With the US launch of the iPad now just a few days away, we have been taking a look at some of the apps we know are coming to the iPad, or that we really want to see hit the platform when it launches.  

Some of this has been wishful thinking (Aperture on the iPad for example), some of it is just us getting excited about the ways we can hopefully use our iPads.

In case you missed any of the posts, we have listed them here:

Part 1 - Art (Brushes App)

Part 2 - Video (Reel Director)

Part 3 - Photography (Photoshop Mobile)

Part 4 - Music (Four Track)

Our fifth and final part of the series looks at pulling all of this together and we call it:

Creative content creation - Pages for the iPad

Why are we getting excited about Pages for the iPad?  Well, for a start, it looks gorgeous, Apple have done a fantastic job of optimising the app for the iPad as you would expect, and it stands out as a fine example for other Developers of what can be done on the iPad platform.  If you are not sure what we are talking about, take a moment to watch Apple's guided tour video for Pages first.

Looks great doesn't it?  Bearing in mind that this is version 1.0 of the software, we think that Apple have made content creation easy and fun, but at the moment Pages for the iPad only appears to create gorgeous, but static, documents.

With the ability to output to PDF or back to Pages on the Mac, this may well be enough for some Creatives, and at just under $10 we think it is a bargain given its current functionality.

Ideally though, we would like to see a bit more integration with other media. This would be a great advantage for self-published content creator.

Imagine you run a small fanzine and currently print out a greyscale magazine every few months, it takes you a long time and costs you quite a bit more than you make in subscriptions, but you love the subject and you really don't care about making money.  You have decided to take the fanzine entirely digital.  You have no budget, but you have an e-mail list of dedicated readers who are open to new ways of reading your publication.

You have a great idea for a fully integrated magazine blending together different media into one publication that you can e-mail out to your subscribers.  In your head this new fanzine has video clips, audio comments and interviews from some of the content creators you follow, a 'Fan Art' section with bios of the artists, audio messages fans have recorded on their iPhones and e-mailed to you that you want to collate together on a 'Your Comments' page and obviously plenty of photos too.  

How great would it be for someone like this, or the Educator creating learning materials, or perhaps a Student putting together a project, basically anyone who wants to produce creative content, to be able to all of this in ONE iPad application and share it with others, either on a site or via e-mail?

This is possible, we realise, with a combination of PDF (Acrobat) and ePub and possibly now HTML5 for video (HTML5 is good for iPhones/iPads), but it seems to be fiddly and/or expensive to get these documents together at the moment.  After watching the video above, we are certain that Pages could be the foundation of the one piece of software that can fulfil this need for independent, busy and probably cash-strapped creatives.  Whether the iPad can cope with all of this remains to be seen, but at this early stage it certainly seems like it will be able to, if not now, in future iterations for sure.

Pages as it is though looks great and we cannot wait to get our hands on it.

We hope you have enjoyed our mini-series of posts about the type of apps we want to be using on our iPads.  If you have any observations, or your own ideas about what you want to be using your iPad for, please let us know in the comments. 

If you haven't already, make sure you don't miss future posts by subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

Air Video is a powerful app and computer server combination that can stream videos in almost any format to your iPhone and iPod Touch. Like us you probably have a collection of your favourite films and TV shows on your computer. Before Air Video the only getting non compatible videos files onto your iPhone was to transcode them into an approved Apple format. This takes time and obviously eats into your precious device storage space. With Air Video for iPhone and the free Air Video Server installed on your Mac or PC you now have the option to stream video from your computer to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The big win is that the source video can be in almost any format and at practically any resolution, the free server software does all the transcoding in realtime. Obviously there is a slight pause while the transcoder kicks in, but it's only a few seconds even for a 1080p HD source video.

If you've not tried it yet, you really must. Fortunately there is a free version available, so you have no excuse.

An iPad specific version is in the works, it may not make it in time for the launch on Saturday, but it shouldn't be too far behind. The thought of streaming our HD copy of Blade Runner to Apple's 'Latest Creation' is making us more than a little giddy!

