On Thursday Apple will hold a small event to show off its latest efforts in the education market. Most sources seem to agree that the event will focus on ways in which textbooks can be brought into the digital age of tablets – but Apple might have a few other tricks up its sleeve. The event might also focus on the announcement of new tools that can be used to create these digital textbooks.

The case for digital textbook has been around for a while. Textbooks are expensive to buy, expensive to print and also heavy to carry around. Imagine a student a few years from now just carrying around a tablet, which has his/her textbooks stored. But the aim is not purely to replace existing textbooks – the value will lie in what type of interactivity can be built into a digital textbook. Instead of static images you find in normal textbooks, textbook publishers can now build in interactive features that enable the reader to better understand a particular issue – think videos, 3D models, sound clips etc.

Traditional textbook publishers will probably show off what textbook experiences they are planning for the iPad, while Apple might show some new content creation tools that will make it easier than ever to publish for the iPad. Right now the digital publishing market is also ripe for revolution with publishers being forced to code apps from scratch, or to use tools like Adobe’s Folio Builder. If Apple can build an easy to use, but powerful tool to build interactive textbooks, it will create another market in which Apple can dominate. The iPad is already doing very well, but if Apple can convince publishers to publish exclusively to the iPad, we can expect to see many students to switch to iPads.

(more…)

Microsoft is slowly but surely starting to cater for people who use Apple’s devices – and the latest app from their stable is the My Xbox Live app. If you are a big online game player, and you hate tearing yourself away from your Xbox, the Xbox Live app will keep you posted on all the activity in your Xbox community. The app is beautifully made, and gives you a very special preview to how apps look on Windows Phone – it feels a little strange having a Metro interface on your iDevice.

Here is the feature rundown: (more…)

The Daily is reporting that Microsoft is readying a version of Office for Apple’s very popular tablet computer. Microsoft has for a long time made Office for Mac, which is very popular with the Mac faithful. Even with the iPad’s limited functionality compared to the PC, the demand for the tablet is incredible. If iPad was considered a laptop computer, Apple would be the number one seller in the US. The iPad has also made significant inroads into enterprise, perhaps more so than any Apple product before it. Now Microsoft cannot stand by and watch this happen.

The iPad already has a few productivity solutions available to it from a variety of developers, the most popular being Apple’s own iWork apps which are going for $10 each. Despite their popularity, people have been clamouring for better file compatibility with an official Office software bundle for the iPad. When Microsoft does roll out Office for iPad, the bigger question would rather be what at price point it will go for. Office is traditionally quite a high priced item, but almost a necessity to many people. If Microsoft can match the $10 per app price, the demand will likely be massive.

Microsoft is no stranger to the Apple iOS platform, they already make a version of OneNote for the iPhone, and they have a few other apps as well. There is one problem though – Apple takes 30% of every app sold in the AppStore. Now will Microsoft be willing to part with this cash? Only time will tell.

Microsoft is not willing to confirm anything, but we reckon it will be a smart move by Microsoft.

Apple has been pretty late to the subscription game for its iTunes store, and has only recently started offering its iTunes Match service in the US. But Apple has now made a deal with Big Fish Games, the creator of games like “Mystery Case Files” and “Mahjong Towers”. The service will give dozens of the Big Fish games for $7 a month.

This will work in a similiar fashion to services like Netflix. Instead of purchasing a game once off, you only pay the subscription fee, and use a internet connection to play the game. You can access a free version of the service which limits the games to 3o minutes a day. This is a significant change for Apple, as they have not used a trial version system of software until now, and the use of a monthly fee for a catalogue of games is a pretty great idea. Right now the user will install the Bigfish app, and then purchase a monthly subscription in app, which is taken from iTunes credit. Apps will be streamed over air, so you might need a decent internet connection.

While iOS games typically have low purchase prices, they tend to have limited game time associated with them. While $5 for a great game is a lot cheaper than other handheld platforms, you eventually stop playing it. We can only hope Apple brings this service to other game publishers as well – only time will tell if someone like EA is willing to work with this type of distribution model.

Oh – this is of course not available in SA, so you will need a US iTunes account to make this work. If you want to be able download Apps, Music, Movies, TV Series etc from the US iTunes store, even if you live in SA, here is how to do it.

Source: Bloomberg

Android users have always had one great feature – you can easily jump to a specific setting that you need to change often with one click. This is usually done with a quick widget, and it works a whole lot faster than trawling the Settings menu to find what you are looking for.

There are certain items in the iOS settings menu more often than others. For example, I set my Brightness multiple times a day, and it gets a little tedious to go through multiple clicks just to change the brightness. Sure, you could jailbreak your iPhone to install SBSettings, but what if you do not want to go through that hassle? Luckily some enterprising South Africans (iPhoneZA) built a great site that hosts script files that contain shortcuts to any item in your settings menu.

