Now is a good time to buy an iPad

It's a great time to buy an Apple iPad and there are two reasons for this. The first is that the iPad 2 has just been announce and it will be on sale in a couple of weeks. The second is that the old iPad is being sold off cheaply. So you have the opportunity to buy a top of the range new specification iPad or to save some money and buy the existing model at a cut down price, saving you lots of money. It's rare to get a bargain at the Apple store, but it's one of those occasions right now.

A 16Gb Wi-Fi iPad used to cost £439 in the UK, but in the Apple UK store right now it is just £329. That's a huge saving and let's face it, the original iPad is still a great device. That price point seems just about right and it's a shame it didn't start off at that. Mind you, the high price doesn't seem to have harmed sales. The mobile phone operator Orange is offering the current 3G iPad for just £99 with a two-year contract.

Presumably this is a limited offer that is designed to clear the warehouses of old stock and when they're gone they're gone. It would be surprising if they were still on sale a month from now, so grab one while you can. The new model isn't in the Apple store yet, but the price is likely to be the same as the old one used to be £439 for the bottom of the range model.

The new iPad looks good and the main benefits are that it has front and rear cameras. These are video cameras and they should not be confused with still cameras though. You can take photos with the back camera, but with a resolution of less than 1 megapixel, is it worth it? I've not seen a digital camera with such a low resolution for about 10 years. Where on earth did Apple get it from? It should be fine for shooting video clips though. The only snag is that the iPad is a bit big to use carry around a video camera.

The second benefit of the new iPad is that there is a dual-core processor on board and this will boost the performance. Having two cores does not mean that applications run twice as fast because they tend to run on one core. It does make the system more responsive though because if one core is tied up with a task there's always the other one. I wonder if iMovie and GarageBand, now both on the iPad, are designed to use both cores simultaneously.

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How would an iPhone nano work?

The rumours of a cut-down iPhone that is smaller and cheaper persist and every day there seems to be some new news story or blog about it. Actually, there is no news because Apple doesn't say anything about products that may or may not be in development. So is there an iPhone nano in the pipeline? It seems very unlikely and I'd say that it is a 99% certainty that there isn't.

There are several reasons for this and one is that the iPhone is all about apps. There are hundreds of thousands of them and there are some amazing ones that are really good. Without any apps, the iPhone would not be anywhere near as attractive. It would look expensive and unexciting.

Imagine an iPhone nano with a smaller screen. How would all those apps work? They wouldn't. If the screen is shrunk down even by just a bit so it is 75% the size of the current iPhone many of the current apps wouldn't fit on the screen. Making a bigger iPhone is fine because like the iPad, apps could be scaled up or displayed in the centre of the screen with a border. How do you make apps fit a screen 25% smaller though?

If you shrunk the screen and used the retina display on the current iPhone you could end up with a small-screen iPhone that had the same number of pixels as the original iPhone. This would allow apps to run OK, however, many iPhone apps use very small text and it is often at the limit of my vision. If the screen was made smaller these apps with tiny text would be unusable because they would be unreadable.

Just as the iPod nano is like a tiny iPod Touch without apps, an iPhone nano would have to be like an iPhone without apps, or at least limited to very basic ones bundled with it like contacts and calendar. Even email would be difficult on a smaller screen. And what about the on-screen keyboard? Would it be as good if it was smaller?

Of course, Android is available on many different screen sizes including small ones, but the difference is that from the start app developers have been creating apps for screens of different sizes. Have iPhone app developers been told to create apps for a smaller screen? That's one rumour I've not heard. I think app developers would be the first to know if there was an iPhone nano coming out.

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iPhone nano coming soon

Every year there are rumours that Apple is working on an iPhone nano. This will be smaller, lighter and cheaper than the ordinary iPhone and it will open up new markets for the company. This year's rumours say that the iPhone nano is a response from Apple to the continuing success of the Android operating system and the number of mobile phones that are now using it. Where do these rumours come from and is there any truth in them?

