Do you ever find yourself frantically trying to fish your phone out of a pocket or purse to find out whether that beep or buzz from the device is an important call, text or email — or just something you can ignore? What if you could simply glance at your watch to find out?

I assure you that I will never step another foot into that Apple Store again.

There is absolutely no reason to have an EasyPay system in place if the sales associates are going to make their paying customers feel like thieves.

Notifi is a small app that does nothing on its own; rather, it watches your Mac for particular events and then uses Notification Center to alert you to those events.

Each of the tables feature a different iconic moment from the Star Wars saga. With 3-D art and unique gameplay, users can control some beloved characters including Luke Skywalker, Boba Fett, Anakin Skywalker, and Ahsoka Tano.

If the growth sustains, it means that the predictions we’ve been hearing for a decade and a half have finally come true: Digital sales are increasing fast enough to outpace the decline in physical. Last year, digital grew 9 percent and accounted for 34 percent of revenue.

If you would like to test Apple's XProtect system, you can now safely do so with the latest definitions update.

Legal forms, letters, and other documents are progressively migrating to digital media; however, the need for applying a signature to them is often still a requirement. While you can print these forms out, sign them and then fax, scan, or e-mail them after signing, another option is to apply a digitally saved version of your signature.

Adobe has released an emergency security update for its widely used Flash media player to patch a vulnerability being actively exploited on the Internet. The company is advising Windows and Mac users to install it in the next 72 hours.

PhotoBulk is an OS X app that should interest webmasters, photographers, and anyone who must manage and edit a lot of images.

Developers need to stop trying to invent new “cute” gestures.

Though supplies of its new iMac remain somewhat constrained, Apple appears to be making some headway in bringing supply of the machine into rough parity with demand. To wit, new data from NPD that shows Mac sales up significantly this year.

If strumming old folk songs on the acoustic guitar is starting to feel a bit (ahem) played out, maybe it’s time to explore the wild world of electro-wankery.

And the idea that people will wear things like this everywhere (as opposed to special specific scenarios, like workers in an environment where their hands are otherwise occupied, like, say, surgeons) strikes me as creepy as hell.

I'm agnostic about Mac versus Windows--both have their advantages. But the iMac's ability to keep running as though it's fresh out of the box, plus the crisp screen, thin design, and speedy processor make this all-in-one a good business buy.

While Mail is a great little program, it’s full of hidden features. Here are some of my favorite tips to get the most from Mail.

From linking bank accounts and credit cards to inputting bills and expenses, Pageonce is easy to use and understand. If you've got investments, it can also help you keep track of those as well.

The ad, focused on apps for photographers and video editors and iTunes Store content, also included a brief demonstration of Apple’s Maps showing a 3D animation of the historical Hollywood sign.

More than four years after it started selling iPhones in India, Apple Inc is now aggressively pushing the iconic device through installment payment plans that make it more affordable, a new distribution model and heavy marketing blitz.

But I have trouble forming a coherent picture of an evolution that would let Apple open the iPad to more demanding users — without sacrificing its great simplicity and falling into the fridge + toaster trap.

There isn’t a single quality modern filesystem that is cross-platform. NTFS is the closest, but it suffers from performance problems on non-Windows systems.

If your relationship with email is unsatisfactory, email isn’t the problem. It’s you.

Preview supports reading most common image format types, and likewise allows you to export them to these same types, so even if Preview is not set to be your default program for handling images, you can still use it to quickly make an image conversion.

This means developers who don't want to use Apple's mapping API can use Google's without having to apply and wait for approval.

Let me start by saying that using it is actually nearly identical to what the company showed off in its newest demo video. That’s not CGI — it’s what Glass is actually like to use. It’s clean, elegant, and makes relative sense. The screen is not disruptive, you do not feel burdened by it. It is there and then it is gone. It’s not shocking. It’s not jarring. It’s just this new thing in your field of vision. And it’s actually pretty cool.

Magazines are a fluke on iOS: they have different price expectations. Big-name iOS magazines can easily charge $5 per month. The New York Times charges about $15 per month. So for The Magazine to be $2 per month sounds extremely inexpensive in the magazine world, yet that’s $24 per year — far more than I could earn per customer with a traditional app.

I’m going to walk you through seven basic adjustments in Aperture 3.4 that will clean up 90 percent of your images: Crop, White Balance, Exposure, Enhance, Highlights & Shadows, Color, and Edge Sharpen.

