ipadapps

In case you hadn't heard, the sky is falling.

iPad apps as we've known them are about to get super-sized and are now on a collision course with whatever space you thought you had on your iPad--old or new. Early evidence pointing in that direction comes from Apple's own applications, which were all updated last week to coincide with its new tablet, and became considerably larger as a result.

As my colleague Jason Parker detailed earlier this week, Pages--the word processor app in Apple's iOS iWork suite--jumped from 95MB to 269MB, while Numbers--Apple's spreadsheet app--increased … Read more

Editor's note: This a guest post by Igor Faletski, whose bio is below.

Since the Apple App store opened on July 10, 2008, it has paid out more than $4 billion to iOS developers--70 percent of the $5.71 billion it has booked in revenue.

Pretty big numbers, right?

Well, yes and no. Yes, those are big numbers that make my head spin and dwarf my personal tax return. At the same time, the real answer has to be no.

In the mobile commerce world, $4 billion is significant, but it's not a headline. It's more … Read more

What is a "book" on an iPad? It's a question that bears some consideration, because the very nature of a tablet redefines the book experience.

According to Apple, iBooks 2 is the answer. However, plenty of booklike apps on the iPad also redefine the territory; the newly released Bats!: Furry Fliers of the Night doesn't live in iBooks, but this app feels as next-gen as Apple's iBooks offerings, or more so.… Read more

The official iTunes U app announced at today's Apple educational event is a coming out of the closet for iTunes U, in a more profound way than Apple's Newsstand was for magazines and newspapers. Launch iTunes U, and you're even greeted with a similar wooden bookshelf, albeit in a darker shade. That's where the similarities end.… Read more

Microsoft has launched software for Apple's iPad at a blistering pace of late, and there's some consternation about whether these moves are wise.

First, Microsoft realizes that it doesn't dominate computing anymore--especially the mobile world. That reality is running into another key fact: Microsoft applications are everywhere.

In other words, Microsoft's plans to launch iPad versions of OneNote, Lync and SkyDrive, which isn't optimized for Apple's tablet, is just smart business. Simply put, the killer app on a single platform days are over.

Mary Jo Foley noted:

My contacts seem somewhat divided as to … Read more

D Day is upon us, for both veteran and fairly new fathers who love their tech gadgets.

From the "Daddy Tech Tandem" Scott Stein and Joseph Kaminski, here are iPad apps our kids love. Why the iPad? Currently, for both of us, it's our sons' gadget of choice. Joe's son's apps now populate more than an entire page on his iPad 2. (Joe bets his son's apps exceed his own in total cost.) Scott's "son apps" folder has bled over into a sequel. More and more, our iPads are becoming theirs. … Read more

Web video streaming has always been a selective experience on Apple devices, limited to specialized apps and HTML5-enabled Web sites. Even the recent announcement of Hulu Plus doesn't fully solve the problem, with its selective library and high monthly cost.

The makers of PlayOn, a useful media-streaming program for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, have a new solution, in the form of an iPhone version of the PlayOn app. It will be available in the iTunes App Store as a free download starting July 15, but it requires you to own the PC-based PlayOn software, which unfortunately recently moved from a one-time purchase to an annual subscription model, with rates running from $5 to $40 per year, depending on whether you're an existing customer (discounted deals are occasionally offered as well).

Previously, I described how PlayOn helped me decide to mothball the media center PC connected to my home theater setup, as it provides for on-the-fly streaming and transcoding of Hulu (and content from a handful of other online sources), plus video files from the local PC the PlayOn server software resides on. It's an imperfect, sometimes clunky solution, but the ability to get Hulu running on a big-screen TV via your game console makes it a killer app.

The new iPhone app works much the same way, streaming the content from Hulu and other sources from a base PC on your network to your iPhone. Simply download and install the PlayOn software on a laptop or desktop (there's a two-week free trial), and have it run in the background. Once you install the PlayOn app on your iPhone, it will see the PC and connect, then let you choose from a variety of media sources. … Read more

I've had the 32GB iPad for almost two weeks now and I'm really happy with my purchase. There are not as many apps available at this early stage as I had hoped, but I suspect that there are many developers working furiously to make their app ready for the new device.

So far, most of the apps I've tried for iPad are fine-tuned, HD versions of their iPhone counterparts. While it can be a little hit or miss as far as whether they are worth the extra cash (especially if you already paid for them on iPhone), … Read more