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Posts tagged with "iPad"

Agenda 3.0: Fast Event Creation, Custom Repeats and More

Agenda, by Savvy Apps, is a fantastic and minimal calendar replacement for iOS (universal) with many built-in options. We’ve covered Agenda a few times already but the new 3.0 update adds some excellent new features and updates.

The first, and most important update is a custom event creation screen that’s much faster than the default iOS one. It has a simplified layout that lets you access event elements without going into second and third screens. This means you only need to tap once to access the event title, start & end time, alerts, location, and notes. You can swipe between calendar months and the animation is very slick!  The dots beneath the calendar identify what month you are in - past, present or future. Agenda now imports your contacts from iOS so once an event is created, you can attach them by tapping the calendar icon and choosing what contacts you want to add to your event for things such as text, email, calls, or status taps.

Another great feature that Agenda now has is a set of customizable repeat options. While on the event creation screen, tap the icon next to the repeat section to choose dates for ending repeating events, create repeating events for specific days or dates of the month, and much more.

Defaults, defaults, defaults! I wish more apps had a larger set of defaults — it makes data entry much easier if there is a predefined set of options. You can now pick defaults for calendar, event alert sounds, view, duration, alert, and all day alert time via Agenda’s built-in Settings > Defaults menu.

iPad users also get a few new options: swiping right or left will now change views, year and week view now move up or down instead of right or left and you can now change settings to a smaller modal view.

To read the complete release notes for Agenda 3.0, Savvy Apps has a listing for your viewing pleasure. They also have a great little Tips & Tricks section on the Agenda page to help you enter events even faster. If you don’t like the new “Fast Event Creation” screen you can always toggle back to the native iOS event creation from Agenda’s settings, but the new way is so much easier and more fun!

Agenda 3.0 is a great upgrade to a great product — anytime you can streamline manual data entry into one screen gets a big thumbs up from me. The Tips & Tricks are worth 2 minutes of your time to read so that you can fully understand the new “Fast Event Creation” screen. Agenda is a universal app and available in the App Store for 99¢, while existing users get the 3.0 update for free.

Airlines Increasing Fuel Efficiency By Adopting The iPad As An Entertainment Device→

Airlines Increasing Fuel Efficiency By Adopting The iPad As An Entertainment Device

Bloomberg reports today that startup airline Scoot Pte (their maiden flight is today) will save fuel and have increased profits by deploying the iPad as the passenger entertainment device. By cutting out old entertainment systems weighing more than two tons, they’ve saved fuel while still flying older airplanes and even expanding traditional seating capacity by 40 per cent. Increasing profit, the post-PC way.

The tablets helped the carrier cut 7 percent off the weight of planes obtained from parent Singapore Airlines Ltd. (SIA) even after a 40 percent increase in seating, Chief Executive Officer Campbell Wilson said. The savings will help Scoot, which makes its maiden flight today, cope with fuel prices that have jumped about 36 percent in two years.

Scoot Pte will rent the iPads for $17 a flight to economy-class passengers and offering them for free to those in business class. It follows moves by other airlines such as Jetstar, AirAsia and Qantas which have deployed the iPad in trials and small test runs since late last year.

Cutting costs and finding new sources of revenue will be key for Singapore-based Scoot as it seeks to make a profit flying older planes than other low-cost carriers and selling tickets as cheap as S$158 one-way to Sydney, a flight of more than seven hours. Singapore Air formed Scoot after budget operators led by Jetstar and AirAsia Bhd. won 26 percent of the city’s air-travel market.

By reducing fuel costs, parent company Singapore Airlines hopes that it can turn over a new leaf with Scoot after it tumbled 28 percent this year, exceeding the 14 percent decline for the Straits Times Index. It’s really crazy to think that something like the iPad can have such a huge impact on fuel efficiency of airplanes - today’s story is on top of  the existing trend of airlines replacing flight manuals with iPads that Tim Cook gladly shared earlier this year.

Scoot plans to increase its fleet to as many as 14 777s by the middle of the decade. The carrier will be able to pare maintenance costs by working with its parent, Wilson said.

