Liveblog: It’s the iPad 3 Event of a Lifetime

By Cody Fink

It seems like only yesterday when I took a wrong turn at a shopping mall and ended up waiting in line for some magical device I knew nothing about. Granted, there were lots of people wrapped around an Apple Store, but how was I to know Apple was launching a new iPad that was as thin as a pencil, had a faster processor, and could be individualized with those foldable Smart Covers? And if I could predict the future, it sounds like I’ll be waiting in some longish line again for another flat computer that has an even better display, an even faster processor, and surprise features that’ll dazzle us before the glow of a blue Apple retail shirt.

I already know most of you already have your wallets out. Some of you are checking the source code on Apple.com for any imminent hints, while the rest of you are furiously refreshing Apple’s store page. Although, I hope you’ll read our predictions instead (we’re half intelligent, half coffee-addled). But if you’re looking for the real skinny, we’re just going to have to wait for Wednesday. We’ll be here on March 7th: still rambling, still highly caffeinated, and probably drunk on iPad 3 rumors… or is it iPad HD? iPad 2S?

To find out what the name of the next iPad will be, tune in tomorrow at 12:30 pm EST when Don and I will be kicking things off early to answer your questions and engage in general mischief before the iPad event. Whether Apple livestreams the event or not, you’ll get all of our flavorful commentary and up to the minute information about the crazy stuff being presented on stage.

Don’t forget to refresh the MacStories homepage regularly tomorrow — the rest of the MacStories team will be writing articles as fast as these products and numbers and shiny things are being announced! If you can’t be in the now, you can always catch up with the announcements later in the day. Don’t worry — it’ll all be here.

Bookmark this page and set a date for Wednesday, March 7th, for our realtime coverage.

Apple Event Time Zones

13:00 — New York, New York
10:00 — San Francisco, California
08:00 — Honolulu, Hawaii
05:00 — Sydney, Australia
03:00 — Tokyo, Japan
02:00 — Shanghai, China
23:30 — New Delhi, India
22:00 — Moscow, Russia
19:00 — Rome, Italy
18:00 — London, England

Don’t see your city? You can use this link to get your exact time.

OmniOutliner 1.2 for iPad Sets the Stage for iCloud Sync

By Cody Fink

OmniOutliner 1.2 Document Browser

The Omni Group have removed the carousel in OmniOutliner 1.2 for a new document browser that closely resembles Pages’. Giving a broader overview of your outlines, the new file browser makes it much easier to scroll through dozens of documents without having to individually file past each one. The new file browser doesn’t let you create folders or sync to the cloud, but the original WebDAV and iDisk implementations are still available for online storage.

Apple Counting Down to 25 Billion App Downloads

By Cody Fink

Thanks to over 315 million cumulative iOS devices sold and the breadth of applications available, Apple’s preparing to celebrate their 25 billionth download by awarding the lucky downloader a $10,000 App Store gift card. In only four months, iOS users will have downloaded an additional 7 billion apps from the App Store since last October where Apple reached 18 billion App Store downloads. (15 billion apps were downloaded as of last July). With over 550,000 apps available (175,000 iPad-specific apps) to download, there’s plenty of great applications to choose from that fill a variety of needs on user’s devices. The App Store’s great download spike can also be contributed to the number of iOS devices purchased in 2011 alone: 156 million iOS devices were sold last year compared to a total of 122 million Macs ever sold.

As of today, nearly 25 billion apps have been downloaded worldwide. Which is almost as amazing as the apps themselves. So we want to say thanks. Download the 25 billionth app, and you could win a US$10,000 App Store Gift Card.* Just visit the App Store and download your best app yet.

To participate in the competition, you simply have to purchase or download a free app from the App Store and be the lucky winner randomly chosen by Apple. You can also enter to win without purchasing anything from the App Store by simply visiting the contest page and filling out the linked contest form. One the 25th billion download has been reached, the contest ends! (Each applicable contestant is allowed only 25 entries.)

[via 9to5 Mac]

Edit (02/19/2012): Updated final paragraph to clarify contest rules.

Clear: A Delightful and Clever Todo App

By Cody Fink

Some apps deliver a certain joy that simply comes from swiping and swooshing through the interface, poking at various elements, and pinching things onscreen. Clear is delightful — it will make you smile. It makes you reconsider the necessity of navigation bars and tool bars and tab bars. We’re used to switching views by tapping at back buttons or icons, but what happens when you take away these common navigational tools? You end up relying on your own honesty and the customer’s intuition. And an honest interface can bring about some terrific ideas.

Phraseology for iPad: Write, Remix, and Markdown

By Cody Fink

You could choose to write in Helvetica Neue, Marker Felt, or Georgia, but Phraseology has a personality all its own that’s best reflected in American Typewriter or Courier. Plenty of text editors on the iPad offer one or both of these font types, but there’s something about Agile Tortoise’s sandy colors and subtle paper-like textures that make Phraseology feel more tangible. It’s the modern equivalent of a typewriter explained through a text editor.

