Apple : Is this the plastic fantastic casing for the 'budget' Apple iPhone?

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Is this the plastic fantastic casing for the 'budget' Apple iPhone? Posted: Could this be another sign that Apple is preparing to launch a more affordable iteration of its world-changing iPhone handset? The picture above is a purported plastic rear casing for a device which, speculation suggests, Apple could reveal in September or October. The leak comes from Chinese blogger 7mob, who SlashGear reports, is renowned for his connections to 'factory sources' in the country. The casing, which could of course be a phoney, also showcases the bright iPod nano-style colour, also rumoured to be a calling card of any cheaper iPhone. YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbZOLqJf0-c iPhone for all Recent rumours have suggested that the affordable iPhone handset, would be enclosed in a plastic casing in order to reduce manufacturing costs for the company, with savings passed onto the customer. The device is expected to target emerging markets rather than the US and Europe, opening up iOS and the App Store to those who may not have been able to afford an iPhone for the first time. Of course, the device has been rumoured for years, so we wouldn't be at all surprised to see Apple hold off a little longer before it launches the device. The cheap iPhone wont be as cheap as we think, according to the manufacturer rumoured to be building the device.

In Depth: Best office suite for OS X: 6 tested Posted: Best productivity suites for your Mac Aside from a browser and an email client, the must-have apps on any Mac are those found in an office suite. TextEdit is fine for tapping out quick notes to the milkman, but you need a more weighty solution for complex business documents. The same can be said of quick sums: Spotlight provides a rudimentary calculator, but falls short when it comes to the family finances. In your workplace, a comprehensive business bundle is less a luxury and more a necessity, but which one you settle on depends on what you need to do. It's like trying to choose between a smartphone, a tablet and a Mac as your daily working platform. Each has benefits, but are communications options and portability, for example, as vital for you as data storage space or sheer computing muscle? The six leading office suites we test here all offer significantly different packages. If you want to work on your files on an iOS device as well as a Mac, iWork offers the most seamless experience, with iCloud integration and iOS versions of all three apps. If you want to share documents and files with other users, you should weigh the benefits of Microsoft Office's 'standard' formats against Symphony's Open Document Format or the ease of sharing files over Google Drive. With the realities of today's business world in mind, we're emphasising two key factors. First is compatibility with the most up-to-date Microsoft formats, because like it or not, these are the cornerstones of modern business communication. Second is how easy each suite makes it to live the cloud dream of accessing your data in any place, on any device. Other factors include how easy it is to find the tools and options you want and how easy it is to use them, so you can focus on your work and not on the tools themselves. Design is an only slightly lesser factor - after all, who wants to spend every working day wrestling with a clunky interface? How we tested To test each suite's compatibility with the established office formats, we created a set of documents using Microsoft Office 2011 and saved them in the latest DOCX, XLSX and PPTX formats. The Word document was a single page of text set in the Cambria and Arial fonts, with headings in Calibri. We added a table with alternating coloured rows and embedded a PNG image, set to float to the right with text running around it. A line and a half of text was highlighted, two prices were coloured red and some numerals superscript. Three blocks of text were set as columns. The Excel spreadsheet test was a single sheet with an embedded image and a selection of regular formulae, plus some date-based calculations. We added a 3D chart and some Sparklines in order to test compatibility with the newest features. The PowerPoint document used a standard template, with some skewed text and a rotated image. We set different transitions between the slides and added handout notes to some of the slides. Finally, we embedded a table and an organisation chart created using the built-in SmartArt tools. Let's take a look at the suites. Test one: Compatibility How well does it work with Office docs? iWork apps have excellent Office compatibility. Pages had no problems. Numbers opened our Excel document with very few glitches, losing only the Sparklines and in-cell bar charts. Keynote had a bit more trouble, straightening out angled text and cutting transitions. ThinkFree Office coped well with basic formatting, though Write increased line spacing, Calc swapped dates from UK to US format and Show turned half of our transitions into basic fades. Symphony also fared well, though the Sparklines vanished and our 3D graph lost its x-axis labels. In our presentation, all but one of the slide transitions had been removed. LibreOffice shares its codebase with Symphony, but had different problems. It rendered the in-cell bar charts and dates, but converted the 3D chart to mono. Google Drive made a hash of our Word document. It has only eight fonts, so used Times New Roman instead of Cambria. It did better with the spreadsheet, losing only some formatting, and the slide transitions became regular fades. On the next page we test features, design and connectivity. Features, design and connectivity Test two: Features Do the bells ring and the whistles whistle? Microsoft Office comprises three core tools: Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Word is the most powerful consumer word processor around. Excel, too, boasts many unique features. Apple's Keynote was streets ahead for a while, but PowerPoint is fighting back, with the ability to edit photos and broadcast presentations online, and a first-class Presenter View. Apple's iWork apps take the pain out of creating attractive documents, particularly at their bargain price. ThinkFree Office aims to replicate Microsoft Office and focuses on accommodating the work patterns of MS Office users. It's a very cost effective alternative. Symphony is a traditional office workhorse. It may not be perfect, but it's stable, reliable and, perhaps most important of all, free. It's just pipped by LibreOffice, though, which also throws in database, drawing and maths capabilities. Aside from word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tools, Google Drive also offers a basic vector drawing program. Test three: Design and use Is it easy to get things done in the suite? The ribbon-based approach of MS Office 2011 can take a little getting used to, but there's a wide range of templates on hand. All the iWork apps come with a generous selection of templates, and it's easy to make your own or find third-party extras. The apps are powerful and a joy to use. Despite aiming to mimic the Office interface, ThinkFree lacks the flair and grace of Microsoft's or Apple's suites. Symphony's interface is well designed, with a Properties panel keeping the most useful options close at hand to help you make quick changes to your formatting without having to dig through the menus. LibreOffice lacks this, but then it doesn't cluster your documents in tabs inside a single window, so you can have multiple files open side by side. The apps in Google Drive are a showcase piece of web design: they render a fullfeatured and very powerful office suite in your browser. In almost every respect they feel like local apps, but you do need an internet connection whenever you want to work. Test four: Connectivity Sync to the cloud, collaboration and more With Google Drive, you can invite colleagues to view or edit documents. It's easy to work on the same document on several different machines. iCloud makes it very easy to edit iWork documents on your Mac and an iOS device, but collaborative working is less well served. You can email documents from each app's Share menu, but since the demise of iWork.com it's more difficult to publish your work online or facilitate group approval. Microsoft hasn't yet produced an iOS version of Office. Document sharing revolves around SkyDrive, which relies on the bundled Document Connection app on the Mac. It's easy-to-use and fuss-free. ThinkFree Office is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, with Android and iOS versions allowing you to manage files stored in a free ThinkFree online account although not edit them remotely. Symphony has no integrated iCloud or SkyDrive equivalent, so the best you can do is save to a shared folder on Dropbox or other third-party service. The same applies to LibreOffice. The winner: Top office suite If compatibility is key, then Microsoft Office wins out. You don't get everything on OS X that you get under Windows, but Office for Mac 2011 is a solid, powerful package. Our only qualm is the price. Even the Home and Student edition now tips the scales at £110. You can cut costs with the Office365 rental model, which starts at £10 per month per user for small businesses, and £7.99 a month/£80 a year for home users. This lets you install all four Office apps on up to five Macs or PCs, and gives you 20GB of SkyDrive storage. Although this is good value, after six months you've paid more than you would if you'd bought the three iWork apps outright, and you'll still have to keep on paying to keep on working.