There are more rumours about Apple and the company's products than any other and this is partly because of the secrecy that surrounds its activities. Whereas other companies are more than willing to let you know about the exciting new products and services they are working on, Apple keeps quiet and doesn't say anything until it is ready to launch or is very close.

I think that the rumours about the iPhone nano and other products (there's a new one each week about the iPad), are just wish lists from enthusiasts. Someone will wish Apple would produce an iPhone nano and they will start a rumour that the company is working on one. The rumours will spread as they get repeated in blogs and websites and tweets. The hope is that this will grab the attention of Apple and the company will think that there is a strong demand for the product and so create it.

I don't think there is any truth in the rumour about the iPhone nano and it's just someone trying to persuade Apple to create one by getting everyone to talk about it.

I think Steve Jobs uses his company to produce products for himself. This is why there is such a small range - compare the number of products that Apple produces with Dell or HP for example. There's a case for a desktop computer and a laptop, even a standard laptop and an ultra thin one. There's a case for an iPad. There are different uses for an iPod Touch and a Shuffle or nano and you don't want an iPod Touch in the gym for example. But Mr Jobs is probably thinking, "I've got a phone, it;'s a great phone, what do I need another phone for?" Unlike an iMac and a MacBook, iPod Touch and Shuffle, you can only use one mobile phone at a time and you don't need two. Apple sells a lot of kit to Apple enthusiasts and all those iPhone owners won't buy an extra phone because they've no use for it.

There is no iPhone nano.

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Burp and fart apps in the Mac app Store

Oh no, they've arrived on the Mac App Store! Those burp and fart apps that plague the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app store are now available for the Mac! Imagine the burps and farts you can experience on the Mac with the processing power, memory and disk space you get on the latest iMac or MacBook Pro! Why does Apple allow such rubbish in the Mac App Store? There are countless places you can download software for the Mac on the internet, such as software listing sites and direct from the developer, so to allow them in the Apple Mac App Store is irritating? Shouldn't it be a place to find quality apps rather than a place where people can peddle rubbish? It degrades the quality of the store.

The number four best selling free app is Burp and Fart Piano. "With this app you can now fart and burp your favourite tunes," the author says. When other fart and burp developers see its position in the Mac App Store top seller charts they will no doubt quickly rush out their own version.

Having lots of poor apps in the Mac App Store devalues its usefulness and I've already downloaded apps and deleted them 10 minutes later because they sounded good, but turned out to be boring or useless. Apps on the iPhone can be simple and trivial because they are often used for short periods when you are bored and want a bit of entertainment. When you're at Starbucks you can get out your iPhone or iPod Touch and play a game for 10 minutes or do some other simple task, but are you really going to boot up your iMac or MacBook Pro and play Burp and Fart Piano?

When your mates come round you can say "Hey, look what my $2,000 27in 2.8GHz quad-core iMac can do," Windows users will just laugh!

Why have rubbish in the App Store? It's not as if the authors have no other way of selling it. Mac apps have been distributed online for years and still are. Just search at Google for 'OS X applications' or 'Mac software' and you'll find lots of great sources of software. Shouldn't Apple make the App Store a source of quality applications?

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Mac App Store isn't the only software source

I have just spent an hour or so downloading software from the Mac App Store and found lots of great apps to try. All of them were free - if I am paying for apps then I will shop around for the best price and won't immediately click the Buy button in the app store.

One thing struck me when browsing the software in the Mac App Store and that is that there is a danger that some people might assume that the store contains all the software that is available for the Mac. After all, the app store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch contains all the software for those devices. Nothing is available elsewhere.

Developers that have apps that aren't featured in the app store could see their sales or downloads fall because some Mac users never look anywhere but in the app store. People might go to the Mac App Store and check out the Graphics and Design section and assume that the only free apps are SketchBook Express and Tilen. What about GIMP, a brilliant and very powerful graphics and design program? It's not in the store and it is unlikely to make an appearance their either since it is a Mac conversion of a cross platform open source program built by a community rather than a single developer.

