Hasta La Gadget!

Utilities are the vegetables of the software world — not fun, rarely pretty, but gosh darnit, they’re good for you. Whether they’re checking that your new TV has been mounted square on the wall, crunching your numbers, getting you up in the morning, or keeping track of your mad ramblings in the middle of the night, these little bundles of binary joy can save your job (or your marriage) every time an iPad game almost destroys it. We’ve taken a close look at a few of the utilities available to iPad owners in the first volley of native, high-resolution apps for the platform and come away with a few winners — and even better, some of these suckers come at absolutely no cost to you. Follow the break for the full rundown — and don’t forget to check the rest of our app roundups after you’re done!

Continue reading iPad apps: utilities you need

iPad apps: utilities you need originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Apr 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As you might’ve notice, either here on the site or likely elsewhere on the internet, we at Engadget have somewhat of an affinity to social networking. With a new screen sitting here saving us some screen real estate, we decided to give a number of Twitter and other pro-social apps a go for perennially staying connected to our online friends — so long as there’s a decent WiFi connection nearby. Here’s the highlights from what we’ve toyed with, and stay tuned for even more roundups on the horizon.

Twitterific for iPad (free; $4.99 for Pro account) – Definitely the best Twitter app on the iPad so far (pictured above). It works great in portrait and landscape, contextual links conveniently pop out and photos even get special format treatment. No option to upload photos when tweeting, but we’re guessing with a lack of a camera, it didn’t seem as necessary an addition — we like to show off our screen captures and saved browsing images, but hey, that’s just us. The only deterrent for power users is that you can only view one column at a time, but with lists, saved searches, and all other thread options easily accessible from the leftmost column, we didn’t find it too inconvenient whatsoever. [See in iTunes]

Continue reading iPad apps: Twitter and social networking essentials

iPad apps: Twitter and social networking essentials originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stephen Elop, el presidente of Microsoft’s business division has stated that his company has “no current plans” to port its Office productivity suite over to the iPad. Contenting itself with a “wait and see” approach, the Redmond outfit isn’t willing to completely close the door of possibility, but earlier hopes of seeing family favorites like Word and Excel on the iPad might have to be doused for the time being. Should that hamper the enjoyment of your new slate, you might want to console yourself with the extravagantly priced SiteClone Publisher, also available for the iPhone, which converts $900 of your hard-earned cashola into a tool that downloads data off particular sites while online, so that the user may access that content even without a connection. Doesn’t sound worthy of a tenth of its price, but maybe the government and corporate entities it’s aimed at will appreciate it more. Finally, Apple Insider is reporting whispers that Apple retail employees will be getting freebie iPads at some indeterminate point in the future, while NeoSmart has a particularly insightful breakdown of the differences between PowerPC, x86, and ARM CPU instruction sets. Hit up the links below for the full edifying experience.

iPad misses out on Office romance, but gains a $900 app and more originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You can’t deny, it’s pretty metaphysically silly to be playing a board game your parents bought at a yard sale for $2 on a $500+ iPad, in conjunction with two or more $200+ iPhones. Mix in service plans, accessories, the price of the app ($10), and the bribes you’ll have to pay your friends to join in on something so embarrassing, and you’re really pushing the limits of common sense with Scrabble for the iPad. But we will say this: it is pretty cool. We just paired up a couple iPhones (running the free Tile Rack app) and joined in with the iPad over Bluetooth or WiFi (the app makes it unclear as to which particular wireless tech is doing the honors at the moment, but both work) and in moments we were swiping tiles up to the iPad with the best of them.

Surprisingly, it makes a game of scrabble go much faster, since the computer does all those difficult maths for you, but the experience isn’t without its shortcomings. If you exit the Scrabble app to the home screen, or accidentally brush the “Menu” button on the iPad app, your game is completely gone. There isn’t even a helpful warning like “are you sure you want to end this game you just invested an hour of your life into without even saving or something?” There not even an option to save a game and resume at later date. The app is more forgiving if you drop a connection with your iPhone, or lock the screen on the iPad for a moment, but we’d really appreciate it if EA rounded off some of these rough edges before we chuck the iPad across the room in a Scrabble-induced rage. Check out video playthrough after the break.

Continue reading Scrabble for the iPad: stir in some iPhones and it’s the best $1,000 you ever spent on a board game

Scrabble for the iPad: stir in some iPhones and it’s the best $1,000 you ever spent on a board game originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Apr 2010 15:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just because you don’t have/want/like the iPad doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun with one anyway. Set any of these images as the background on a your friend’s iPad, and watch the chaos ensue when they turn it on. More »