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Software : In Depth: Best office suite for OS X: 6 tested

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In Depth: Best office suite for OS X: 6 tested Posted: Best productivity suites for your Mac Aside from a browser and an email client, the must-have apps on any Mac are those found in an office suite. TextEdit is fine for tapping out quick notes to the milkman, but you need a more weighty solution for complex business documents. The same can be said of quick sums: Spotlight provides a rudimentary calculator, but falls short when it comes to the family finances. In your workplace, a comprehensive business bundle is less a luxury and more a necessity, but which one you settle on depends on what you need to do. It's like trying to choose between a smartphone, a tablet and a Mac as your daily working platform. Each has benefits, but are communications options and portability, for example, as vital for you as data storage space or sheer computing muscle? The six leading office suites we test here all offer significantly different packages. If you want to work on your files on an iOS device as well as a Mac, iWork offers the most seamless experience, with iCloud integration and iOS versions of all three apps. If you want to share documents and files with other users, you should weigh the benefits of Microsoft Office's 'standard' formats against Symphony's Open Document Format or the ease of sharing files over Google Drive. With the realities of today's business world in mind, we're emphasising two key factors. First is compatibility with the most up-to-date Microsoft formats, because like it or not, these are the cornerstones of modern business communication. Second is how easy each suite makes it to live the cloud dream of accessing your data in any place, on any device. Other factors include how easy it is to find the tools and options you want and how easy it is to use them, so you can focus on your work and not on the tools themselves. Design is an only slightly lesser factor - after all, who wants to spend every working day wrestling with a clunky interface? How we tested To test each suite's compatibility with the established office formats, we created a set of documents using Microsoft Office 2011 and saved them in the latest DOCX, XLSX and PPTX formats. The Word document was a single page of text set in the Cambria and Arial fonts, with headings in Calibri. We added a table with alternating coloured rows and embedded a PNG image, set to float to the right with text running around it. A line and a half of text was highlighted, two prices were coloured red and some numerals superscript. Three blocks of text were set as columns. The Excel spreadsheet test was a single sheet with an embedded image and a selection of regular formulae, plus some date-based calculations. We added a 3D chart and some Sparklines in order to test compatibility with the newest features. The PowerPoint document used a standard template, with some skewed text and a rotated image. We set different transitions between the slides and added handout notes to some of the slides. Finally, we embedded a table and an organisation chart created using the built-in SmartArt tools. Let's take a look at the suites. Test one: Compatibility How well does it work with Office docs? iWork apps have excellent Office compatibility. Pages had no problems. Numbers opened our Excel document with very few glitches, losing only the Sparklines and in-cell bar charts. Keynote had a bit more trouble, straightening out angled text and cutting transitions. ThinkFree Office coped well with basic formatting, though Write increased line spacing, Calc swapped dates from UK to US format and Show turned half of our transitions into basic fades. Symphony also fared well, though the Sparklines vanished and our 3D graph lost its x-axis labels. In our presentation, all but one of the slide transitions had been removed. LibreOffice shares its codebase with Symphony, but had different problems. It rendered the in-cell bar charts and dates, but converted the 3D chart to mono. Google Drive made a hash of our Word document. It has only eight fonts, so used Times New Roman instead of Cambria. It did better with the spreadsheet, losing only some formatting, and the slide transitions became regular fades. On the next page we test features, design and connectivity. Features, design and connectivity Test two: Features Do the bells ring and the whistles whistle? Microsoft Office comprises three core tools: Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Word is the most powerful consumer word processor around. Excel, too, boasts many unique features. Apple's Keynote was streets ahead for a while, but PowerPoint is fighting back, with the ability to edit photos and broadcast presentations online, and a first-class Presenter View. Apple's iWork apps take the pain out of creating attractive documents, particularly at their bargain price. ThinkFree Office aims to replicate Microsoft Office and focuses on accommodating the work patterns of MS Office users. It's a very cost effective alternative. Symphony is a traditional office workhorse. It may not be perfect, but it's stable, reliable and, perhaps most important of all, free. It's just pipped by LibreOffice, though, which also throws in database, drawing and maths capabilities. Aside from word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tools, Google Drive also offers a basic vector drawing program. Test three: Design and use Is it easy to get things done in the suite? The ribbon-based approach of MS Office 2011 can take a little getting used to, but there's a wide range of templates on hand. All the iWork apps come with a generous selection of templates, and it's easy to make your own or find third-party extras. The apps are powerful and a joy to use. Despite aiming to mimic the Office interface, ThinkFree lacks the flair and grace of Microsoft's or Apple's suites. Symphony's interface is well designed, with a Properties panel keeping the most useful options close at hand to help you make quick changes to your formatting without having to dig through the menus. LibreOffice lacks this, but then it doesn't cluster your documents in tabs inside a single window, so you can have multiple files open side by side. The apps in Google Drive are a showcase piece of web design: they render a fullfeatured and very powerful office suite in your browser. In almost every respect they feel like local apps, but you do need an internet connection whenever you want to work. Test four: Connectivity Sync to the cloud, collaboration and more With Google Drive, you can invite colleagues to view or edit documents. It's easy to work on the same document on several different machines. iCloud makes it very easy to edit iWork documents on your Mac and an iOS device, but collaborative working is less well served. You can email documents from each app's Share menu, but since the demise of iWork.com it's more difficult to publish your work online or facilitate group approval. Microsoft hasn't yet produced an iOS version of Office. Document sharing revolves around SkyDrive, which relies on the bundled Document Connection app on the Mac. It's easy-to-use and fuss-free. ThinkFree Office is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, with Android and iOS versions allowing you to manage files stored in a free ThinkFree online account although not edit them remotely. Symphony has no integrated iCloud or SkyDrive equivalent, so the best you can do is save to a shared folder on Dropbox or other third-party service. The same applies to LibreOffice. The winner: Top office suite If compatibility is key, then Microsoft Office wins out. You don't get everything on OS X that you get under Windows, but Office for Mac 2011 is a solid, powerful package. Our only qualm is the price. Even the Home and Student edition now tips the scales at £110. You can cut costs with the Office365 rental model, which starts at £10 per month per user for small businesses, and £7.99 a month/£80 a year for home users. This lets you install all four Office apps on up to five Macs or PCs, and gives you 20GB of SkyDrive storage. Although this is good value, after six months you've paid more than you would if you'd bought the three iWork apps outright, and you'll still have to keep on paying to keep on working.

