps in the App Store.
ReederIf you use Google Reader, you want Reeder - plain and simple. It's an RSS reader that will sync with your Google Reader account and present your feeds on a beautiful and clean interface. You can also choose to sync with Fever and Readability and Reeder allows you to share to nearly every social service out there.
InstacastInstacast 3 is the all new version of Vemedio's popular iPhone and iPad podcasting app. With it, Vemedio has switched out a lot of old methods for newer technologies like automatic reference counting and Core Data to make Instacast better and faster. Alongside these fancy new technologies is Instacasts new Cloud sync. Instead of using Apple's iCloud to keep your podcasts in sync, the folks at Vemedio put in a lot of work to create their own. All you need to do to use it is sign-up for a free account and all your data will be seamlessly moved to the cloud. If Apple's free Podcasts app isn't up to your needs, give Instacast a whirl.
BywordByword is a text and Markdown editor that focuses on being simple, distraction free, and beautiful. It's available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac and can keep all your work in sync via iCloud or Dropbox. It also features a special keyboard with a swipable row at the top that includes selective word and character counters, a tab key, smart paring characters, and undo key, Markdown helpers, and more.
iWork: Pages, Numbers, and KeynoteWant to create posters, write papers, design spreadsheets, and create presentations? Apple's iWork suite consisting of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote has go you covered. All three of these apps are available on both the iPhone and iPad and sync over iCloud with their Mac counterparts.
Your favorite paid apps for iPhone?This really is just a short list of fantastic apps out there, and we know there's some other great ones that have been left out. That's where you come in! What are the best paid apps you have installed on your iPhone and use regularly? Let us know in the comments below! 
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