Lucifer, call the furnace repairman: Microsoft finally unveiled the much-rumored iPad version of its popular Office productivity suite. Office for iPad includes the familiar Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, available as individual downloads. Microsoft previously made another Office app, OneNote, free for Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows and Windows Phone. Those wanting unrestricted use of the other iPad apps will be disappointed. Although anyone can download Office for iPad to harness it as a reading and presenting tool, access to editing features requires an Office 365 subscription, like its iPhone sibling. Such subscriptions start at $6.99 per month or $69.99 a year for personal versions of Office 365. Microsoft today has good news for iPhone and Android users, as well: the Office Mobile apps for those platforms are now free for home use (businesses still need to pay). This brings those mobile apps in line with the also-gratis Office Mobile app for Windows Phone.The announcement came at a San Francisco media event keynoted by Satya Nadella in his first major appearance as the company’s new chief executive.

Microsoft has released the much-rumored Office for iPad, which is free for reading Office documents, but editing requires an Office 365 subscription.

When the fifth Apple II rolled off the assembly line in 1977, it went to Team Electronics in Minneapolis inside a leather case festooned with an Apple logo (mysteriously lacking a bite mark). That makes the Team Electronics store, which eventually became Twin Cities institution FirstTech, the first and oldest continually operating Apple reseller. Alas, FirstTech is calling it quits, citing pricing pressure from national resellers after Apple recently loosened restrictions on minimum prices. FirstTech has already closed its Rochester, Minnesota store, which opened just months ago, and will shutter its Minneapolis headquarters on 29 March 2014. A TwinCities.com report by TidBITS contributor Julio Ojeda-Zapata has the fascinating details, plus a video excerpt from the “Welcome to Macintosh” documentary with background on how FirstTech came about and its historical importance in the Apple world. “And it all started in Minnesota,” the video notes.

In the third of a series of articles looking at solutions for mobile workers, the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s Julio Ojeda-Zapata, a lifelong Apple fan, gave the Microsoft Surface a chance and was surprised by what he found.

In the second of a series of looks at perhaps-unexpected hardware choices for Apple users, the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s Julio Ojeda-Zapata turns his attention to Chromebooks, laptops essentially built around a Web browser that turn out to be surprisingly compelling for certain audiences.

In the first of a short series of articles looking at perhaps unexpected hardware choices for those in the Apple world, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, explains why the iPad Air is the perfect tool for his trade.

If you want to watch your favorite TV shows on your Mac - or your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch - whenever you want, a bit of hardware and software from Elgato will let you do so without spending money in the iTunes Store or relying on dodgy BitTorrent sites.

Unsatisfied with your current Twitter client, but overwhelmed by the number of options out there? Julio Ojeda-Zapata, tired of using Twitter from his Web browser, tries out three new Twitter applications for the Mac: Nambu, Lounge, and the just-released Tweetie.