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Apple : Apple's chip deal with TSMC could hasten messy Samsung divorce

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Apple's chip deal with TSMC could hasten messy Samsung divorce Posted: Apple has signed an agreement with Taiwanese semiconductor company TSMC to build mobile processors for its iOS devices, the Wall Street Journal has reported. The rival chip-maker will eventually take over from Samsung as Apple's key supplier, eventually phasing out a business relationship destroyed by endless patent infringement lawsuits between the two. The report claimed TSMC will begin building chips in 2014, although Samsung will continue to be the primary supplier for that year and perhaps beyond. Apple and TSMC had been in talks since 2010, the report said, but were finally able to agree a deal after the latter resolved "glitches preventing the chips from meeting Apple's speed and power standards." End of an era? The procurement of a new chip supplier could be the final piece in the puzzle for Apple as it seeks to lessen its reliance on Samsung as a component manufacturer. It no longer buys the displays for iOS devices from Samsung and has been spreading the wealth by finding other firms to manufacturer RAM and flash memory for iPhones and iPads. Apple and Samsung had done great business together for many years before Samsung emerged as a genuine contender to the iPhones dominance with its Galaxy smartphone range. Apple strongly alleged that Samsung got its leg-up by "blatantly copying" its own devices, leading to countless suits and counter suits around the world. Although they make plenty of money together, it seems neither is too keen on lining the other's pockets regardless of how mutual beneficial the business relationship has been. Remember the tech trial of the century that cost Samsung a billion bucks?

Tutorial: How to speed up your Mac in 30 minutes Posted: Introduction You opened that beautiful Apple box to find your gleaming new Mac within ages ago! It booted up, and immediately the Mac seemed so much faster than what it replaced. Apps opened with a speed you found astonishing. And any task you could throw at it seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. The novelty of your no-longer-new Mac's incredible speed wore off a long time ago. Now you find yourself tapping the table impatiently, sighing as you wait for applications to open and documents to load. And if the cursor changes to a spinning beachball, you get that sinking feeling that tells you you're going to be waiting a good long time for whatever you were doing to finish. It isn't you. You're not getting irrationally impatient - your Mac really may be slowing down. Over time, the software you install may affect the overall performance of your Mac. What's more, software updates, full version upgrades and new versions of OS X may put additional load on your Mac. And as your hard drive fills up, files can get fragmented - that can hurt speed too. As system and application software specifications change, your Mac's hardware itself may not be as up to the task as it once was. Faster drives, more memory and other hardware tweaks can breathe new life into an old system in dramatic ways, and you don't need to spend a lot. There are a lot of ways to slow down your Mac, but there are a lot of ways to speed it up too. We're going to take a look at many of the ways you can restore your Mac to its original potential, and we're also going to look at the ways you can improve your Mac's performance beyond factory spec! What's slowing down your Mac? Take the guesswork out of tuning your Mac's performance with some helpful tools Your Mac didn't slow down just by itself. The software running on the device, even core operating system processes, take their toll on your Mac's overall performance over time. The first step to figuring out how to speed up your Mac is to find out what's running. To that end, OS X includes some handy tools to give you a sense of where your system resources are being spent. Activity Monitor Check inside the Utilities folder on your Mac, and you'll find a tool provided by Apple that will help you understand what's running on your Mac. It even gives you a way of stopping stuff in its tracks if it's causing problems. Activity Monitor shows you all the processes that are running on your Mac - not just applications that you might recognize, but all the discrete functions the system needs to operate, or software that you depend on may need to continue working even when it's not running. At a glance, and by rearranging some columns by clicking on their headers, you can quickly ascertain what processes are demanding the most attention from the CPU, or gobbling up the most memory. You'll find a lot of stuff running on your Mac that might otherwise be invisible, but don't panic. These are usually legitimate things that your Mac and the software you've installed needs to work. Still, if you find a runaway process that's gobbling up resources, you can force quit it from here. Before you do, though, Google the Process Name exactly - perhaps with 'CPU', for example, if it's soaking up your processor - to check if others have solved the problem. Activity Monitor's Memory tab At a glance, this pie chart, accessible by clicking on Activity Monitor's Memory tab, tells you the state of your Mac's memory: Free: How much RAM is available. Wired: How much memory can't be offloaded to disk in a pinch. Active: Information in RAM that's recently been used. Inactive: RAM that's recently been touched by an app but that can be allocated for something else if need be. Used: The amount of RAM used in total. On the right, Page Ins and Page Outs gives you a sense of how often the Mac is moving information between RAM and the hard disk. If you have a high number of Page Outs, or your pie chart is mostly warm colours, adding more RAM to the Mac can help improve performance. Console Also inside the Utilities folder is Console, a handy app that lets you check the logs your Mac produces to document what it's doing. The Mac is constantly writing notes to itself, and these notes are useful in diagnosing problems - especially kernel panics. Console is a handy troubleshooting tool if you think an app is giving you trouble but you're not exactly sure why. OS X documents what it's doing and when it's doing it, and if an app or processes crashes it, a log will be generated telling you what happened. You can even set a preference in Console to alert you when an open log changes, if you want to keep an eye on a specific process or app that you think is giving you trouble. Admittedly, there's a tremendous amount of alphabet soup in here, with processes running with names you may not recognize. Doing a quick Google search can usually yield answers. Apple Support Communities can also be a great resource to search for what you need. iStat Menus This indispensable $16 utility from Bjango populates your menu bar with charts and graphs that show you at a glance how full your hard disk is, what sort of inbound and outbound network traffic your Mac is experiencing, how memory is being used and much more. 30 minutes to a faster Mac Quit open apps you don't need Just because you've closed open windows doesn't remove apps from memory - you have to remember to quit them altogether to remove their footprint from the operating system. If you're a recent Windows convert, this idea might be a bit strange to you. If you run a lot of apps simultaneously and you don't have to, make sure to actually quit them to reduce their impact on your Mac's performance. Any app that appears in your dock with a light underneath is something that's taking up RAM. You can quit open apps by selecting Quit from the application menu to the right of the Apple menu while the app is active, or right-click on their Dock icon and select Quit. Clean your desktop Do you know all those files and folders you keep within easy reach on your desktop, or the stuff that you saved to the desktop but you're just too lazy to put away? Technically, the Finder treats every icon on your desktop as a separate window behind the scenes, and that puts a significant additional strain on resources. Find a place for everything in the Documents folder or somewhere else you're likely to remember, away from the Finder. Clear your browser's cache Safari can fill up with a lot of junk that will slow it down over time, and the last thing you need when you're in a hurry is a spinning beachball. To do so, first open Safari's Preferences, then click on the Advanced button. Click the checkbox labelled 'Show Develop menu in menu bar' and a new menu will appear. Half way down the list is Empty Caches. Alternatively, try Reset Safari… in the Safari window. Close Dashboard widgets that you don't need The Dashboard can be a convenient way to run tools you might need occasionally, but each of them take up memory and eat up your Mac's limited resources. If you only need to know the value of British pounds against Icelandic Króna every once in a while, close the