We're not sure why, but this makes us want to develop an app for the iPad just so we can play with these stencils in Omnigraffle.  iA (InformationArchitects) are giving them away free in a bundle that you can use to mock up designs for apps on the iPad.  As an added bonus, "the text is fully editable on the lists, title bars, buttons, and scroll wheels", so you can overlay your own text on those elements, nice.  Check out the site and download the set here.

With the US launch of the iPad now less than a week away, we take a look at some of the apps we know are coming to the iPad, or that we really want to see hit the platform when it launches.

Some of this is wishful thinking, some of it is just us getting excited about the ways we can hopefully use our iPads. Between now and launch day we will post one app from each core area of the creative sphere. Part 4 of 5 is...

Music - FourTrack

What developers have been able to achieve with the iPhone OS has really impressed us, and the functionality that Sonoma Wire Works have squeezed out of a device like the iPhone as far as audio recording and processing has rarely been bettered in our opinion.

If you are not familiar with what it does, FourTrack emulates the old cassette tape 4-Tracks like the ones that Fostex used to make, and that many bands and musicians used to record their creations on to.  From Sonoma Wire Works' website:

FourTrack multitrack audio recorder is a songwriting and practice tool for singers, guitar players, piano players, and others who want to capture musical ideas and record songs on the iPhone and iPod touch.

With this software on your iPhone and the right sort of external equipment you can even record a 'hit record', as indie band 'The '88' demonstrate in the video below (it is actually this video which made us buy the app for our iPhones).

However, this is not a review of FourTrack for the iPhone, what we want is a bigger and better version of this software, or something very much like it, for the iPad.  In fact what we really want is GarageBand for the iPad, or maybe even a cut down version much like the iPhoto / Aperture-mini we suggested for Photo editing in yesterday's post. 

Perhaps then we could have 6 or maybe even 8 tracks without needing to 'bounce down' tracks (always a compromise)?  Maybe we could have editable waveforms for recorded tracks instead of needing to export the tracks via wi-fi back to our Macs?  What about a raft of per-track audio effects that can be applied on-the-fly with the extra processing power the iPad affords, just like we can in GarageBand?  There are many possible ways this type of audio recording software could be developed that excite us greatly.  

We think there may be some hardware limitations on what can be input to the iPad, as there are with the iPhone, but the ingenious developers have worked around these things before to bring us solutions like FourTrack.

There was no official word from Sonoma Wire Works about iPad development when we asked them, but we have a feeling we will see something from them very soon, and we cannot wait!

Don't forget to check back tomorrow for Part 5 of our Top 5 apps we cannot wait to see on the iPad. If you haven't already, make sure you don't miss it by subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

Jamie and Simon Edis have been busy tuning up their voice activated iPhone iPuppets for the iPad. Here again is another class of app that is -- unless you have a very small head -- far better suited to the larger screen of the iPad. Kids and their unabashed parents now have another reason to make that purchase in April.

Be sure to check out the Ezone.com website for updates and why not try out the free iPhone iPuppet, Blue Monster.

Let's hope Jamie and Simon get around to making a Steve Jobs iPuppet, We're sure children the world over would be enthralled by classic Steve Jobs keynote speech reenactments. Boom!

Apple have just added some new iPad videos for us to explore and pore over, on the iPad section of their site.

We are still watching through them, but they have impressed us so far.  The guided tours include a lot more detail about the functions of each app, detail we have not seen before, so it is a first glimpse for most of us at what we can expect on 3rd April.

Included also are guided tours for Keynote, Pages and Numbers.  Ok, we are going back to watch the rest of the videos, check them out for yourself here.

With the US launch of the iPad now less than a week away, we take a look at some of the apps we know are coming to the iPad, or that we really want to see hit the platform when it launches.

Some of this is wishful thinking, some of it is just us getting excited about the ways we can hopefully use our iPads. Between now and launch day we will post one app from each core area of the creative sphere. Part 3 of 5 is...