Arment walked me through the numbers. He has 25,000 subscribers who pay $1.99 a month. Apple takes a 30 percent cut, leaving Arment about $35,000 a month.

This cost of putting out the magazine is a bit over $20,000 per month. It comes out every two weeks, and each issue costs about $10,000. Roughly $4,000 goes to writers. The rest goes mostly to copy editors, illustrators, photographers and editors.

These options can be invoked by holding their respective key combinations immediately when powering on the system; however, if you use Apple's Bluetooth keyboard, you could find that the system may ignore these inputs and boot normally. While you might assume that these options require a USB keyboard or other physical connection, this is not always the case. There are a couple of workarounds if you find yourself in this situation.

I often find myself wishing that I could retrieve something that I had cut or copied earlier in the day, or maybe even longer ago than that. So I decided to make an archive of my pasteboard, and store it on Dropbox so I can easily retrieve something later.

When I initially discovered my Dropbox files on my Time Machine backup, my first reaction was to exclude the files from my backup. After more thought, though, I realized there already had been times that I had deleted files from my Dropbox folder that I could have rescued via Time Machine. But if you have a Dropbox Pro account with Packrat enabled, or simply aren’t worried about needing to restore a deleted file more than 30 days later, you might prefer to save some space on your Time Machine drive.

The improvements in the new version of TextWrangler, which include Retina display support, cosmetic refinements, and better feature organization, mirror similar upates to BBEdit 10.5, released back in December of last year.

The idea behind Reader X 2.0 is that you can browse articles in your Google Reader account as a “wallpaper of news”. Forget the usual sidebar/folder/content pattern: headlines are the main content area of Reader X, which puts the focus on browsing several articles at once rather than having to check every few minutes to mark as unread and “get the count to 0”. You can do that if you want, but it’s not what Reader X wants to focus on.

Intel graphics issue aside, we've enjoyed our time with the Mini. It really is powerful enough for most computer use. You could use this as your work PC all day, and never struggle with slowdowns or crashes. It's also prettier and smaller than almost any Windows-based PC you can buy, and for those corporates that need Windows, it can happily run Microsoft's OS.

Anyone who purchased a Retina MacBook Pro prior to this refresh shouldn’t kick themselves for making the leap, but the reduced cost for the 13-inch models and faster performance for the 15-inch models make these thin, light, and fast laptops a better deal than ever.

In case you hadn’t noticed, none of this has anything to do with a “proliferation of digital options.”

Ways you can secure your Mac from such attacks include enabling a firmware password to block DMA access, encrypting the hard drive with FileVault, disabling the system's sleepimage file when it's going to sleep, and simply shutting down the computer when not in use.

If you develop in C#, you can now build apps for iPhone and iPad … and hundreds of millions of Android smartphones and tablets. And you can do it all right on your PC in your favorite development environment, Visual Studio.

AppStudio allows developers to use BASIC or Javascript to create iPhone or Android apps, but previously the IDE only ran on Windows. Now, the app is Mac-compatible, and any previously created apps should just work, no matter what platform they were created on.

While it can use the open source Open Street Maps to download mapping data with an Internet connection, it also lets you create your own maps from JPEG or PNG files.

Through a combination of software and hardware products, it’s not hard to protect your MacBook from the scourge of Apple picking.

It’s odd that Apple would announce something new, yet have it disable by default, but if you’ve been scratching your head trying to find this feature, it’s just a few clicks away.

Among the notable features of this new version, Tapbots is introducing notifications for specific users, support for inline Flickr and Vine previews, and compliance with the Twitter 1.1 API.

I understand that OAuth is a security win in some ways. But implementors should, I think, be mindful of what normal people expect — which is that changing your password locks out every app until you re-authenticate.

Improvements have been made to text editing, the file browser, scrolling and conflict resolution. On the iPad, there is also a new accessory keyboard and optimized landscape mode.

Firefox users will no longer be required to download Adobe's Reader PDF plugin -- something which could be buggy and slow to load.

Mailbox's strategy of "focus on one thing" is a simple concept, but how well does it work in real life?

Apple has released a new version of Java meant to plug a vulnerability that can be exploited to install malware on user's computers.

Apple has released the promised iOS 6.1.2 update today to fix the Exchange bugs that have been plaguing users since the release of iOS 6.1. The bug caused iOS devices connected to Exchange servers to over-poll calendars and mailboxes, leading Microsoft to recommend that administrators block or throttle iOS devices until the bug was fixed.