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Inkflow Has One Great Idea

When we talk about hotly contested app markets for the iPad, we’re either talking about iOS text editors or sketching apps — today we’re focusing on the latter. Between Adobe, Autodesk, Paper, and Penultimate, something needs to be dramatically imaginative and different to make it stand out in a section of the App Store that is well contested and already populated with great apps. Sometimes an app like SyncPad stands out by providing new and interesting features (in this case it’s immensely useful for presentations), but very rarely does an app come along that can compete with these established tools on the iPad. Similar to how Instapaper and Pocket (once Read It Later) have captured the “read later” space, the aforementioned apps broadly cover everything you’d likely need or want when it comes to writing, drawing, and sketching.

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The iPad Is The Future Of Education

For the past years, Apple has been showcasing the educational advantages of devices like Macs, iPhones and iPods on its Apple in Education website. Since the introduction of the iPad in 2010, however, the company has been making an effort to position the device as the best tool now available to teachers and students to improve the quality of education and level of engagement. The dedicated iPad in Education webpage showcases recent moves by Apple such as iBooks Textbooks and the iTunes U iOS app.

While we have covered schools and educational institutions adopting iPads in the past, the latest profile posted by Apple today on their UK website is quite possibly the best example of iPad in education to date. Those of you who have been following the progress of iPad deployment in schools may remember Fraser Speirs’ iPad Project, which made headlines throughout 2011 as it was the first one-to-one iPad deployment to every people in a school. Speirs documented the process of giving an iPad to every teacher and student at Cedars School of Excellence (Scotland) on his personal website, and today Apple has posted a video profile showing how “Cedars students boost learning with iPad”.

The full video is available here, and it shows teachers and kids using the iPad as a modern, regular tool in their daily lives that has improved the way they create and share content of any kind. One particular segment towards the end of the video struck a chord with me:

I don’t think we could ever go back from where we are right now with the iPad. The only way’s really forward – to more access to knowledge, more empowerment, more creativity…all these things in the classroom”.

As I wrote before, Apple’s education strategy will be interesting to follow. Actually seeing kids and teachers who have been using the iPad as a real substitute for and enhancement over old learning tools for over a year now, however, reminds me that, no matter Apple’s strategy as a company, software is the future of education, and the iPad is giving our kids a bit of that future today.

Detractors of the iPad as a learning tool point at the management required by connected devices to ensure that, in the classroom, the possibilities offered by the Internet don’t get in the way of teachers’ requirements and students’ attention. Fortunately, this is something Apple has been addressing since day one, and that has recently improved with more tools.

Every major change in our society and culture will be awarded an equal amount of optimism and skepticism. As someone who’s been lucky enough to find his dream job in the possibilities offered by the Internet and software, I tend to see skepticism as a challenge, rather than a roadblock. People like Fraser Speirs are proving that, beyond analysts and blog posts, a better education for our kids is possible, today, every day, with a device that’s making kids eager to learn.

Free of the constraints of paper and old, disconnected learning material, the iPad brings new challenges and practical issues to overcome. With time, patience, and willingness to look past rules established in societies different than ours, we must make sure these devices we have built and ecosystems we have nurtured won’t be remembered for Angry Birds, because among other things, our kids deserve a better, modern education. And we have to start building it today.

Apple Starts Changing “iPad WiFi + 4G” Name To “WiFi + Cellular”

As noted by 9to5mac, Apple has started changing the “iPad WiFi + 4G” name to “iPad WiFi + Cellular” in some countries. Currently, the change is live on several international versions of Apple.com, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong. Other countries, such as Italy or France, still report the new iPad as “iPad WiFi + 4G” in the Tech Specs page of the product in what appears to be a gradual update of the device’s name. On the websites where the change has already taken effect, a version cached by Google shows the old “WiFi + 4G” product name.

The new iPad, available in almost 90 countries, comes with “4G” networking capabilities, albeit only in some countries, and on selected carriers with support for LTE. Because of Apple’s initial marketing of the device as “4G” regardless of country availability, the company came under scrutiny from Australian and UK regulators, who claimed Apple was falsely advertising the iPad as “4G” and misleading customers without properly specifying such feature was dependent on carrier support.