Photography: Photoshop Mobile App

Admittedly, with regard to photography, we could have picked any number of photo apps currently available for the iPhone. To varying degrees, they all allow manipulation and enhancement of your photos. So it was very difficult to decide on just one.

Really, this is a representative pick, but the Photoshop Mobile app is one that we have used a lot on our iPhones and we would love to see a killer version created for the iPad, taking into account the screen size and extra processing power Adobe could use.

We are all fairly keen amateur photographers here and so we are eagerly looking forward to getting our hands on the iPad and putting it through its paces with photo editing and processing. But what would be really nice is an app that can handle some sort of RAW image processing. The desktop version of Photoshop can obviously handle RAW files, but with the camera connector kit and the capability of pulling images off of a memory card, the iPad completely trumps anything the iPhone can do.

And it would seem a real shame to see the iPad used as just a portable disk drive, without any ability to edit the photos once they are on there. With the latest update to Apple's desktop photo processing software, Aperture 3.0.2, comes iPad support. Initially it looks like it is just syncing with the iPad and recognising it as a photo storage device that is supported.

But imagine if there was a mini-Aperture (or even iPhoto) in the pipeline for the iPad, then things could get really interesting, and for Mac users, the editing and syncing experience could be seamless, with edits made on the iPad carried across and remaining editable back on your Mac.  Bliss!

As it stands at the moment though, Photoshop Mobile has fairly basic, but effective and easy to use editing functions and its clean interface and speed on the iPhone has impressed us so far. We can only hope that Adobe are prepping an iPad native re-design of the app as we speak.

It may not happen on launch day but we expect someone, if not Adobe, to come forward fairly soon with photo-editing software on the iPad that will blow us away.

Don't forget to check back tomorrow for Part 4 of our Top 5 apps we cannot wait to see on the iPad. If you haven't already, make sure you don't miss it by subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

With the US launch of the iPad now less than a week away, we take a look at some of the apps we know are coming to the iPad, or that we really want to see hit the platform when it launches.

Some of this is wishful thinking, some of it is just us getting excited about the ways we can hopefully use our iPads. Between now and launch day we will post one app from each core area of the creative sphere. Part 2 of 5 is...

Video: Reel Director app

Reel Director stands out in the current app store offerings as the video editing app of choice. It has enabled iPhone users to edit and output videos that could arguably be mistaken for iMovie produced videos. But it can be a bit painful carrying out editing, and viewing the timeline on the iPhone's screen.

Enter the iPad, with the same ease of use, but bags of extra room to view the timeline and video plus a good deal more extra processing power (very important for video). We have not seen anything from Nexvio about their plans for developing Reel Director on the iPad, so this is just wishful thinking at the moment.

However, it is not hard to imagine being able to stretch the timeline across the full horizontal width of the screen, have multi layered tracks stacked on top of each other with an iMovie like Canvas showing a preview of the movie on the fly, easier adding of audio and transitions, there is so much that could be done.

We are hoping that, just because the iPad cannot shoot video, it doesn't run into the issues faced by iPod Touch and iPhone 3G users, who were not able to initially load and edit video with Reel Director due to Apple restrictions on file access for these devices. It seems unlikely, and it would be very short-sighted of Apple to cripple the iPad in such a way, especially when it seems the ideal device on which to do this consumer level of video editing.

Until we get our hands on the iPad though we won't know for sure, but for now, take a look at Reel Director as it currently appears on the iPhone OS:

Don't forget to check back tomorrow for Part 3 of our Top 5 apps we cannot wait to see on the iPad. If you haven't already, make sure you don't miss it by subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

With the US launch of the iPad now less than a week away, we take a look at some of the apps we know are coming to the iPad, or that we really want to see hit the platform when it launches.

Some of this is wishful thinking, some of it is just us getting excited about the ways we can hopefully use our iPads. Between now and launch day we will post one app from each core area of the creative sphere. Part 1 of 5 is...

Art: Brushes app

One of the things that initially excited us about the iPhone was the perfectly implemented touch interface, especially when we started playing with the doodling and sketch apps. But we quickly found the size of the iPhone screen a little frustrating to work with. Yes, we could zoom in and out to see the detail on the iPhone, but it has to be said that it is still a bit too fiddly on a 3.5 inch screen.