Apple Inc was recently attacked by hackers who infected Macintosh computers of some employees, the company said Tuesday in an unprecedented disclosure describing the widest known cyber attacks targeting Apple computers used by corporations.

The malware was distributed at least in part through a site aimed at iPhone developers, which might still be infecting visitors who haven't disabled Java in their browser, the person close to the case said.

Simple solutions require sophisticated technology.

BeamApp is a new pair of apps for the iPhone and Mac that can instantly synchronize and share all of your directions, songs or websites. The idea is that whenever you move between devices, whatever task you were carrying out follows with you. So you can continue listening to your favourite song when you leave the house, instantly grab the directions to that bar you’re headed to without jotting down the address, or even dial a phone number from an email without typing a single digit.

The process does work quite well on small objects and there’s always the built-in Clone tool to fall back on.

Owning an Apple router is a great option for those of us with multiple Apple devices (MacBooks, iPhones, and so on) and it's an easier and smarter way to set-up and manage a network in the home or small office.

Microsoft has quietly raised prices of Office for the Mac as much as 17% and stopped selling multi-license packages of the application suite.

The move puts Office for Mac 2011 on the same pricing schedule as the new Office 2013 for Windows. The price increases and the disappearance of the multi-license bundles also makes Microsoft's Office 365, a software-by-subscription deal the company has aggressively pushed, more competitive with traditional "perpetual" licenses.

Making standard UI elements look beautiful shouldn’t be condemned.

The real value in a “native” app is that it can embrace the platform. Designers should not view an app as a blank canvas (like a web page), but instead as a new part in an existing system.

Great, so you can quickly switch accounts, but why would you want to, especially if you’re just one user on one Mac? Here are a few possible instances for using multiple accounts, beyond the parents-with-kids scenario.

One of the scariest things that can happen to your Mac, short of actual flames and smoke billowing from the case, is a failure to turn on at all. You press the power button and nothing happens—no startup sound, no light, nothing. If this happens, you can check several things before hauling your Mac to the nearest Apple Store for repair—as often as not, this seemingly difficult problem might have a simple solution.

Apple has just released two new adverts for the iPad and iPad mini with a strong emphasis on the apps available for the devices.

Slate is a Mac OS X window manager made for those who are tired of fiddling around with the mouse when it comes to resizing, focusing and arranging programs. With Slate, all comes down to the keyboard: just customize the dotfile with the hotkeys of your liking and you are good to go.

Time Machine saves data.

Planning out your MacBook upgrade to coincide with Intel’s “tock” releases should ensure that you are getting the largest performance gains with each purchase. When you purchase your new hardware as close to the release date as possible, you will maximize the number of days your Mac will be running on the last supported version of OS X.

The history feature is completely useless for those links. I have to reload all “(no title)” links manually one by one just to see which ones might be to pages that I hadn’t yet finished reading. It’s quite frustrating. And it’s an unforgivable flaw in Mountain Lion’s Safari.

I honestly don't care about seeing “multiple apps” on the iPad's screen, but I'd love for Apple to find a way to make iOS multitasking less aggressive without compromising battery life, making the process of moving between apps instantaneous as it is on OS X.

Some of my favorite feedback on Basecamp for iPhone has been that the app feels wicked fast, and all native. The app actually is a mix of web and native UI, but it’s difficult to see where the line is drawn.

Keeping your Web browsing private and erasing data from an online session is easy to do.

So while I'd say this is undoubtedly “geek” and beyond most people's needs, can we say something as simple as avoiding duplicates wouldn't be beneficial to all kinds of iOS users? Does the “average” iOS user need to jump between 7 apps to complete a single task? How can Apple improve that area while keeping iOS easy to use and secure? How do they balance “geeky” features with “everyone” features? Could Automator go mainstream with an iOS version?

In my years of reporting on Apple and speaking to many of its employees, I had never heard of such a practice. When I sought answers by interviewing current and former Apple engineers, I found that "fake" projects are certainly not a regular occurrence at Apple—and they quite probably do not exist at all.

Thanks to its solid interface and useful display-as-desktop feature, Email Pro is worth a look if you’re a Gmail user.

Via a special arrangement with Adobe Systems, the Computer History Museum announced in a blog post today that it has made available for download the entire 128,000 lines of source code for the first version of Photoshop.

AirServer is the Mac app that takes AirPlay back to the Mac. Install AirServer and use AirPlay to take whatever is showing on your iPhone and iPad direct to the Mac’s screen.