converter Widget when you're not using it (click the minus button and then click the x buttons on the Widgets you wish to close). Reduce the number of Login Items If your Mac is slow to boot, it may be because there are too many software processes trying to load when you first log in. You have control over this activity, however. Simply go to the System Preferences and click on Users & Groups. Click the Login Items tab, and you'll be presented with a list of software that loads before you see your desktop. Select the items you don't want the Mac to load, and then click the minus button below. Run Software Update Apple regularly posts system software updates and even occasionally produces firmware updates for its computers. Some of these can have a positive effect on performance, so they're clearly worth doing. Select Software Update from the Apple menu to check for the latest changes, and make sure to apply them from within the Mac App Store to see if your Mac can speed up a bit. Clear caches using OnyX or another tool The OS stores tons of rebuildable data in caches and creates temporary files. Over time these files can get corrupted or so big they get ungainly. One excellent tool to help you get a handle on these issues is Titanium Software's OnyX. It lets you clean up caches used by the system kernel and extensions, multimedia components and more. Restart your Mac Sometimes it's a good idea to give the Mac a clean sweep by restarting all together. Restarting clears memory out completely and can stop stuck processes in their tracks, so don't be afraid to reboot every once in a while if things seem off. Memory and storage upgrades Memory upgrades The easiest way to increase the working performance of your Mac Apple has traditionally been a bit stingy with the amount of RAM it includes with its systems, so Macs often run out of RAM breathing room as users begin to make more sophisticated demands on their systems. Of all the hardware improvements you can make to your Mac to dramatically improve performance, adding RAM is usually one of the least expensive and most effective. Adding more RAM makes it possible to have more applications and documents open simultaneously without making the Mac have to swap what's in its RAM to a virtual memory file. Using virtual memory is much slower than using 'real' memory, because it's actually a file written to the hard drive. The first thing you'll need to do is figure out how much RAM is currently in your Mac. If you're not sure, select About This Mac from the Apple menu, and it will tell you. In Mountain Lion, clicking the More Info button yields an overview of how your Mac is set up; clicking the Memory tab will tell you specifically how your Mac's memory is configured to work. Soldered on Some Macs don't have upgradable memory, like the MacBook Air, the new 21.5-inch iMac and Retina display-equipped MacBooks; the memory is soldered onto the motherboard and can't be easily replaced. Others, like the Mac Pro, new 27-inch iMac and recent-era Mac minis, can easily accommodate additional memory by replacing existing chips or using existing open slots. The More Info window can be deceiving: it might tell you your MacBook Pro has two memory slots, each of which accepts a 1600MHz DDR3 memory module and each of which is occupied by an 8GB memory chip. That's how it appears to the system, but if it's a Retina display-equipped MacBook Pro, it can't be upgraded. Third-party vendors such as Crucial offer easy-to-use web-based tools to help you figure out which RAM to order for your particular system, or even if your particular machine is upgradable at all. For what it's worth, Apple is okay with users opening up their machines to put in more RAM. Some Macs are more accessible than others - older Mac minis, for example, require a spudger tool to pry the case apart and demand extensive disassembly before you can get to the RAM; newer ones make RAM slots available by turning a panel on the bottom, no tools required. If you decide you're up for doing the job yourself, make sure to take precautions: work in a clean, well-lit area, and keep an anti-static strap on your wrist to keep the chances of zapping your Mac's delicate circuitry to a minimum. Solid-state storage Replace your aging hard drive with the latest solid-state technology Solid-state drive technology (SSD) is being used more and more in new and old computers alike, and it's easy to see why. Apple's been able to produce ever-more slender laptops in part by eliminating bulky hard disk drives and replacing them with much faster solid-state storage. A hard disk drive is a very physical device. Under the hood of a hard drive is a magnetised platter, or sometimes a stack of platters, rotating around a spindle at a high rate of speed - typically 5400 or 7200 revolutions per minute. A small actuator arm extends from one corner of the enclosure to just above the disc surface, where tiny heads read from and write to the surface of the platters magnetically. If it sounds archaic, that's because it is. Hard drive technology has been around since the 1950s. By comparison, SSDs have no moving parts. SSDs are simply integrated circuits that store data even when the power to the computer is turned off, thanks to the use of a special type of flash memory (similar to what's used in iPads and iPhones). Because there are no moving parts, SSDs are much, much faster than hard drives: reading and writing data is quicker, and you spend less time waiting for the 'disk' to find the information, too. They're also less susceptible to physical shock for the same reason, and they produce no noise. Not cheap If SSDs are so great, why isn't everyone using them? They're still relatively expensive - many times more expensive, per gigabyte, than a hard disk drive, at any rate. Consider that a 128GB SSD can cost the same as a 1 terabyte (TB) hard disk drive. So unless you have very deep pockets or a very generous benefactor, chances are you're going to pay a lot more for a lot less storage. But what you lack in storage you will make up for in blazing speed. While boosting RAM may offer the best overall bang for your buck, replacing a pokey old hard drive with an SSD is the quickest way to supercharge an ailing system, especially since paging RAM out is much faster. SSDs now come available in replacement enclosures that look like traditional hard disk drives, and they will drop right into place where the hard drive goes - the screws to hold them in place will line up right where you expect, and the cabling is the same. If the idea of less storage is daunting, there may be another solution. Other World Computing, for example, makes kits that enable some MacBook and MacBook Pro users to remove the SuperDrive and fit the hard disk drive there instead, then put an SSD in the empty spot where the hard drive was. Or, if you're using a Mac Pro, you can put an SSD in an empty SATA hard drive bay. In those cases, you can move your OS and crucial apps and documents to the SSD but continue to use a hard disk for long-term storage. Expansion cards Slots on your Mac can offer various types of expandability The Mac Pro is the most expandable of any Mac model, and while not available for sale anymore in Europe as of March 2013, plenty are still in use in professional settings because of the system's massive horsepower and extraordinary flexibility - it's Apple's heaviest iron. The Mac Pro can accommodate four PCI Express expansion cards (one is already occupied by a video card). PCI Express is a widely adopted standard in the PC world, so many manufacturers make cards, but only some offer Mac-specific cards or Mac drivers to enable them to operate. Cards available for the Mac Pro include exotic high-speed networking technology like Fibre Channel, or external SATA (eSATA) - a faster hard disk interface than FireWire. Professional digital video companies manufacture specialty cards to enable the Mac Pro to input and output broadcast and cinema-quality video, which can take up massive bandwidth. There are also USB 3.0 cards; while it's become standard issue on other Macs, USB 2.0 is all that the Mac Pro includes from the factory. Some Mac Pro owners have maxed out the number of internal drives their systems can handle (there are four bays, each capable of supporting a 3.5-inch drive). For those users, adding additional SATA expansion cards can be handy, especially if it's time to start incorporating SSDs in the mix. Put in an array of SSDs and you can set them up as a RAID for even faster performance. The now-defunct 17-inch MacBook Pro, which went out of active circulation in June of 2012, was the last MacBook Pro to feature an ExpressCard/34 slot - an expansion slot that offered PCI expansion capabilities. Cards available for the MacBook Pro include FireWire 400 and 800, eSATA, USB 3.0, additional Gigabit Ethernet ports and more. How fast can a Mac go? Replacing hard drives with SSDs, adding memory and fine-tuning the software contents of your system are all fine ways to improve the performance of your current Mac, but how fast will the Mac get? From