However, when we saw the iPad being demonstrated it wasn’t reading our newspapers and magazines, or watching movies, or playing games that crossed our minds first of all (although these things are really exciting us), no! It was the thought of using that lovely touch interface to draw graceful arcs across the 9.7 inch screen, washing in a watercolour fill on a skyscape background, or seeing our whole sketch, drawing or image and then picking out the detail and zooming in with all that extra elbow room the iPad screen will allow us to use.

And then we saw Steve Sprang demo his Brushes app, completely revamped for the iPad interface, and our heads exploded! This was it, the perfect app for the iPad’s new supersized touch screen. So we had to mention this one first really, this was the app that sparked our imagination during the iPad keynote. Steve Sprang looks to have done a fantastic job with this app, the interface has been optimised to use the full screen real estate that has been given him, the tools look gorgeous and easy to use, it uses layers, implementing them really well and, watching the demo, you may not even need a stylus, but if you do this one looks good.

Check out the video demo of Brushes for the iPad below:

Don't forget to check back tomorrow for Part 2 of our Top 5 apps we cannot wait to see on the iPad. If you haven't already, make sure you don't miss it by subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

Ok, we don't usually do this type of post, but because it is Friday and nearly pay day for many of us here in the UK (and, more importantly, only one week away from the iPad launch for you fortunate US residents) here is a link to the ipadaccessories.com Essential Accessories for the iPad.

Our favourite?  The horrendously-overpriced but lovely-all-the-same Muzetto iPad Messenger Bag.  In fact, their round-up of messenger bags has got all of us creative types reaching for the credit card.

And, just for a laugh, let's not forget The Joy of Tech's take on how to carry your iPad.

Enjoy!

Earlier this week, the new Chairman of the UK television network ITV, Archie Norman, e-mailed all his staff requesting they contact him directly with comments on a new strategy for how the company can move forward. 

But the comments he makes later in the Telegraph article show what he thinks the future of TV networks is likely to be, paid content on mobile devices and computers.  And the mobile device he specifically mentions?  Of course, the iPad!

"I think it is very likely [we will use some elements of pay-TV] because one of the things that is going to happen as people consume their television off different platforms — such as internet-enabled TV, off your laptop, off your iPad as you commute to work — for some parts of the content that ITV own or others own, people will pay."

This is interesting because it shows how major content providers see us using our iPads, as well as other mobile devices.  The rest of the Telegraph article is worth reading too for an idea of how corporate networks are thinking.

In another news story this morning, the BBC are reporting that UK newspapers the Times and the Sunday Times will begin charging for access to their online news service from June.  They will launch new versions of their websites in May, offering an initial free trial period, before charging £1 for one day's access or £2 a week for a regular subscription.  It is not something we are used to here in the UK so, as the article says, it will be interesting to see whether this 'high risk strategy' pays off, or if people instead go to the free sources of news that abound around the Internet.

The New York Times is itself reporting that advertisers are going for a 'land grab' of sorts over advertising space in certain iPad apps before the April 3 launch.  The NY Times comments that this is arguably the hottest time to be in front of punters' eyes whilst the excitement lasts.

Those of us familiar with the iPad launch event will remember well the New York Times demo of their app for the iPad, and this is certainly how many people see themselves using the iPad.

The iPad Catalyst

You may think it is going a little too far calling the introduction of the iPad a catalyst, but that is how many see it, for the content creators especially.

Just like the iTunes store affected the music sales model and the iPhone shaped the development of 'SmartPhone' or mobile apps, we think the iPad has the potential to shape the future of content delivery.

Whether the 'paid content' model works or not is going to depend on a lot of factors, some of those being cost, quality of content, accessibility (i.e. independent stores or everything routed via Apple's iTunes/iBookstore), and quality of service, especially for video based content.

Have an opinion about paid content on the iPad?  Let us know in the comments.