So how do you do it? Just as an example, I am going to add the “Brightness” shortcut on my Home Screen: (more…)

So you were so eager to jump on the iOS5 update when it arrived, and now your phone wont last the day? It looks like Apple’s fancy new mobile operating system has been giving a few people very poor battery life. Well luckily Apple has fixed iOS5 with a simple Over The Air update. In the past it was a big mission to update your iPhone, requiring you to plug in your device to iTunes and then downloading a massive ipsw file.

This time it is a lot easier, provided you have iOS5 installed already. First off, make sure you have a battery above 50%, or plug your device into power:

• Go to Settings – General – Software Update
• Click Download and Install.

You can then keep using the phone for other things. The download will happen in the background, and the phone will inform you once it needs to restart.

First off, you have to be connected to a wifi network, as the update is still 40+ megabytes to download. The whole update took us about 5 minutes on a decent internet connection. iOS5 is available on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S (on which it is preinstalled). Any iPod Touch 3rd generation and newer, and any iPad can install iOS5 as well. As a bonus, this update also enables multi touch gestures on older iPad 1′s. Which might be reason enough to get it…

If you have not updated to iOS5, here are some reasons you need it right now.

The iPhone has always had a weird development cycle – it has until now always lagged a little behind in terms of features, especially compared to the very quick development cycle of Android. Even though the hardware was first rate, users have stuck by the iPhone primarily because of ease of use and the rich app ecosystem.

But today Apple has finally given the iOS operating system the shot in the arm it has always needed. If you are an iPhone or iPad user, we strongly recommend you download and install iOS5 as soon as possible. It is perhaps the most significant update that the iPhone and iPad (and iPod Touch) has gotten yet. So why would you want it? Here is the rundown of the new features – this is not all (there are a LOT), but only the most important ones:

iMessage:

For a messaging crazy country like SA, this is the number one reason to get iOS5. It basically mimics the free BBM service that Blackberry has had for ages, or the Whatsapp app that many people are familiar with. Only it is a lot smarter – and it works very well.

It works in a pretty simple fashion-the first time you send an SMS to another iOS5 user, it notes that on the Apple server (automatically, no interaction needed), and then all subsequent messages take the iMessage route which only requires a data connection. If it finds that the message cannot be delivered, it switches back to the old sms route.

And no, there is no handing out PIN numbers like BBM – you can register your email addresses (in addition to the iPhone you are using) you prefer to be contacted at with iMessage. In my testing it has worked flawlessly for the past week. For example – my wife has an iPhone as well, and all our SMS’s between each other has been free. Great.

New Notification Center:

This might be a bigger deal to some than the iMessage integration. Up until iOS4, the notification system was severely limited. You know the drill – you might be playing a game, reading an important mail etc., and then a notification takes over your entire screen. This then freezes whats underneath it, until you confirm that you read the message. The new notification system is a lot more subtle – the top of the screen simply rolls up to tell you what is up. Easy enough.

But what if you have missed the notification? With iOS5 you can now go see previous ones. Apple has gone and taken a page from Android and WebOS and built a drawer that slides down with a list of past notifications. By clicking on a line in the drawer you are taken directly to the relevant app – for example click on a tweet you have gotten, and you will be taken to the Twitter app. Same for missed calls, calendar entries, weather, etc. Want to remove the notification? Just click the close button next to it.

New Lock Screen:

The iPhone’s lock screen has always been a bit of a wasteland, with perhaps one single notification on the screen. That has luckily been fixed now, and many apps can now take a place on your lock screen to inform you about things. If you miss something it will take up a line on the lock screen, and the user can very quickly be taken to the relevant app by just sliding the icon accross the screen. Missed a call? Just drag the notification icon to the right, and the phone instantly fires up a return call. Huge improvement.

Reminders:

Yeah, yeah. How interesting can a Reminders app be? Hold on – iOS5 does make some very cool enhancements to such a mundane app. Reminders will be integrated with iCloud (and servers like Exchange for Tasks), but they have added location aware reminders as well. You can set the iPhone (or iPad) to remind you based on certain location based triggers.

For example – set a reminder like “Pick up Gift” and set it to remind you when you arrive at home. Or before you leave work. I expected this to strain my battery, but my battery held up fine. Combined with the upcoming Siri feature on the iPhone 4S, this will be amazing.