processor improvements to bus speed changes, different types of data storage and more, let's take a look down the road. Let's start with Wi-Fi. All of Apple's currently shipping products use 802.11n technology, which can transfer data - in theory - at up to 300 megabits per second (Mb/s). Routers are already hitting the market that support the fifth generation Wi-Fi spec, called 802.11ac. 802.11ac can transfer data at up to 1 gigabit per second, and the industry anticipates widespread adoption by 2014. (The routers available today are only using a preliminary version of the 802.11ac spec, and no Macs support it natively yet; tread carefully.) There may be a reason to postpone your purchase of any 802.11ac networking gear, at least for a bit. Another wireless networking technology called 802.11ad is coming in fast behind 802.11ac. It'll work at up to 7Gb/s, with backwards compatibility for older, slower systems. Of course, not everything can be wireless - sometimes you still need a good old fashioned cable to connect peripherals to your Mac. To that end, the current state of the art is USB3, which can transfer data at up to 5 gigabits per second. At CES earlier this year, the USB Promoter Group announced a new USB3 enhancement that doubles USB3 to 10 Gb/s instead. That puts USB3 on a similar level as the transfer speed of a single lane of Thunderbolt (Thunderbolt actually uses two lanes, with effective bandwidth of 20Gb/s). Thunderbolt isn't sitting still, either. It's due for an overhaul late this year, when Intel introduces new silicon that will double the effective bandwidth of Thunderbolt from 10 gigabits per second, per lane, to 20Gb/s per lane. Chips featuring the new 'Falcon Ridge' controller are expected to be widely available in 2014. And Intel says there's plenty of room left to grow Thunderbolt even further. Serial ATA (SATA) is the interface Macs use as the hard drive or SSD interconnect. In its current form, SATA 3.0, the interface can transfer data at up to 6Gb/s second. SATA was designed at a time that mechanical hard disks were still state of the art, however, and times have changed. Some higher-performance SSDs are already hitting the limit of SATA 3.0 interface, maxing out that 6Gb/s speed limit. But relief is in the works, according to the Serial ATA International Organization. SATA Express, officially announced at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada earlier this year, is a recently proposed spec that will up the speed limit even more. The organisation says that SATA Express will be able to move at up to 16Gb/s. SSDs aren't the be-all end-all of storage technology, either. Already a company called Everspin is selling 'Spin-Torque Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory' or ST-RAM, a non-volatile solid state storage medium that it says is 500 times faster than current SSDs. The downside, predictably, is price - currently ST-RAM costs about 50 times more than SSD, and SSD is no value compared to a cheap, old-fashioned hard disk drive. Further ahead Looking much further down the road, researchers are working on holographic data storage. This optical storage medium stores data in three dimensions instead of two, such as on a DVD or Blu-ray disc, which increases the storage density of the material dramatically. Genetics researchers have also tested the viability of using DNA as a storage medium, though they admit they're decades away from having real working storage systems available. And IBM is working on storage systems that record data at the atomic level. Macs will, predictably, add horsepower through improved processors. The next jump in Intel hardware is making its way into the world now with the introduction of Haswell microprocessors, which replace the Ivy Bridge processors used throughout Apple's Macintosh product line today. Intel's longer-term roadmap calls for continued refinements in processor architecture and a reduction in die size, allowing for ever more complicated processors that gradually grow more power-efficient. While Intel hasn't outlined all of its plans, we can count on chips with even more cores capable of multiprocessing capabilities well beyond what the CPUs in Apple's machines do today. Ultimately, Haswell will be supplanted by Broadwell, Skylake and Skymont processors through 2017. Intel CEO Paul Otellini believes that silicon, the material that serves as the base of all current CPU designs, is probably in its last decade of use. Intel hasn't said what it will replace silicon with, but if IBM's research is any indication, carbon may be a safe bet. IBM researchers have built circuits out of graphene, a highly conductive one-atom thick sheet of carbon molecules. It's possible to build much smaller, more powerful chips using graphene. Quantum computing Gazing further into the future still, physicists have hypothesized about the feasibility of the quantum computer - a computer that stores data using quantum bits, or 'qubits,' instead of the regular binary bits (0s and 1s) that comprise today's machines. Qubits make it possible for quantum computers to work potentially millions of times faster than today's machines. Quantum computers aren't a pipe dream. In fact, they've been produced in laboratories since the late 1990s. And one company, D-Wave actually makes what it says is a commercially available quantum computer, a 128 qubit system priced at US$10,000,000. Clearly, some of this stuff is years away from finding its way into the Mac. But a lot of this technology is just a matter of time. What's for sure is that Apple will keep Macs performing as fast as possible, as soon as it reasonably can. We can't wait!

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Software : Twitter's Vine video app arrives on Amazon Kindle Fire tablets

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Twitter's Vine video app arrives on Amazon Kindle Fire tablets Posted: Twitter's Vine video app has graduated to a new platform this weekend and is now available to download from the Amazon app store for Kindle Fire tablets. The app, which allows users to create and upload short, 6-second video clips, had only been available on Apple's iPhone or Android smartphones. Vine's arrival on Kindle Fire is the first time the app has been optimised specifically for a tablet device. The decision to launch on the Kindle Fire is somewhat surprising considering the questionable quality of the device's front-facing camera and the lack of any rear-facing camera. There's also no Vine app for Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10 at this time. Instagram attacks Vine's expansion comes following new competition from Facebook-owned Instagram, which rolled out its own short video feature earlier this month. Reports this week had suggested uploads to Vine had taken a hit as a result of Instagram's encroachment on its reason for being. To combat the new rival, Twitter updated the Vine Android app earlier this week to include support for the front-facing camera, bringing it in line with the iOS app. Have you tried Video on Instagram yet? Is it a Vine-killer? Check out our first impressions.

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Apple : Updated: 80 best free iPad apps 2013

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Updated: 80 best free iPad apps 2013 Posted: Best free iPad apps: 1-40 On comparing iPad apps with iPhone equivalents, one thing rapidly becomes clear: apps for Apple's tablet are pricier. Many of the best free iPhone apps cost 59p or more in their iPad incarnations, and the quality level of what's still free is often ropey. But among the dross lie rare gems – iPad apps that are so good you can't believe they're still free. Of those we unearthed, here is our pick of the best free iPad apps. Note that apps marked 'universal' will run on your iPad and iPhone, optimising themselves accordingly. iPad 4 review iPad mini review For a mix of free and paid apps, check out our amazing Best iPad apps chart. 1. AccuWeather for iPad Annoyingly, some free iPad weather apps refuse to believe that the UK has any weather (or that the country exists), so AccuWeather gets props for merely working. Happily, AccuWeather also proves to be a decent – if quirky – weather app. The interface is odd (but fun) and there's a 'lifestyle' page that determines how your current local conditions might affect over 20 activities, including dog-walking and stargazing. 2. Facebook (universal) The social networking giant has gone back-and-forth with its mobile apps, finally settling on this smart, native implementation. Much like the slightly simpler iPhone equivalent, Facebook on iPad is such that you won't want to use the comparatively clunky website again for seeing which of your friends really shouldn't have internet access after midnight. 3. Air Video Free (universal) Despite naysayers whining about the iPad screen's 4:3 aspect ratio, it's a decent device for watching video, although it lacks storage for housing large video collections. Air Video enables you to stream video (converting it on-the-fly, if necessary) from your Mac or PC. The main limitation of the free version is that it only shows a few items (randomly selected) from each folder or playlist. 