The Apple Beat: The iPad grows up

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

To say Apple is eyeing the enterprise is a huge understatement. They’ve struck deals with the likes of IBM and Cisco to create some serious, secure, and enterprise grade iOS-first solutions that should satisfy CIOs of Fortune 500 companies as well as any SMB outfit looking for a standardized set of tools.

Apple’s iPad Pro is a daring creation. It is a powerful yet portable tablet that may seem oversized to many of us used to 7, 8 and 9-inch tablets but there’s merit to the new size as well as the new functionality.

IPad Pro isn’t the first pro-focused tablet. There’s three (possibly four, by October) generations of Microsoft Surface Pros that have a similar keyboard and stylus combination. The big difference is that the Surface runs PC applications as well as some mobile ones as well.

Click to read more ...

The Apple Beat: 10 things you might have missed from Apple’s September event

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple’s September announcement was definitely a jam-packed affair. A time of year traditionally reserved for iPhones and various iOS updates, features and new apps; this week’s monumental unveiling at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium covered so much more.

You can read about the iPad Pro, the new iPhone 6s, the Apple TV as well as all the updates to Apple Watch. You can even relive the moment by watching the keynote video and all the product videos and ads. You’ll realize a lot of things you might have missed. Here are just 10 things that were briefly covered or not even mentioned during the ‘Hey Siri,’ event. 

Click to read more ...

Twitter looks to unify app experience on iOS with iPad update

Twitter is hoping to have a more unified experience on iOS with the latest update for the iPad. The tablet version of the app now sports a similar look to the iPhone app. You can now also quote tweets on the iPad. Twitter’s using an adaptive layout for the iPad so it can support new features coming to iOS 9 such as multitasking. The rollout of the update is happening on an account-by-account basis. Just wait for a bit before it hits your device.

Source: The Next Web | Download: Apple App Store (Free)

Microsoft shows off new features for Office on iPad

It’s a strange sight having a Microsoft executive present at an Apple event but it has happened. Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Office 365 client applications, took the stage at Apple’s big press event in San Francisco to demo some of the new changes in its suite of apps for Apple’s tablet. Some of the new features include being able to draw freehand shapes on Word or PowerPoint and have these translated into shapes such as arrows and circles. This new feature is designed to take advantage of the new Pencil stylus for the iPad Pro. Users can now draw annotations on documents and have those sync across Office apps on iOS and other platforms. It wasn’t mentioned though it you’ll need the Pencil stylus and only the new iPad Pro to use these features.

The Office suite of apps also now takes advantage of the multitasking features available on iOS 9. You can copy and paste content from different Office apps running side by side. An example is you can copy a chart on an Excel file and paste it to the Word document you have running alongside it on an iPad Pro or iPad Air 2. You can see this push for Microsoft products as Apple’s way to attract the enterprise market to consider its products. Apple recently partnered with IBM and Cisco to push their enterprise entry further.

Source: PCWorld