Some great utilities are banned from the Mac App Store because they do things Apple doesn't approve of, such as Growl. There are lots of cheap programs in the app store and people might assume that they are the best available, but this isn't true. Where's Photoshop?

The Mac App Store is an excellent service, but there is lots of software available elsewhere and you'll find some cool stuff in other download sites that isn't in the Apple's store. Just Google 'mac software' or 'mac freeware' or something similar to find some exciting software that isn't in the Mac App Store.

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First impressions of the Mac App store

After months of waiting the App Store for the Apple Mac is live at last and I've spent well, about half an hour on it. That's enough to get a first impression though and it looks good, but not quite perfect. First off you have to use Software Update on the Apple menu to download and install an update to OS X. It was just over 100Mb on my Mac. Then you can access the App Store from the Apple menu.

It looks similar to the iTunes store, but without the iTunes menus and other clutter. The iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app store is the only place to get software for those devices, but there are countless places to get Mac software and the first thing I did was to compare prices. Well, wouldn't you? I've only looked at two items so far, but in both cases the price was cheaper on the Mac App Store. That's good, but it's only two applications and you can't generalise from this. Whenever I buy something I always shop around for the cheapest source. If that's the App Store, I'll use it, but not if it's more expensive.

iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch developers have converted some of their apps to run on the Mac and you can get titles like the very popular Angry Birds. When I looked through the first five pages of comments though, about a third of them complained that the app just crashed and wouldn't work. This could be bugs in the app or a hardware problem. Some apps won't work on certain Macs, for example, if you try to run a modern game on an old Mac with an Intel graphics chipset rather than Nvidia. Was this the problem? I'm not sure whether the App Store will stop you buying and downloading apps that won't work on your Mac and it's something to watch out for. If you do buy something that doesn't work, I wonder if you can get a refund.

It's early days yet and problems like these will get sorted over time. I like the ease with which you can find software and there are lots of free and cheap apps. Providing the prices are comparable to other online stores, then I'll certainly use it.

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iPad magazines are failing

The word on the web is that iPad magazines are failing. When the iPad was launched, many publishing companies were excited by the prospect of selling digital versions of their publications over the internet. The iPad is a fantastic device that has the perfect format for digital publications. It is small and light (compared to a laptop), and has Wi-Fi and 3G internet connections.

Digital publications look great on the device and it was thought that digital magazines could save the publishing industry, which has been suffering from falling sales and/or revenue. Initial sales of iPad magazines were fantastic and it is said that the first issue of Wired's publication, for example, sold 100,000 copies. November sales, however, were just 23,000. That's some fall!

The launch issue was a one-off and subsequent sales were 31,000 a month, but it's now hovering between 22,000 and 23,000. Wired isn't the only magazine that is suffering falling sales and Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour and Men's Health are all way down from their early sales.

Is there a future for iPad magazines? Probably not.

There are several issues that need to be considered and the first is that over time there are going to be a lot more tablets. Even if the iPad continues to dominate the market, a publisher wouldn't want to ignore all the other tablets out there and it would be a bad idea just to support one tablet form factor.

Pricing is an issue and people expect digital magazines to be cheap, perhaps even free. It still costs a lot of money to publish a magazine digitally, but the public thinks that it costs next to nothing to produce because there's no paper, no distribution costs and so on. It's hard to convince people to pay for something that people expect to be free or very cheap.

There is also the duplication of work and magazines already have a website. It requires extra time, effort and money to produce an iPad issue, so why bother? Why not simply create a great website? This can be accessed by computers, mobile phones, iPads, and any other device with a web browser. It makes a lot more sense for a publishing company to create a great website with a paywall than to create an extra issue just for iPad owners and ignore everyone else.

Perhaps the number of iPad owners will make it worthwhile continuing with iPad-only issues, but as the number of other devices with web access increases, publishers will surely rethink their strategy. They will want a publication that everyone can access, not just a subsection of the market.

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