We are perhaps a few years away from playing holographic chess as R2 and Chewbacca did on the Falcon, but the pieces are beginning to fall into place. Movile Inc. recently informed Touch Arcade's forum members of its plans to bring BoardBox to the iPad. "BoardBox is set to be the most graphically rich and realistic looking board game set on iPad... With dozens of features and true-to-life visuals, BoardBox is the only board game you will need on your iPad! Grab a friend and play a game of Chess, Checkers, or Reversi. Turn off the rules and make up your own! Play with a friend around the world via email!"

Here again is yet another example of a class of application that is better suited to the larger screen of the iPad. With a launch price of just $3.99 we think Movile Inc. could have a huge hit with BoardBox. 

We have fond memories of playing Pangea Soft's delightful games on our lustrous new Mac hardware. Back in the day, most new iMacs and iBooks came with Bugdom or Cro-Mag Rally preinstalled. Recently, Pangea Soft have enjoyed considerable success in porting its popular Mac catalogue to the iPhone/iPad Touch platform. Puzzle games like Enigmo and Enigmo 2 have been ported perfectly, whilst the classic Mac platformer, Otto Matic, was less successful due mostly to control issues.

Pangea Soft's founder Brian Greenstone recently informed iPad Creative of his plans for the iPad. The team have "been working like crazy on getting our best sellers ported first.  The plan is to eventually get all of our iPhone apps moved over."

Knowing that we may only be a month away from playing Enigmo 2 on the iPad has got the iPad Creative team in a tiz. In truth, it's hard to think of any puzzle game that is more suited to Apple's new large touch screen computing platform.

Macrumrors have reported that Apple are promoting the iPad to Educational Institutions with a special 10-pack bundle for the Wi-fi only models (not the 3G models).  Academic organisations can benefit from the fairly modest saving of $20 (about £13.41) for non AppleCare iPads and a slightly better $40 (£26.82) discount per unit if they opt for AppleCare. 

The iPads will be supplied in one big box without individual packaging though, so it is very much a distribution pack. The Educational establishment will not be allowed to resell them of course.

Individuals (Students/Educators) who would normally receive an Educational discount from the Apple Store are not included though it seems.  We have gone through the Education Store and verified that no discount is applied if shopping for just the one iPad.

Why is this of interest? 

Even before the iPad was announced, many commenters discussed the merit of using the device in an Education environment, and it excites us to think of the creative uses the iPad can have in a classroom. 

It is easy to think of how the iPad can be used in areas such as art, music/audio and video production, Languages, Geography, Design, etc.  It also seems a natural fit for Internet based research, as well as being used for textbooks and e-learning. 

In fact, when you sit and think about it for a minute, there are many possibilities of using such a simple, and let's face it gorgeous, device in the Education arena.

The modest discounts offered here aren't going to completely enable the adoption of the iPad, but it does mean that Apple are thinking along these lines too and this opens up new opportunities for engaging learners of any age, but especially those of school age, who arguably have more of a leaning towards the use of technology in their learning.

Have you got any ideas for how the iPad can be used in Education?  We would love to hear them in the comments.

We knew it was coming but Amazon have officially announced their Kindle App for 'Tablet computers including the iPad' (italics ours) on their website.  The announcement focusses on the app, but the iPad makes it into the headline, with a specific mention later on too.  It is an interesting play for Amazon, especially when many pundits have said that Apple is looking to put some pressure on Amazon with their iBookstore.

The Kindle app has been available on the iPhone for just over a year now, but the iPhone is not really suited for reading books or magazines for most people.  This announcement is of note because it appears to duplicate one of Apple's most touted iPad features, the iBookstore.  Business Insider have an interesting side-by-side comparison of the two apps on their site and it is obvious which one is Apple's, as they say:

So far, it looks like Apple is winning the design contest, especially for its e-book store.

 Duplication = customer choice?

There is certainly function duplication here, and Apple have refused apps on the iPhone simply because they 'duplicated functionality' already installed on the device.  However, the deals that Amazon have with publishers and the books they have available should differ from Apple's selection in theory.