4. Beatwave (universal) Beatwave is a simplified Tenori-On-style synth which enables you to rapidly build pleasing melodies by prodding a grid. Multiple layers and various instruments provide scope for complex compositions, and you can save sessions or, handily, store and share compositions via email. You can also buy more instruments via in-app purchases. 5. Bloomberg for iPad It used to boast an eye-searing white-and-orange-on-black colour scheme that was a little like being repeatedly punched in the eyes, but now Bloomberg has grown up, discovered a palette (a subtler, serious 'things on black', for the most part), and has subsequently become a much more usable business news and stocks app. 6. Comics (universal) On the iPhone, Comics is innovative, but zooming each panel and constantly rotating your device gets old fast. By contrast, the iPad's screen is big enough to display an entire page without the need to zoom or scroll. And with dozens of free comics available via the bundled store, comic book fans should lap this app up. 7. Dictionary.com - Dictionary & Thesaurus - For iPad We approached Dictionary with scepticism, since most free dictionary apps are sluggish interfaces to websites. That's certainly what this looks like, but it works offline, providing speedy access to over two million words and definitions. The app's search is also reassuringly fast. 8. Dropbox (universal) Dropbox is a great service for syncing documents across multiple devices. The iPad client works like the iPhone one (hardly surprising, since this is a universal app), enabling you to preview many file types and store those marked as favourites locally. 9. Evernote (universal) Like Dropbox, Evernote (a free online service for saving ideas – text documents, images and web clips – that you can then access from multiple devices) works the same way on the iPad as it does on the iPhone. It benefits from the iPad's larger screen, which enables you to see and navigate your stored snippets more easily. 10. YouTube (universal) When the YouTube app presumably became a victim of the ongoing and increasingly tedious Apple/Google spat, there were concerns Google wouldn't respond. Those turned out to be unfounded, because here's yet another bespoke, nicely designed Google-created app for iOS. The interface is specifically tuned for the iPad, and AirPlay enables you to fire videos at an Apple TV. 11. The Guardian Eyewitness A showcase for engaging photography, The Guardian Eyewitness provides a daily, visual reflection of global events. You get access to the most recent 100 photos, which can be viewed full-screen or with a caption and 'pro tip'. You can also save photos to your iPad or share them via email. 12. iBooks (universal) Going head-to-head with Kindle, iBooks is a decent ebook reader, backed by the iBookstore. As you'd expect from Apple, the interface is polished and usable, with handy cross-device bookmark syncing, highlighting, and various display options. It's also a capable PDF reader, for your digital magazine collection. 13. IM+ (universal) Although the iPad enables a certain amount of basic multi-tasking, anyone who constantly juggles a number of instant messaging services will soon be tired of leaping between apps. IM+ is a good solution, enabling you to run a number of IM services in a single app, and there's also a built-in web browser for checking out links. 14. Kindle (universal) Amazon's Kindle iPad app for reading myriad books available at the Kindle Store is a little workmanlike, and doesn't match the coherence of iBooks (you buy titles in Safari and 'sync' purchases via Kindle). However, Kindle's fine for reading, and you get options to optimise your experience (including the ability to kill the naff page-turn animation and amend the page background to a pleasant sepia tone). 15. Movies by Flixter (universal) One for film buffs, Movies figures out where you are and tells you what's showing in your local cinemas – or you can pick a film and it'll tell you where and when it's on. The app is functionally identical on iPad and iPhone, but again the extra screen space improves the experience. 16. PaperDesk Lite for iPad Effectively a souped-up digital notepad, PaperDesk Lite for iPad enables you to combine typed words, scribbles and audio recordings in user-defined notebooks. Be mindful, though, that this free version restricts you to three notebooks, each of which can only have three pages, and there are no export options. 17. PCalc Lite (universal) PCalc Lite's existence means the lack of a built-in iPad calculator doesn't bother us (in fact, we'd love to replace the iPhone Calculator app with PCalc Lite as well). This app is usable and feature-rich – and if you end up wanting more, in-app purchases enable you to bolt on extras from the full PCalc. 18. Reuters News Pro for iPad Spurious anti-competition complaints meant the BBC News app took a while to come to the UK; in the meantime, Reuters offered the next best free news app for iPad with its Reuters News Pro for iPad. It's a little US-centric, but can be skewed towards UK coverage via the Settings app, and it's worth downloading for a more international take on news coverage than BBC News provides. 19. Cooliris (universal) Long ago, Cooliris lived within browsers, converting online galleries into 3D walls of thumbnails you could zoom along. On the iPad, the concept seems more at home. It's of course a gimmick, but it's a great-looking and tactile one, and more fun than using the Photos app to rummage through your snaps. 20. Wikipanion for iPad The Wikipedia website works fine in Safari for iPad, but dedicated apps make navigating the site simpler and faster. We went back and forth between Simplepedia and Wikipanion, eventually plumping for the latter, largely due to its efficient two-pane landscape view with excellent bookmarking and history access. 21. eBay for iPad Use eBay for iPad and you'll never touch eBay in a web browser again. It's fast and efficient, beautifully showcasing important details and images in its main results view. Gallery images can often be displayed almost at a full-screen size, which is particularly useful on an iPad with a Retina display. Speedy sorting options are also available. 22. Soundrop (universal) Soundrop is a minimal generative sound toy that offers an endless stream of balls, which make noises when they collide with and bounce off user-drawn lines. The overall result is surprisingly fun and hypnotic. For more advanced features – save, multiple instruments and gravity adjustment – there's an in-app 'pro' purchase option. 23. Granimator Wallpaper apps litter the App Store, but are mostly dull, offering photos of brick walls or bored animals. Granimator is a bonkers art tool, enabling you to choose a background and spray all manner of shapes around. Compositions can be fine-tuned by dragging objects, and then shared to Flickr, Twitter or your device's Photos app. 24. Google Earth (universal) It's not the smoothest app in the world, and it lacks some elements from the desktop, but Google Earth is nonetheless a joy on the iPad. Touch gestures are an intuitive means of swooping around the planet, and the optional layers enable you to display as much or as little ancillary information as you wish. 25. Explore Flickr (universal) Explore Flickr provides an engaging way to discover new photography. On launch, your iPad screen fills with a grid of thumbnails, drawn from Flickr.com's top daily images. Tap one to view (and, if rights permit, download to your device), or just leave the app lazily updating (every now and again, a thumbnail spins to reveal a new image) while your iPad charges in its dock. 26. Rj Voyager One for budding iPad DJs, Rj Voyager enables you to choose from a selection of bundled tracks, turn parts on and off and edit parameters in real-time via an intuitive, futuristic interface. Play through headphones or a decent sound system and the result is infectious. 27. BBC News (universal) Although the BBC News website works nicely on the iPad, BBC News is still worth downloading. Rather than trying to provide all of the news, it instead concentrates on the latest stories, with inline video. Categories can be rearranged, stories can be shared and the app's layout adjusts to portrait and landscape orientations. 28. Epicurious (universal) Tens of thousands of recipes at your fingertips (as long as you have a web connection) ensure Epicurious is worth a download for the culinary-inclined. The app even composes a shopping list for recipes; it's just a pity it doesn't include measurements for those of us who use that new-fangled metric system. 