The good news is that since GIMP 2.8.2, it no longer needs the X11 environment and now runs as a native Mac OS X app. Installation is as simple as downloading a build, and double clicking. And without X11 in the way it now has a typical Menu bar structure, so it's much more instantly familiar to regular comptuer users.

The chip inside the Lightning connector can be reverse engineered — copied by another company — but it probably would not work as well as one that came from Apple, Mr. Howe said. Apple could also theoretically issue software updates that would disable Lightning products that did not use its chips, he said.

“Apple takes user security very seriously” spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD. “We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update.”

Wunderlist launched version 2 of its popular iPhone and Mac task manager late last year and has stepped up to the plate again to launch a fresh, new version that adds support for the iPad.

The method involves making (and immediately canceling) an emergency call and holding down the power button twice.

The workaround is to disable then reenable the Exchange calendar on your iOS device.

This implementation goes against everything on the web. You're not just actively preventing me from visiting your site by forcing me to log in, but you're also actively forcing me to download your app to access your server.

I don't want your app. Apps are too much like 1990's CD-ROMs and not enough like the Web.

The Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 14.3.1 Update fixes an issue that could "...cause Office 2011 applications to report a problem with Licensing even though the applications continue to run unaffected," according to the company.

The increased attacks are targeting supporters of the Uyghur people, a Turkic ethnic group who primarily live in a region of China, according to two separate reports independently published by researchers from Kaspersky Lab and AlienVault Labs. They are the latest to document the growing vulnerability of Mac users to so-called advanced persistent threats, which target users over a span of months or years to mine specific proprietary or social information of interest to the attackers.

Rdio has updated its iOS client to version 2.1 today, adding a number of design tweaks to improve the look and usability of the app.

There is a lot of code sharing going on but it isn’t the be-all and end-all of browser development. Innovation can clearly still occur when working on a shared codebase and performance will almost certainly continue to improve.

Our iOS devices have been empowered by 3rd-party apps.

When Shush is running, I can mute and unmute my mic using a systemwide hotkey—no matter which app or service I’m using, the mute action is the same.

Your first step should be to determine the scope of a problem. Is just one application having difficulties, or is the whole system affected?

Unlike my Dock, the menu bar is always visible, and always in the same location. This makes it a perfect spot to keep apps that display information or that I want quick access to but don't need to interact with regularly.

You could fly to the US, purchase the software in LA and fly home and it would still cost less than purchasing it outright in Australia.

So yes, in many ways, in painful ways, in sad ways, Apple is ignoring if not flat out abandoning power users, but they're doing it in a way that will eventually result in far broader, deeper base of users becoming empowered. That will let more people do more stuff.

Napkin gets the job done using a remarkably sparse feature set, with a hefty dollop of innovative ideas, and with an almost fanatic attention to your workflow.

The HBO Go app for iPhone and iPad scored a long-overdue update on Tuesday. As HBO’s co-president Eric Kessler promised at the Dive Into D conference, the app—along with Cinemax’s Max Go app—can now stream video wirelessly to the Apple TV.

Apple's iOS 6.1 update introduced some improvements to Siri and LTE compatibility, but for many users, it also cut their phones off from 3G networks or Microsoft's Exchange. The former issue has hopefully been addressed with a bug fix, but the latter apparently remains unsolved — and Microsoft is now telling Exchange administrators they may need to block or throttle iOS 6.1 users to keep their servers running well.

It really does not help one feel that Apple is taking security issues seriously when (1) the procedure to submit queries/concerns about Apple ID security issues is far from obvious and (2) the reply you get does not address the main concerns you have about a particular issue.

Along with the new interface, Public Radio Player 3.0 introduces episode downloading for offline listening and viewing of station Twitter feeds and breaking news headlines.

So while there is an argument to be made that Dropbox’s UI is a relic, its value as a syncing engine is still huge, precisely because it’s built around the paradigm of files, a paradigm we have decades of experience working with.

The answer for me, then, is that you’re having a conversation with the interface. It’s “Your stuff.”

Keycard is a nifty application new to the Mac App Store that locks your Mac when you get up and walk away with your iPhone or other Bluetooth device.

iOS 6.1.1 has one purpose: To fix “an issue that could impact cellular performance and reliability for iPhone 4S.” Apple made no other details available.

Apple reportedly provided testimony on the matter in a private hearing last year, while Microsoft provided a written statement during the same timeframe pointing to regulations, supply chain costs, and the "relatively high cost of labor and rent" as reasons for the price discrepancies.