In addition, Apple would certainly be seen to be anti-competitive if they refused the Kindle app simply because it sold books too, wouldn't they?

However, as Amazon are announcing the Kindle app, we can only assume it will be available in the app store for the iPad sometime after it launches.  It is a complex relationship that Apple and Amazon has at the moment and it will be fun watching it pan out.  Our only hope is that the choice will remain in the app store, to the benefit of us, the end consumer.

What do you think about Amazon's play here?  Let us know in the comments.

Australia's first iPad app is going to be a medical encyclopaedia according to Mogeneration. In conjunction with Medwords, they have announced the publication of Carter’s Encyclopaedia of Health and Medicine, and it will be released first on the iPad.

This 1,100 page medical encyclopaedia will have the traditional look of a hardback encyclopaedia, but it will contain interactive images, a browsing history and allow you to add bookmarks. From the screenshots on Mogeneration's website it looks a lot like the Dorling Kindersley Human Body book for the iPad, demoed by Penguin publishing, which we blogged about a few weeks ago.

However, this is interesting from two perspectives:

1) This is an example of a serious use of the iPad for educational purposes and much is being said about the iPad and the impact it could have on the field of education and research.

2) Mogeneration's publishing framework is quite interesting. It allows any content creator to publish their content via a native iPad/iPhone (and Android) app, which can then be purchased through the App store, but they do the development work.

Mogeneration are not the first to offer this service and provide books via apps in iTunes, but from a creative point of view this kind of service is interesting. It is an alternative to the more traditional publishing route using the iBook store that Apple will be introducing with the iPad launch.

Once the iPad is launched this is certainly the approach that we expect many self-publishing Creatives to take in getting their content onto the iTunes App store without having to deal with Publishers and all that entails, thus joining the hundreds of other 'appbook' publishers already there. It is an area that we expect to develop rapidly and we will be watching with great interest.

Here's what that we know so far. The iPad uses Apple's own A4 chipset. At the heart of the chipset is the Arm Cortex (probably A8) processor running 1GHz. The GPU (the processor that handles all graphics, both 2D and 3D) is a variant of the PowerVR SGX design. This makes the iPad broadly similar to the iPhone 3GS. The 3GS uses the same CPU but clocked at 600MHz and is assisted by the PowerVR SGX 535.

Anatomy of Apple Design from Transparent House on Vimeo.

Though there are some glaring omissions in this gorgeous CGI production, you can't help but be captivated by the design journey that Apple have taken us on over the last 34 years. This has left us wondering what the Apple computers of 2044 might look like. Neural implants perhaps? (via: www.stylecowboys.nl)

These are the living conditions of the first iPads to venture outside 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino. According to Business Week, only a handful of carefully chosen developers are getting the opportunity to test their iPad apps on actual iPad hardware. The chosen few have to comply with multi-page agreements and even go so far as to provide photographic evidence that they are putting these extreme security measures in place.

While it's tempting to assume that these security requirements are in order to hide some previously unknown features of the iPad, it's more likely just Steve Jobs wanting to ensure that the launch day is as hyped as possible. If Apple can keep a secure lid on this thing right up until launch day we'll be amazed, but if anyone can, Apple can. "Radar about to be jammed!"

IGN have been been offering some fairly extensive iPhone and iPod Touch game coverage of late, it's certainly worth a visit if you are looking for detailed iPhone gaming news and reviews. IGN Wireless has posted a list of 8 games which it would like to see reworked for the iPad. Right at the top of the list is PopCap's marvellously addictive Plants vs. Zombies. We totally agree with IGN's take, "The iPad's 9.7-inch screen will gives some breathing room to the battlefield and allow PopCap to restore the original, handsome plant and zombies sprites."

If you haven't yet tried Plants vs. Zombies you really should. It strikes the perfect balance between fun and challenging. Try it for free by downloading the PC/Mac demo version, or pickup the full iPhone app for just £1.79. It's also worth noting that PopCap is giving away a nice selection of wallpapers and even a full MP3 from its website.