In Australia, Apple was forced to change its marketing for the new iPad by stating on its website the device wasn’t compatible with Australian 4G networks. In spite of the iPad still working with 3G networks, however, Apple decided to keep the “WiFi + 4G” name even after the initial clarification. This appears to be changing now as the company rolls out an updated product name across all its international websites.

Apple’s iPad Tech Specs page carrying the new name is available here.

New iPad Launches In 30 Additional Countries This Week

Off to a “tremendous start”, Apple’s new iPad has also become the company’s fastest rollout to date, adding 56 launch countries in 42 days, and, later this week, 30 additional countries with two separate rollouts during the weekend. As confirmed by Apple’s Latin America website (via MacRumors), the new iPad will launch in 23 countries on Friday, May 11; MacRumors also examined other international Apple websites in the Middle East, and confirmed Apple will also roll out the new iPad in 7 countries (including Egypt and United Arab Emirates) on Saturday, May 12.

As usual, here’s a recap of the iPad’s launch dates, plus units sold until Q2 2012.

March 16 (10 countries): United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK.

March 23 (25 countries): Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macau, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

April 20 (12 countries): South Korea, Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela.

April 27 (9 countries): Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand.

May 5: Turkey (quiet launch).

May 11 (23 countries): Argentina, Aruba, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Malta, Martinique, Mauritius, Morocco, Peru, Taiwan, Tunisia and Vietnam.

May 12 (7 countries): Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

With this week’s launches, the new iPad will be available in 87 countries worldwide (including Turkey) after 57 days. With 12 million units sold in the past quarter, Apple said the new iPad is “off to a great start”.

Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop→

Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop

John Carey, who you might know from all the excellent photographs he posts on his (equally awesome) fiftyfoodshadows blog, today wrote a piece entitled “Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop”. It’s effectively a counter-argument from Carey on why the iPad just isn’t a laptop replacement for many people, particularly those in the professional creative community - yet.

I would say a good 90 percent of the debate on the iPads usefulness as a computer is coming from writers and casual users and this is where I find the debate getting a little one sided. Of course a writer would like the iPad. The tools most needed to get their work done are right there for the taking, you can hunt and gather all day long and it does make a fantastic, distraction free space to write in.

Carey doesn’t dispute that the iPad is a ‘personal computer’ - in fact he asks “what is there to even to debate” on that question and he says it’s all about the software, not the input device. For creatives, he says there are a number of nice apps for sketching, image editing and so on, but they don’t have anywhere near the “horsepower or precision that it takes to complete a finished product” - likewise for others such as web designers, coders, industrial designers and so on.

When it comes to many jobs within the professional creative community the iPad is still more or less incapable of handling any honest workload. At least as far as things stand at this point in time. There are no designers that I am aware of using it to create much outside of concepts.

Some might question Carey’s premise, is the iPad ever meant to replace a laptop for such professional tasks? Perhaps that is why the laptops (or trucks as you may call them) are going to stick around for the key purpose of satisfying these people. But I’m not so sure, I think the iPad can evolve to be a suitable PC for most of these tasks undertaken by creative professionals - I don’t think it will completely replace the need for a laptop or desktop, but I think it will eventually replace the laptops of these professionals. As Carey said, it’s all about the software and whilst we have made giant leaps and bounds in just over two years — we have a long way to go.

But when it comes to honest creative work I can not help but find the iPad as little more than a sidekick. I can say with certainty though, that this is far from the last word on this. I can clearly see a future where touch screen devices such as the iPad become more and more viable for the kind of things I have discussed here today. It is still new territory being explored and I for one can not wait to see where it takes us.

One particular point that Carey talks about quite a bit in his piece is about the filesystem - or rather lack thereof in iOS. His arguments resonate with me, particularly surrounding photo management on iOS which in some ways has gotten worse with iPhoto - “a black hole within a hole where edited photos from your “camera roll” somehow end up in limbo within the app and you have to send edited versions back to the photo roll to do anything else with them”.

For such a supposedly simple to use device the iPad it sure makes it complicated to move files around. In this case, Apple is entirely responsible with their rebellious idea to avoid traditional file structures. I can not fathom why it would be so difficult to have a system level file management area that is as convenient to use as the notification system they have so diligently been working on. Something which is not so flawed and cumbersome as the hidden data that lives within each app.

