While there's no shortage of mouse and trackpad apps available for our mobile devices, any app updated to take advantage of the gorgeous new Retina display of the iPad are certainly worth our attention.
The new iPad has finally arrived, much to the excitement of the many who've been waiting anxiously since last Wednesday's announcement.
For those among us who are Mac OS X users, you will no doubt be familiar with the Growl notification service. Growl is described as the ultimate notification service for OS X and is by far one of the easiest methods available for keeping in touch with installed applications, and any messages or alerts that they may give. Different users appreciate the simplicity of Growl for a number of reasons, with one of the main ones being that it works right out of the box and doesn't have any complicated setup procedures. Applications that are Growl compatible will simply just work with the system without any fuss.
The newly released iOS 5.1 contains minimal changes in the way of actual tangible feature additions, but it does include some Siri support for additional markets as well as fixing over eighty one security flaws, and if internet murmurings are anything to go by then it looks as if it has also brought improved battery life.
With the public release of the the new iPad drawing ever closer, the gadget and Apple loving population are rightly becoming more excited as the days countdown until they can get their hands on the brand new tablet. Email inboxes around the globe are also starting to receive notifications that Apple have already sent their new shiny iPad out for shipping, prompting speculation that in some case it may even arrive before the March 16th official release date. I received my email this morning saying my two new iPads had been shipped, so fingers crossed that they get here promptly.
When Apple launched the iPhone 4S in October of 2011, one of the most talked about and probably its headline feature was the inclusion of the Siri intelligent assistant software which attempted to make life easier by being able to accomplish tasks given to it through a simple voice command. When invoked by the user, Siri is ready and able to take spoken orders which can range from setting meetings up in the calendar, checking the location of friends and family or even pulling up a weather forecast for most locations in the world.
Although the talk of new iPad and updated Apple TV will undoubtedly dominate the headlines concerning Apple's media event in Yerba Buena, that doesn't necessarily downplay the rather significant software releases bundled into proceedings.
Tim Cook and his Apple team took to the stage in San Francisco as expected to announce the launch of the new iPad, throwing in a new Apple TV set top box for good measure. The announcement pretty much came as everyone had predicted, with no specifications or inclusions to blind side us. But while there has been plenty of talk about what hardware the company would introduce, little time was spent wondering about the software side of things and what the upgraded device would mean for the applications that we all know and love.
When Apple officially launched the public version of iOS 5 alongside the iPhone 4S in October 2011, the new and improved system wide notification system was generally perceived as a much needed and long overdue addition to the operating system. Previous versions of iOS came with an extremely ugly, and intrusive way of handling notifications by slapping a big blue alert view onto the device’s screen. Not only was this system not in-keeping with the beauty of the OS, but it also provided a terrible user experience, with the alert view making sure that the user was interrupted in whatever they were doing.
No matter which iPhone, or iOS software version you are using, the default Notes application will always take pride of place on the device’s SpringBoard. Well, that is until you hide it away in a folder or store it two homescreens deep to remove it from view. The point is that the Notes application has been part of the iPhone OS since the beginning and doesn't show any signs of leaving Apple's mobile operating system anytime soon.