The Thunderbolt Accessories of CES 2012

By Cody Fink

The Thunderbolt ports on our new MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros didn’t receive a lot of attention in 2011, with tech demos still carrying on through the mid-year as LaCie and Promise flexed their muscles at Computex. Seven months later at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, several companies were finally prepared to unveil their products integrated with Thunderbolt technologies on the show floor (and we expect to see more at the upcoming Macworld | iWorld). Past the break we’ll take a look at ten new Thunderbolt accessories that offer connected solutions, speedy storage, and new possibilities for stellar gaming performance.

iPad Users Have Downloaded 3 Billion Apps in One Year

By Cody Fink

Thanks to a rich marketplace, consistently good apps that are featured in the App Store, and the constant attention blogs like ours bring to developers and consumers, the iPad has had its fair share of owners downloading tons of applications. Not only did iPad users download more than 3 billion apps from the App Store since the iPad’s launch in 2010, developers published 120,000 apps specifically for the iPad in the third quarter of 2011. ABI Research notes that iPad downloads are only 19% of all the cumulative downloads by Apple users. With lots of choice and a device that just works, users are eager to try out the latest innovations in touch-based software.

In comparison, Android users have only downloaded 440 million applications. It could be that there simply aren’t as many Android tablets in consumers’ hands as there are iPads, or it could because that developers simply aren’t making apps formatted for the tablet experience like they are on the iPad.

According to Lim Shiyang:

Discounting all those apps that were originally developed for Android smartphones, Android still trails greatly behind the iPad in terms of its tablet app offerings. Many Android tablets in the market are still using older versions of Android, which disadvantages users from enjoying the better effects of apps produced from more advanced software development kits.

As for Android’s phone ecosystem, ABI Research expects Android users to rack up 58 billion app downloads by 2016, compared to only 27 billion by iPhone users.

I wonder how many of these downloads will be because of Angry Birds?

[ABI Research via GigaOM]

The OmniFocus for Mac 2.0 Wish List →

Linked By Cody Fink

The OmniFocus for Mac 2.0 Wish List

Sven Fechner of Simplicity is Bliss:

I hardly use the project or task notes as the UX choice made is too clunky for me. It is clearly a concept coming from OmniOutliner, which, using the Kinkless GTD Scripts, was the original source of inspiration for OmniFocus. However, it doesn’t really work for longer notes, any font size you chose for the note section is either too small or too big, if you insert attachments things start looking awkward, … In my eyes there are quite some challenges with the way notes are handled in the current OmniFocus UI.

I’d like to cut and paste Fetcher’s entire list of ideas for OmniFocus 2.0 here, but his complaints about notes (in both OmniFocus and OmniOutliner) hit the nail on the head and sum up the issues about giving ideas or tasks additional details.

The one challenge that OmniFocus and other apps face is mitigating how you manage an “everything box.” OmniFocus ultimately becomes and should become a sort of outbox where you follow up on email, gather your errands for the afternoon, and follow decisive actions to complete a project. Where the lines begin to blur is with contexts and details. Contexts are the sort of tags that specify either the person, thing, or place you need to be in to complete a task, and details are the additional reference materials or notes associated with a task.

If your task is concise and straightforward (you should never have to think about the action), you shouldn’t need any supporting details. This changes however if you need a reminder for an article (Paste attached note as a quote in “Apple Q1 2012 Results”) or if you need to attach a picture, lines from an email, or need to type out what someone gave to you in paper form. OmniFocus could really use a boost in how documents are attached. An icon inline with text or a full blown image that can get cut off due to column-width aren’t good ways to display supporting details for tasks and projects.

There are other good opinions in the article too. I personally don’t need or want themes in OmniFocus, but I would love to see better email handling and the ability create projects based off templates of pre-written tasks (you can sort of do that now, but it’s messy).

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The Logitech Cube →

Linked By Cody Fink

The Logitech Cube

Ricardo Bilton at ZDNet:

The first thing you’ll have to understand about Logitech’s interesting take on the mouse is that its not actually a cube, despite its name.

The second thing to know is that the Cube is meant to offer more than just a strange shape; it’s meant to be a presenter’s best friend.

Scrolling, for example, works via a swipe of the finger, a movement that’s meant to mimic touch screen navigation. Lifting up the device puts it in presentation mode, allowing presenters to advance slides with the click of its top.

According to Logitech’s specification sheet it works with OS X 10.5 and up. The mouse isn’t a bluetooth device — instead it connects to a small USB nano-receiver (over the 2.4 GHz spectrum) that’ll work with a desktop you’re connecting to at a podium, or to a laptop that’s absent of Bluetooth. It’s more or less a mouse-mote in that it probably wouldn’t be comfortable to use as your primary mouse, but it’s convenient and pocketable enough to browse the desktop, open your PowerPoint or Keynote document, then pick up and use for the presentation.

It’s not clear what the battery life is on the remote (Logitech simply links to a battery life FAQ that lists mice with “extended battery life”), but I’m sure the built in USB-rechargeable lithium-polymer battery will get you through a presentation. There is an on/off switch so you can completely power-off the mouse while traveling.

Bilton notes you simply pick up the device to put the cube into presentation mode. You then click to advance a slide, or turn it over & click to go back a slide (I’m not sure if I’m keen on the second gesture). Being a presentation tool, I’m surprised there isn’t a laser pointer packed inside.

I could see myself using this, and the $69.99 pricetag isn’t too bad. You can pre-order the mouse directly from Logitech.

Edit 01/06/2012: Corrected battery note from double AA battery to rechargeable battery.

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