You may not agree with everything Carey says, but I encourage you to read his full article, I think he makes some very good points and the personal examples of where he has tried to use the iPad as a laptop are an excellent addition.

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Concept Video Shows New Text Selection Method for iPad

Remember how, before the iPad was unveiled in January 2010, speculation was running wild as to whether Apple would simply use a larger virtual keyboard on the device? Back then, some rumors claimed the bigger nature of the device would force Apple to come up with some crazy and revolutionary way to type text on screen. As it turned out, Apple simply replicated the iPhone’s soft keyboard on the initial version of iPhone OS 3.2, making it almost laptop-size. In fact, the biggest change to the iPad’s software keyboard only happened with iOS 5.0 last year with the introduction of the split keyboard.

That’s not to say everything related to the iOS keyboard is perfect and Apple should stop improving on it. As the plethora of Dropbox text editors have showed, there is a need for different, possibly customizable keyboards that give better access to text selection tools.

In my list of wishes for iOS 6, I forgot to mention I really would like to see easier, faster text selection coming to the iPhone and iPad. I believe iOS’ text selection method is one of the best around, yet Apple could do better. For writers, selecting text – not typing it – simply isn’t nearly as fast as on a laptop. And the problem is not the keyboard – the issue persists with external Bluetooth keyboards – it’s the design of iOS itself that forces you to get your hands off the keyboard to manipulate text.

iDownloadBlog has posted an interesting concept video by YouTube user “danielchasehooper”, showing an interesting possible take on text selection on the iPad. By allowing users to tap and swipe on the keyboard, this system could, in theory, allow for faster selection, also in combination with keys like Shift. Almost every area of iOS now supports taps and swipes: why not the keyboard?

Concepts are what they are – ideas – but sometimes Apple seems to consider them. I don’t know if this video will turn out to be a feature Apple will evaluate – albeit it really makes a lot of sense in my opinion, design-wise – but I sure hope something’s cooking for iOS 6 in regards to text selection.

Reading Manga On The Retina iPad

Last month, I asked on Twitter if there was an easy and legal way to purchase manga digitally on the iPad. Unfortunately, while American comics are seeing a nice digital resurgence thanks to apps like Comixology, the situation is profoundly different and inherently worse with Japanese manga. There is no Comixology for manga – where by manga I basically mean Shonen Jump content – and the few services that do have some manga available (like VIZ) have terrible apps that don’t take advantage of the latest iOS technologies and come with risible offers on multi-volume purchases.

I have no idea why Shonen or its international publishers – like Panini Comics and Star Comics in Italy – aren’t realizing the huge potential for legal, convenient, digital editions of their manga on mobile devices. It is kind of ironic that, as of today, pirating manga you already own physically gets you better, higher quality results from some shady Internet forum than going the proper, legitimate way. Because that way doesn’t exist. It’s the same problem of old media all over again.

As I was listening to T.Rex on Spotify yesterday for my review of the app, I connected Marc Bolan’s song to Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, and I felt the need of finding a solution to begin reading the series again. It turns out, provided you have scans for your manga ready to go (I prefer PDF and CBR, but there are several options out there), there are two interesting options right now on iOS.

Assuming you want to read manga on your iPad, Bookman is a $2.99 iPad app that’s been updated for the Retina display and that comes with fast caching of pages, great performance, and a good selection of browsing and optimization settings. Its rendering has been very good for my copies of 20th Century Boys, and I like how you can easily import content through a built-in FTP server (I transfer files with Transmit) or Dropbox. You can organize manga in bookshelves, and the app comes with various settings for tap areas, thumbnail previews, appearance, and zoom. It’s even got page resume and multiple page turning effects. $1.99 on the App Store gets you the separate iPhone app (I wish they were universal). Right now, I’m reading manga with Bookman.

The other option is Comic Zeal, which is universal, but that I haven’t tried yet as it doesn’t have support for the Retina iPad. Technically, the app displays manga in Retina resolution if higher-res images are available, but interface elements haven’t been updated for the new display. According to the developers, an update with new graphics and “other goodies” has been submitted to Apple. Comic Zeal is $4.99 on the App Store.

Here’s to hoping publishers will consider the market for digital manga someday.