Safari:

The Safari browser on iPhone is already the most popular smartphone browser out there, and the new upgrades will make it even better. The biggest change is with the new “Reader” option. You know that irritating thing where you might be reading an article, and then you have to click to read the next page? Now you can just click on Reader, and then it goes and pulls all those pages into one page, and you can then also quickly change the font sizes. No ads as well… Just good clean text.

If you are running iOS5 on iPad you also now have real tabbed browsing, not the pseudo version like on the previous iOS. The other tabs will also load in the background, just like your desktop browser.

Camera:

For some people their phone’s camera is never that important, but for others the best camera is the one they have on them. One of the problems have always been how slow it is to start up the camera – but now it is a lot faster. Simply double tap the home button when the phone is locked, and then click the camera icon. Apple has also finally listened to users and enabled the volume up button on the side of the phone, instead of trying to click the on screen shutter button. You can also see grid lines to better compose your images.

But after you have taken the photos, you also gain some simple on device editing. Colour balance a little off? Just click edit, then auto-enhance. You can also crop an image or remove red-eye by clicking on the subject’s eyes. Yeah, these editing tools have for a long time been available on other platforms, and Apple just caught up. Good thing nonetheless.

Once your photos have been taken they can also be stored in iCloud in what Apple calls “Photo Stream”. In default mode the iPhone will automatically upload all new photos up to photo stream, and then download that to all your other iCloud connected devices, like your iPad, or PC or Mac.

iCloud Backups and PC Free setup:

Typical readers of Bandwidth Blog are quite familiar with backups we reckon (right?). But a shocking number of iPhone users have never, ever backed up their phones. Then when they lose their phone and replace it with a new iPhone, they have to start afresh. The backup system has always worked well, but required users to plug in their devices into a iTunes-installed computer. Bit tedious, especially if you do not use a computer much. Luckily now Apple bundles iOS5 with iCloud, which amongst other things enables the user to backup his phone contents to the “cloud”. All you need is a decent Wifi connection, and then you can set your device to save changes on Apple’s servers. Lose you phone? Then just unbox a new iPhone, and then enter your iCloud details to restore everything like it was before. Great.

This also means that we finally get rid of that connect to iTunes screen when you unbox a new iPhone.

iTunes Wifi Sync:

People do not like connecting their iDevice every time they want to sync with iTunes. So with iTunes 10.5 and iOS5 you can now let your device sync through Wifi. In fact it will automatically sync if the phone is connected to power, and connected to the same wifi network as your computer.

Find My Friends:

While not strictly an iOS5 feature, it did roll out with iOS5. You need to go download this app, and it really does work well. The concept is simple – you need to find a friend, and you can now request his location quickly and easily. The recipient can then share his location for 24 hours, which ought to be enough. You then get a ping on your map to show where to find your friend, with a button to quickly find directions as well. How cool is that?

So this is not a social network class tool like Google Latitude. It is simple to use – because the concept is simple.

Other Nice to Have New Features:

• Built in Twitter functionality – Set up your Twitter account in Settings, then you can quickly share from various built in apps to Twitter.
• Mail has been improved – You will now have some more control over the text formatting in composed mail. You can also quickly drag contacts between different fields like BCC, CC etc. Not rocket science. Should have been there long ago.
• Newsstand – You can now subscribe to many magazines which will now be seperately kept on a bookshelf called Newsstand. You subscribe, and new issues simply land in the Newsstand.
• Split keyboard on the iPad – You can now split the iPad keyboard into two smaller halves, which makes for better thumb typing when you cannot put the iPad down to type.

Naspers has so far been pretty quick with releasing great mobile apps to support their ever expanding empire – their News24 app is a popular app on many SA iPhones, and their recently released Supersport iPad app is a pretty great addition to any couch potato’s sports watching session. If you are already someone who watches TV with your tablet on at the same time, the new DStv guide app should prove useful.

The latest DStv guide app is now available on iPad, and it makes a lot more sense than the previous iPhone one. It uses the extra screen estate of the tablet perfectly, and the interface is exemplary to other SA app developers. It is pretty feature rich, and it serves as a great replacement for the paper based DStv guide:

The 10-day TV Guide displays in both grid and list views giving users easy access to the information they are looking for. The guide feature provides users with greater control by allowing them to sort channels according to country, genre, DStv bouquet or selected favourite channels. The DStv iPad app also allows users to set reminders for any show, movie, or sport event

.

 This app provides the latest entertainment news, keeping users abreast of local and international stories as well as news from DStv and its host of exciting TV channels. It also displays the latest TV highlights, making viewing planning for DStv subscribers so much simpler.

If there was one thing we could have asked for is better integration with PVR. While we realize it would require a big system revision, this app would be even better if I could set which shows / events to record right on the iPad, instead of only reminding us. Maybe in a future release?

See more screenshots below: (more…)