29. WordPress (universal) This official WordPress app has a reputation for being a bit clunky, but it's fine for authoring the odd blog post on the go, along with making quick edits to existing content and managing comments. It also offers both text-based and visual approaches to crafting posts, so you're not stuck with HTML. 30. Speedtest X HD (universal) Truth be told, we're always a touch suspicious of apps that claim to test your connection speed, but Speedtest X HD seems to do a decent job. It's also handy to have installed for when your broadband goes all flaky and you need to record the figures for a subsequent moan at your ISP. 31. Adobe Photoshop Express (universal) With people regularly moaning about bloat in Adobe's desktop applications, it's great to see the giant create something as focused and usable as Adobe Photoshop Express. Its toolset is strictly for basic edits (crop, straighten, rotate, flip, levels and lighting adjustments), and applying a few effects, but the app is fast, stable and extremely useable. Top marks. 32. App Shopper (universal) Prices on the App Store go up and down like a yo-yo, and Apple's own wish-list mechanics leave a lot to be desired. You're better off using App Shopper, which lists bargain apps and also enables you to compile a wish-list and be notified when an item drops in price. 33. Find my iPhone (universal) Find my iPhone would perhaps be better named 'Find my Apple stuff', because it's not just for figuring out where a missing iPhone is—it can also track iPads, iPods and Macs. The app is simple, elegant and, generally speaking, provides an accurate location for devices. It also enables you to remote-lock or wipe a device. 34. Flipboard (universal) Initially, Flipboard looked like a gimmick, trying desperately to make online content resemble a magazine. But now it can integrate Flickr and other networks, beautifully laying out their articles, Flipboard's muscled into the 'essential' category – and it's still free. 35. Find My Friends (universal) While perhaps less practical than on the iPhone, Find My Friends on the iPad nonetheless works well, enabling you to track any pals that are happy with you digitally stalking them. The iPad's large display improves the app's usability, simultaneously displaying your friend list and a map. 36. IMDB (universal) IMDB might be a wee bit US-focused at times (much like the movie industry), but the app is a great way to browse more movie-related info than you could ever hope to consume in a single lifetime. Settings enable you to define which sites IMDB and Amazon info is taken from, and the show times finder works pretty well. 37. Pocket (universal) Pocket and Instapaper have long battled it out for 'article scraper' king, but Pocket trumps its rival in appealing to iPad-owning cheapskates. Instapaper requires a purchase for iPad goodness, but Pocket is free. It's also very fast, offers tagging, includes a great original article/plain-text toggle, and has a vaguely Flipboard-like visual grid-based index. 38. TED (universal) TED describes itself as "riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world". The app pretty much does as you'd expect – you get quick access to dozens of inspiring videos. However, it goes the extra mile in enabling you to save any talk for offline viewing, and also for providing hints on what to watch next if you've enjoyed a particular talk. 39. Twitter (universal) This app used to showcase some breathtaking iPad UI innovation, but in its quest for cross-platform consistency, Twitter has refashioned its tablet offering as a blown-up version of the iPhone app. The result is a far less exciting experience, but one that's nonetheless very usable, and which unlike third-party apps rolls in the service's Interactions and Discover tabs. 40. Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD There's not a great deal to piano app Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD, but it's not bad for a freebie. You get a dual-keyboard set-up, with optional key labels, and you can shift octaves and notes by prodding arrows. A really nice touch is the 'duette' [sic] button, which creates a second, mirror image, keyboard, so that two people can play at once. Best free iPad apps: 41-80 41. BBC iPlayer (universal) BBC iPlayer is a must-have download for iPad users. The slick interface makes it easy to browse/watch recent shows and current broadcasts. You can also choose from two quality settings and toggle subtitles, and there's AirPlay support for an Apple TV. Recent updates also enable you to download shows to your iPad, so that you can watch them on the move. 42. Dolphin Browser Safari for iPad is a great mobile browser, but if you hanker for more features, Dolphin is a decent alternative. The browser has an Opera-like 'speed dial' that provides one-touch access to favourites, and you can create personalised action gestures. There's also a distraction-free full-screen mode for when you really want to get into a website. 43. Skyscanner (universal) Skyscanner's website is pretty good, but the iPad app's another great example of how an app's focus can really help you speed through a task. You use the app to search over a thousand airlines, and it provides straightforward competitive journey lists and comparison graphs. If you're planning a flight, it's an indispensable download. 44. Dragon Dictation (universal) There's always something slightly spooky about voice recognition software, as if Skynet's listening in or something, but such tools had for years been out of most people's reach. Now, Dragon Dictation is free for iOS. It's eerily accurate, trainable and, despite the dev recommending you use an external microphone, the app works fine with the iPad's built-in one. And unlike Siri, Dragon Dictation works on any iPad running iOS 4 or later, and it also has a bigger buffer than Apple's service. 45. Remote (universal) Although pretty basic on the iPhone, Remote on the iPad is akin to a stripped-down iTunes when it comes to accessing network libraries and playing music. It's also indispensable if you have an Apple TV and want to control it with something other than the hateful metal chewing-gum stick that ships with the device. 46. Pulse News Reader When unveiled, RSS reader Pulse was divisive, with an unresponsive oddball interface. But it's evolved to become free and fast, and is now a tactile, enjoyable way to catch up on news. The image-oriented interface, with slider-based RSS feeds (akin to those in the BBC News app) and configurable tab groups, makes it particularly suitable for anyone who subscribes to image-heavy sites. 47. Fotopedia Heritage (universal) Rather like The Guardian Eyewitness, Fotopedia Heritage is perfect for anyone who enjoys awe-inspiring photography. The app enables you to browse tens of thousands of photos of beautiful locations worldwide. It also provides information about each location, and can be used for travel planning through favourites and links to TripAdvisor. 48. Yell Search If you're in an unfamiliar place or travelling somewhere new, Yell Search is a great app for figuring out what amenities are available locally. The interface is responsive and efficient, and you can handily add any business you find as a favourite for easy access later on. 49. XE Currency for iPad (universal) It's as ugly as they come, but XE Currency is the best free currency app you'll find. You define which currencies you want to see, along with the number of decimals to show. Double-tap a currency and you can set it as the base currency by tapping 1.0 in the calculator, or do bespoke conversions by typing any other value. 50. Airport Utility (universal) With apps like Airport Utility, it's increasingly clear Apple now sees the iPad as an independent unit, not merely an accessory to a PC or Mac. The app provides an overview of your Wi-Fi network, and enables you to view and change settings, restore or restart a base station, and get terribly angry at a flashing orange light that denotes your ISP's gone belly up. 51. Skype for iPad In theory, we should be cheerleading for FaceTime, what with it being built into iOS devices, but it's still an Apple-only system. Skype, however, is enjoyed by myriad users who haven't been bitten by the Apple bug, and it works very nicely on the iPad, including over 3G. 52. Skitch for iPad (universal) Skitch is a screen-grab and annotation tool that was snapped up by Evernote. In its iPad incarnation, it enables you to scribble on grabs, photos, maps and web pages and then fling the result to Twitter, email or Evernote, or fire your work at an Apple TV. 53. Readability (universal) The latest of the major read-it-later systems, Readability brings with it a clean interface and a lovely set of fonts. As with the likes of Instapaper, Readability strips junk from web pages, leaving only the content. As you'd expect, you can also send on anything particularly interesting to Twitter and Facebook. 54. iTunes U (universal) If you're still convinced the iPad is only a device for staring brain-dead at TV shows and not a practical tool for education, check out iTunes U. The app enables you to access many thousands of free lectures and courses taught by universities and colleges, thereby learning far more than what bizarre schemes current soap characters are hatching. 55. 