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Office To Follow Someday? Microsoft’s OneNote Comes To The iPhone→

Office To Follow Someday? Microsoft’s OneNote Comes To The iPhone

Earlier today, Microsoft released a new version of its note-taking application OneNote that’s specifically meant for iPhone users. The app is available for free (limited time offer) in the App Store. Even though this is no confirmation the full Office suite is coming to iOS soon, the arrival of OneNote on the iPhone sure suggests the Office team has been thinking about iOS apps. Even if Ballmer was disappointed at initial iPad sales (we wonder if he still is), rumors surfaced in the past pointed at the Microsoft Office team considering development of an iPad version of Office.

As for OneNote:

We know people care more about what they do than where they do it,” Microsoft Office unit Vice President Takeshi Numoto says in a blog post being published on Tuesday. “Whether it’s on a PC or Mac, a mobile phone or online through the Web Apps on multiple browsers, we continue to bring Office to the devices, platforms, and operating systems our customers are using. It should be about the ideas and information, not the device, right?”

Of course, OneNote is just one piece of Office–and one of the newer and least used of the main components at that. It’s also an interesting choice since OneNote isn’t available natively for the Mac. But, Microsoft seems to be leaving the door open to bring other pieces of Office to the iPhone.

The app can be downloaded for free here.

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How Many iPhone Apps Are There? 306,554 - And 60,000 iPad Apps

Looking at the “All-Time Top iPhone Apps” charts Apple updated earlier today, I noticed two interesting numbers worth to be shared: Apple is listing the actual number of free and paid iPhone apps available in the App Store. There are 306,554 iPhone apps available, and 201,635 of them are paid apps. These numbers are noteworthy as Apple rarely provides official stats of the iPhone App Store: they announced the 300,000 apps milestone on November 22 with the release of iOS 4.2 but there never was an easy way to instantly check on the exact number of apps available in the Store. Read more

Ahead of 10 Billion Downloads, Apple Updates “All-Time Top Apps” Page

The clock’s ticking on the 10 billion app downloads countdown, and Apple has updated its “All-Time Top Apps” page to reflect the changes that have occurred in the App Store in the past 12 months. The iTunes pages that showcase “All-Time Top Paid iPhone Apps” and “All-Time Free iPhone Apps” are available here and here, respectively.

Unsurprisingly, games are among the top paid apps. And by games, we mean Doodle Jump, Angry Birds, Pocket God and Flight Control. Actual “apps” in the top paid list include SoundHound (the music scanning / discovery tool), I Am T-Pain from Smule, Air Sharing from Avatron and Awesome Note. The list is huge as it basically sorts any iPhone app ever released by popularity and sales in the App Store. It is nice, however, to see gems like 1Password, Convertbot and Hipstamatic in the first page.

As for free apps, the usual Facebook, Pandora, Google and Shazam are the most downloaded apps of all time. Paper Toss, Bump, Skype and AroundMe are in there, too, together with dozens of other games in the first page.

These charts give us an idea of the trends in the App Store, and the kinds of apps that people want to buy or download for free. Where by “apps” we mean games. [via iSpazio]

iPad Pinches Almost 90% of Third Quarter Tablet Shipments

The world’s media tablet market grew an astounding 45% in the third quarter of 2010, says the International Data Corporation (IDC). And what magical device is getting the credit? The iPad of course. Apple’s iPad was the force behind the growing demand.

According to IDC’s figures, vendors shipped almost 5 million units worldwide in the third quarter of 2010. The second quarter shipped over 3 million units, with the iPad steering almost 88% of tablets shipped. Read more

White iPhone 4 To Make Its Debut Feb. 27th? Best Buy May Be Telling

The White iPhone 4 was at first rumored to suffer from a series of problems with color, but it was later rumored to be delayed thanks to issues with the camera sensor. As the glass is white, light leakage was affecting the camera sensor. While Apple has kept quiet about the latest White iPhone 4 developments, there were some signs of life in Apple Stores thanks to a 9 to 5 Mac reader spotting a Spring 2011 launch date. Today, MacRumors has a sneak peek at Best Buy’s inventory system (which has been a leaky faucet for numerous tech rumors).

The white iPhone is speculated to have a launch date of February 27th, and the SKUs are identical to the previous white iPhone listings last year before they were pulled. There’s no doubt that there will eventually be a white iPhone, and the question of when may be sooner than later. With a large pool of white iPhones on hand, however, would Apple launch a new series of white iPhone 4s with the next generation iPhone arriving in the Summer on AT&T? Or is this an early indication that Verizon will feature the iPhone 4 for the next year? (And let’s not forget the White iPhone 4 on Verizon snafu.)

[via MacRumors]

Happy Politicians with iPads In German Parliament [Photos]

In October, we reported that the German parliament lifted the ban on tablets and announced members were allowed to replace papers with Apple’s iPad. Today, German newspaper Spiegel posted photos of iPads in action in the Bundestag, and is reporting nearly every member of the Parliament has adopted an Apple iPad. Chancellor Angela Merkel was the first one to get an iPad during her trip to California last year, and after her several others got one, which comes free of charge with refunds from the German government. Sounds like a deal.

Unsurprisingly, the iPad’s form factor seems to be the most important aspect among members of the Bundestag: the screen makes it easy to send and read emails, browse the web and quickly check on documents. According to the Spiegel, the iPad “looks like it was made for the Parliament”.

The fact that Saarland’s premier Peter Müller was spotted playing chess on his tablet during a meeting doesn’t come as a surprise either. With an iPad in your hands and access to thousands of apps, it’s hard to resist the temptation of games, like Angry Birds and well, chess. Check out more pics of happy politicians with iPads in the Parliament below. Read more

Quick! Download AirView Now, It Turns Your iOS Device Into An AirPlay Receiver

AirView is a universal application available for free in the App Store that does something iOS users have been asking since the original release of AirPlay: it turns any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch into AirPlay receivers capable of playing videos streamed from another device. With AirView, in fact, video can be streamed from iOS device to iOS device (iPhone to iPad, iPhone to iPhone) or from iTunes, something that Apple only does with the Apple TV 2nd generation.

AirView must be running on a device in order to show up as receiver on a local network. The app doesn’t enable music streaming, a feature we managed to activate in the past with a jailbreak hack. Photos aren’t supported either.

AirView is a neat little app that we guess Apple will soon remove from the App Store. When used in combination with Erica Sadun’s apps that extend AirPlay’s functionalities, it can become a quite powerful tool. Go grab it here now.

TV Show Tracker 2.0 for iPhone: One To Add To Your Homescreen

Not having cable, keeping tabs on the shows that appear on cable TV bites because I have to constantly check in on online schedules (all on different networks) just to see when the next episode of House is going to air. What sucks is that when having only Hulu as my prime source of entertainment, December was a month devoid of any content as weekly shows began to grind to a halt. With the exception of Saturday Night Live and a maybe two other shows, I’m paying for nothing. Shows will come back, but when?

We’ve already covered TV Show Tracker on MacStories, but the 2.0 update is worth mentioning since it delivers a much improved interface, a notification system alerting you before or after a show ends, inline video previews of episodes, and quick iTunes links so you can rent those shows quickly from the interface. TV Show Tracker consolidates all of the shows you watch into an instant access panel where you simply search for the popular program you watch and add it to your list of shows. TV Show Tracker displays the artwork for the program’s season, displays previous and upcoming showtimes, and keeps tabs on what episodes you’ve already seen. This is an app to add to your homescreen if you’re at all interested on keeping track of your favorite shows – it’s super convenient to have only the show listings you care about all in one place.

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