Books, email, and iPads, oh my! Our articles cover the gamut this week, starting with Apple’s announcement of iPad availability and pricing in a variety of countries. We’re also pleased to announce the release of ebooks about Apple Mail on the Mac, managing spam with Apple Mail, and the Mail app on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Elsewhere in this issue, Glenn Fleishman takes a long look at reading books on the iPad and covers the new Eye-Fi Geo X2 Wi-Fi SD card, Mark Anbinder examines Bento for iPad, and Adam reports on a new plug-in for Gmail that provides social networking details for email correspondents. Finally, if you want to peruse the past, we note the reappearance of nearly all the old Info-Mac Digests from yesteryear. Notable software releases this week include MarsEdit 3.0, Aperture 3.0.3, Typinator 4.0, Mac Pro Audio Update 1.1, Epson Printer Drivers 2.3.1 for Mac OS X 10.6, and Phone Amego 1.1.20.
Thanks to the new Info-Mac folks for bringing nearly all the old Info-Mac Digests back online for historical reference.
Apple Mail and the Mail app are among the most commonly used applications on the Mac, the iPad, the iPhone, and the iPod touch, so we're especially happy to bring you three ebooks that provide comprehensive guidance, spam prevention advice, and troubleshooting help for these programs.
Apple revealed that the iPad will appear on 28 May 2010 in nine countries outside the United States, with pre-orders beginning 10 May 2010. Another set of countries follows in July. Hardware and service pricing has been announced for most of the included nations.
Eye-Fi, makers of an SD memory card with Wi-Fi transfer capabilities, will offer an improved version for sale by Apple Stores in May 2010. Eye-Fi also announced a deal with Devicescape to make it easier to upload to many more hotspots.
Tired of ignoring the ads in Gmail's Web interface? The new Rapportive plug-in replaces them with information about the current message's sender, complete with connections to that person's social networking data, where available.
Many early iPad apps are little more than what you'd get running an iPhone app with its pixels doubled - stretched-out user interfaces with more space, but nothing new. Not so for the Bento personal database app, available now for your shiny new iPad.
Glenn Fleishman tries reading in several apps - iBooks, Kindle for iPad, and GoodReader for iPad - and finds the experience uniformly positive.
Notable software releases this week include MarsEdit 3.0, Aperture 3.0.3, Typinator 4.0, Mac Pro Audio Update 1.1, Epson Printer Drivers 2.3.1 for Mac OS X 10.6, and Phone Amego 1.1.20.
All the interesting bits we found on the Web this week revolve around the iPad and iPhone, not terribly surprisingly. Most fascinating are Jakob Nielsen's iPad usability test findings, along with Bytemobile's tests showing that the iPad consumes more data than an iPhone. Also, Jeff Carlson talks about iPad 3G details on a MacJury podcast, and we note that Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference sold out in only eight days, despite focusing mostly on iPhone OS topics.