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MacStories Interviews: Dave Caolo, Author of “Using Your iPad as a Business Productivity Tool”

If you live in a corporate environment these days, chances are your employer has given you an iPad to try out. It is no secret that hundreds of companies are piloting or deploying iPads and iPhones, but when it comes to a machine that’s less than a year old and has created a new category of portable computing, trying to make it fit in your daily workflow can become a problem. What apps do I need to install? What about email settings? What’s the best way to manage my calendar? And Exchange?

Author Dave Caolo provides answers to these questions in his first book “Using Your iPad as a Business Productivity Tool”. The book is available now in the iBookstore for iPad at $5.99, but you can also pre-order it for your Kindle on Amazon. We had the chance to chat with Dave about the background of this book, and why he decided to focus on the iPad, a relatively young device for a business audience.

So head after the break for the full interview, and go download the book for your iPad here. Read more

CalendarBar Tucks Event Reminders In Your Menubar

Clean Cut Code is known for making beautiful apps like Cloud Calendar, and it was only a matter of time before they brought some of their talent to the OS X desktop. CalendarBar takes on the inefficiencies of a traditional calendar client by providing a quick list of events in a beautiful timeline that can grab events from iCal, Google Calendar, and Facebook. Clicking on an event takes you to the event listing in its parent application – CalendarBar removes the distraction of busy calendar utilities, but provides shortcuts so you can add entries and gather additional information. The app features a some iOS overtones in its design, most obviously via the settings and exit button that adorn the bottom of the pop-up panel. Launching yesterday, the app is only $1.99 in the Mac App Store.

Xcode 4 GM Seed 2 Released

Together with the GM seed of iOS 4.3, Apple has updated the developer center with a new build of Xcode 4 GM. The “seed 2” available for developers includes performance and stability improvements.

The first Xcode 4 GM seed was released in February. It included support for submitting iOS and Mac apps to the App Store and brought along the impossibility to build apps for OS X 10.5 Leopard. Xcode 4 is a major new version of Apple’s development suite which sports lots of new features and a new single-windowed UI.


Apple Releases iOS 4.3 GM [Update: Gestures, Home Sharing]

A few minutes ago Apple seeded the GM seed of iOS 4.3 to developers. It’s available now in the iOS Dev Center. Build number is 8F190. Updated versions of the iOS SDK and Apple TV pre-release software have been released as well. iOS 4.3 beta 3 was released on February 1st.

iOS 4.3 is set to come out on March 11 together with the release of the iPad 2. This GM build should include the new iTunes Home Sharing feature announced by Apple yesterday.

Update: We have received word from several developers that the multitasking gestures for iPad can still be activated in the GM build with Xcode. At this point it sounds like Xcode will be able to activate gestures in the final release as well, but the general public won’t have this feature – it’s exclusive to developers for testing. Read more

MobileMe Photo and Video Sharing Pulled From iPad 2?

As noted by iLounge, it appears that among the functionalities of the iPad 2 announced yesterday there is the notable lack of photo and video sharing through MobileMe. The device has two cameras capable of shooting photos, videos, do video calling with FaceTime and apply effects in Photo Booth, but there was no mention of MobileMe media sharing and Apple’s website confirms you’ll only be able to upload HD video to Youtube, or share via email.

Obscured by the many iPad 2-related announcements yesterday, Apple failed to make any mention of MobileMe-based video or photo uploading during its media event. A quick scan of Apple’s iPad 2 mini-site shows that no references are made to sharing photos or videos via MobileMe, although the service is still mentioned by name in references to synchronization and location-based services.

Recent rumors suggested Apple is working on a major revamp of MobileMe, which is reportedly becoming a digital-only, free service with access to cloud backups for music and movies and social / location features. Code references found in iOS 4.3 also pointed to a new MediaStream service built in iOS devices to (likely) share photos and videos with your friends through MobileMe.

But, then again, the lack of MobileMe sharing in the iPad 2 camera app might just be a last-minute removal from the  iOS 4.3 built demoed to journalists in San Francisco yesterday, and perhaps will be integrated again come the final release on March 11. Or maybe Apple is planning more surprises for the iPad 2 on March 11? We’ll see.

Twitter Updates iOS App with Lots Of New Features

An interesting (and rather huge) update to the official Twitter app for iOS was released a few minutes ago, and it includes improvements both for the iPhone and iPad version of the client. New features has been added to this release as well, which unlike previous updates doesn’t only focus on bug fixes and stability improvements.

First off, the tweet compose screen has been greatly improved and redesigned to have a much cleaner UI and buttons to attach media for easier photo uploading; location info and usernames shortcuts are part of the redesigned screen, too. There’s even username auto-completion now, which is very nice on the iPhone considering one doesn’t always have time to type a long username on the virtual keyboard.

Trends have been improved, the app now shows trends for your specific location and there’s also a bar on top of the timeline called “Quick Bar” that allows you to cycle through trends. I wonder if there’s a way to disable it from the new Settings view. Twitter for iOS can also look in your local address book now to find friends that you might want to follow. This has been enabled both on the iPhone and iPad. Local trends, on the other hands, can be ignored thanks to an option in the Settings.

We are looking for new features and details right now and we’ll update this post as we find more interesting stuff. Check for more screenshots below, and go download the app here.

Update: The app seems a lot stable on the iOS 4.3 beta, and the bug that caused DMs and mentions to be marked as “unread” on each launch has been fixed. Finally, DM conversations behave like you would expect, too.

Update #2: Surprisingly enough, Twitter for iPad doesn’t seem to have the Quick Bar. Also, Quick Bar on the iPhone only stays at the top of the list and doesn’t follow you when scrolling the timeline.

Read more

AT&T Confirms iPhone Personal Hotspot with iOS 4.3, Also Offering Postpaid Subscription Plans for iPads

PERSONAL HOTSPOT

Well, we knew that when Verizon got the Hotspot feature on their iPhone 4s, AT&T’s iPhone wasn’t too far behind. With iOS 4.3 available on March 11, AT&T will also offer Apple’s Personal Hotspot feature after updating your iPhone’s OS.

AT&T will start supporting the Personal Hotspot feature in sync with the launch of iOS 4.3. Hotspot functionality will require a $25/month DataPro plan with 2 GB of data plus the $20/month add-on tethering plan that AT&T recently changed by adding an additional 2 GB of data capacity. So, you will be paying $45 a month for a 4GB of data.

At first people actually thought that AT&T may not offer this option, as it was one of the first features noticed on the Verizon iPhone, but we all knew AT&T would have to do this to stay competitive with iPhone sales. Read more

Nintendo Still Doesn’t Get The (New) Mobile Market→

Nintendo Still Doesn’t Get The Mobile Market

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, speaking about “quality video games” and mobile platforms like iOS and Android:

In a feisty attack on the fastest-growing sectors of the video-game industry, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that smartphone games and social-media games focus on quantity instead of quality.

“They are not like gaming consoles, there’s no motivation [for] high-value video games,” Iwata said at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

I’d say this is one of the biggest problems a company like Nintendo is facing right now: trying to compete in the mobile gaming space with a device that’s just meant for gaming, while consumers are demanding something that goes beyond cartridges and games sold at $40 a piece. And so they try to build “social functionalities” into their consoles, hoping that an avatar creation feature or in-console communication would provide a solution to a market that’s deeply changed in the past four years.

Should Nintendo change at its roots and start doing all that consumers want? No. But the way I see it, they should pull their head out of the sand and understand that the rules have changed and it’s time to stop complaining, and start building to stay in the game. Those Angry Birds won’t go away by themselves.

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