4oD Catch Up (universal) Despite what we said in the previous entry, the iPad is, of course, a great tool for TV. (After all, once you're done studying, you need some downtime, right?) Channel 4's 4oD app enables you to view a selection of recent shows, along with a handful of classic programmes. 56. Google Search (universal) Google Search might seem redundant - after all, the iPad's Safari app has a built-in Google search field. However, Google's own offering provides a superior search experience that's been specifically designed for iPad. Highlights include a tactile image carousel, visual search history and Google Goggles integration. 57. TuneIn Radio (universal) Output your iPad's audio to an amp or a set of portable speakers, fire up TuneIn Radio, select a station and you've a set-up to beat any DAB radio. Along with inevitable social sharing, the app also provides an alarm, AirPlay support, pause and rewind, and a 'shake to switch station' feature - handy if the current DJ's annoying and you feel the need to vent. 58. TVCatchup Live TV (universal) More TV! This time, it's the only partially inaccurately named TVCatchup Live TV; with it, you can watch TV for free, but it's not so much 'catch-up' as 'watch what's on now'. You get access to over 50 channels, although we're unsure about taking the developer's advice that you can "even watch TV in the bath" - iPads don't float. 59. Netflix (universal) Netflix has been described by some in the UK as the perfect way to experience everything a DVD bargain bin has to offer. We do agree there's a lack of content compared to the US library, but Netflix is cheap and fine for catching up on older shows. And the iPad app includes AirPlay support and a resume function, so you can pick up where you left off on another device. 60. SoundCloud (universal) SoundCloud is a popular service for sharing sounds, and the iPad app enables you to search and play myriad snippets and music tracks hosted on SoundCloud's servers. If you're a budding musician or oddball loudmouth, you can also record and upload sounds from your iPad, or record to upload later. 61. 30/30 (universal) It's easy enough to ignore a to-do when it's lurking somewhere in the background on your Mac or PC, but on an iPad, 30/30's crystal-clear events (including optional repeating loops for work/break cycles) can't be so easily dismissed. Fortunately, it looks great and the tactile interface makes creating and removing items a joy. 62. Paper By FiftyThree There's a certain train of thought that apps shouldn't ape real-world items, but we dismiss such talk. They just shouldn't ape real-world items badly! Paper by FiftyThree gets this right, with beautiful sketchbooks in which you can scribble, then share across the web. Books and the pen tool are free, and other tools are available via In-App Purchase. 63. Telegraph pictures for iPad Rather like the Guardian Eyewitness app, Telegraph Pictures for iPad provides you with new imagery on a daily basis. In fact, The Telegraph's rather more generous than The Guardian, offering a dozen new photographs every 24 hours, and leaving a 14-day archive for you to explore at any time. 64. Sticky Notes for iPad If you're a fan of sticky notes, but not the sticky nor the waste, Sticky Notes for iPad provides you with the means to bung colourful rectangular notes on your iPad's screen, even dictating the text should you wish. Just don't have someone think they can't get the note off and then attack your device with a scourer. 65. Architizer There are two levels to this beautifully designed app directed at architects and anyone else with an interest in buildings. On entry, you can select projects from a grid that's updated in real-time. Photography can then be explored full-screen. However, you can also dig deeper, finding out more about each project and who designed it. 66. Pinterest (universal) Social network Pinterest is one of the very few to challenge the big guns in the industry. It provides a means to find and share inspiration, working as a place to collect and organise the things you love. The iPad app has an elegant interface that pushes inspirational imagery to the fore, just as it should. 67. Cards (universal) Yes, the cards that you can send from Cards cost four quid each, but the app itself is free, providing the means to experiment in making cards for your loved ones, based on your own images. Without spending anything, it's a fun toy; even when you send cards, it might work out cheaper than shop prices - and the images will be far more personal. 68. Quark DesignPad One for the graphic designers out there, desktop publishing giant Quark's DesignPad is an astonishingly useful app for figuring out layouts on the move, or knocking about ideas in meetings. Plenty of ready-made documents can give you a head-start, and your finished work can be exported as a PNG or emailed for use in a QuarkXPress document. 69. Gmail (universal) Because of its single-app nature and big screen, the iPad's become a tool many people prefer to a PC or Mac for email. However, if you're reliant on Gmail, Apple's own Mail is insufficient, not providing access to your entire archive nor Gmail's features. Google's own app deals with such shortcomings and looks as good as Apple's client. 70. Solar Walk: Saturn (universal) Really, this is a promotional app for Solar Walk, but what a piece of promotion it is! There's a ton of information and interactive components that concentrate on perhaps the most fascinating of planets in our solar system, and it looks particularly impressive on a Retina iPad. 71. Netbot for App.net App.net is a bit like Twitter, only it eschews adverts, has a subscription fee, and is hugely keen to attract (rather than repel) developers. Netbot is one of the finest clients for the service (having been created by the team responsible for the excellent Tweetbot, which it mirrors), and it's free. 72. Cloze (universal) If you ever have one of those conversations where a friend swears blind they did reply, you say you didn't get the email, and they sheepishly mutter "on Facebook", Cloze is for you. It bungs all your social communications (email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) into a single inbox and also prioritises people who you most often deal with. It's a great time-saver. 73. Haiku Deck If we're honest, we rather liked the original version of Haiku Deck, which stripped back presentations, only enabling you to add to each slide a single image, a heading and a sub-heading. The minimalism's gone (Haiku Deck now includes charts, graphs, bulleted lists and other 'improvements'), but it's still fun and easy to use, which is the main thing. 74. Tumblr (universal) Tumblr has a perfectly serviceable mobile presence, but the Tumblr iPad app gives you a more tablet-oriented interface for using the site. It's therefore a cinch to manage your blogs, post new entries and reply to messages on your iPad. Additionally, there's also offline support, enabling you to queue posts, likes, replies and reblogs without a web connection. 75. Homestyler In the professional world, Autodesk is best known for high-end 3D products: Maya, 3ds Max, AutoCAD. On the iPad, the company's been using its 3D smarts to churn out interesting consumer-focussed 3D tools. Homestyler enables you to photograph a room, then paint colours on the walls and add furniture, light fittings and accessories. 76. Podcasts (universal) Podcasts was once one of those Apple apps that people looked at in disbelief, wondering whether anyone at the company had ever really used it. Now, it's a different beast: the interface is slick, and you can create custom stations that auto-update across iCloud, and on-the-go playlists with custom episode lists. 77. Calorie Counter HD The iPhone version of Calorie Counter is a great way of ensuring you're not eating for several, but the HD iPad release takes things to a whole new level. The extra space enables the interface to breathe, providing plenty of room for charts, calorie breakdowns and interaction with fellow dieters. 78. Google Drive (universal) It's curious to think how rapidly Microsoft made Office irrelevant to so many. Most people just want a simple app for documents and spreadsheets, and that (along with a storage repository) is precisely what Google Drive provides. Like Dropbox, it's also possible to store documents locally, for when you've no web connection. 79. Fotopedia Wild Friends (universal) iPad displays have always been a fantastic way to explore photography (especially the newer Retina models). Fotopedia Wild Friends is one for nature lovers, packed with thousands of stunning images taken during hundreds of missions in dozens of countries. Being a conservation initiative, the photography's also backed with interactive maps, stories and information. 80. PlainText (universal) The iPhone incarnation of PlainText is good for the odd bit of note-taking, but on the iPad PlainText is transformed into a minimal but highly usable writing tool with Dropbox sync. The lack of clutter provides a real sense of focus - even the single iAd is hidden from view once the on-screen keyboard appears.

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