There's no easy path to iPad adoption and a bogged-down iPad pilot program can spell disaster. Apple could be more helpful to businesses, but there are ways to simplify complicated iPad migrations. Here's what a tech services firm learned while helping Cablevision configure 3,000 iPads.

It’s quite a handy workflow for people who, say, come across several links a day and want to save them for later alongside a portion of text they’re interested in. Unfortunately, it only works with Safari for iPad because it’s the only browser that will let you tap a bookmarklet while keeping selection active.

Apple and Samsung, on the other hand, are not engaged in a corporate death match so much as a multi-layered rivalry that is by turns both friendly and hard-edged. For competitors like Nokia, BlackBerry, Sony, HTC and even Google - whose Motorola unit is expected to launch new smartphones later this year - they are a formidable duo.

Mac OS X is the best-looking operating system around, but it's also one of the most capable. Underneath all the eye candy is a serious amount of functionality and although you may not have realised it, there are many different ways to carry out everyday tasks using your Mac.

More than 60 million photos or messages are sent each day through an app called Snapchat and then, after they are viewed for a few seconds, the missives vanish. That disappearing act — and a volume that is over a tenth of the well-established Facebook’s — has made the tiny start-up a technology hit, amassing millions of users and the backing of some of the most respected names in Silicon Valley, even though it doesn’t make any money.

The first step is to uninstall Flash by using Adobe’s official uninstaller application. This completely removes Flash from your system, making it impossible for an attacker to target it.

“But wait,” you say, “my kids will kill me if they can’t play those Flash-based Disney games”. Not to worry, there is an easy solution, thanks to Google.

The whole point of WriteRoom is that it gives you less. If you're a writer who wants to get well-written text on the page, and you don't want to be distracted by options that have nothing to do with the actual words you're writing, then less is more. The fewer visible options there are on screen, the more you can concentrate on your writing. WriteRoom makes concentrating easier than any other app I've tried.

When I finally arrived at San Francisco airport, some 19 hours after I'd left home, my iPad mini and its beat of a battery was still at over 30%, and I was able to switch back to my iPhone and make all my arrangements while on my way to the city.

Mistakes will be made in the march towards the future. But the worst possible mistake is neglecting to do the work required to get there because you think we’ve already arrived. There is no destination; there is only the journey. Pick a direction or get out of the way.

The notice has been sent out to users via an SMS message telling them that, if the users were to update, they could face 3G issues.

So how much do these fine-grained divisions between regional dialects of English actually matter?

It felt tacked-on and even a 7-year-old could sense that.

This week’s column looks at some common problems with iTunes, some quirks with iTunes Match, and explains how to update smart playlists, among other subjects.

If you need specific tab organizations or regularly find yourself needing to restore multiple tabs, then Firefox, Chrome, and Opera offer more robust options than Apple's Safari browser.

So we have transitioned from a time where the advertised capacity of a device was largely available to a user, to an era where the technical capacity may deviate greatly from what a user can realistically work with. The speed and affordability of RAM, magnetic disk, and most recently SSD storage, have created a situation where the parts of a computer that the vendor most wants to exploit are the same that the customer covets.

The updated AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule firmware brings with it the ability to extend Guest Wi-Fi on networks featuring multiple Base Station units. It also lets you add WPS capable Wi-Fi printers and adds support for additional countries.

Adobe Systems has released a patch for two Flash player vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited online to surreptitiously install malware, one in attacks that target users of Apple's Macintosh platform.

Tablet operating systems are designed to be small, and they sacrifice all sorts of capabilities that you expect in a full-strength PC. But if you're going to complain about operating systems using too much of the available storage, you'd better make sure your letter to Redmond is cc'ed to Cupertino.

In general, AirPlay devices are hardware accessories like routers such as Apple's AirPort, or media appliances like the AppleTV. However, if you are not willing to shell out about $100 or more for a new AirPlay and you have an old Mac lying around (especially a Mac Mini), then one option is to turn it into an AirPlay hub.

Try saying "Remember to pick up the milk" rather than "Remind me to pick up the milk." Siri adds that item to the Reminders app without a time cue.

Fortunately, by installing the right apps and preparing ahead of time, the iPhone can still be very functional on the road, even without a data connection.

Apple has issued a rare, rapid public response to a shareholder lawsuit, countering charges by Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn that the company hasn't done enough to return its large cash reserves to shareholders. In sharp but diplomatic language, Apple suggests that Einhorn and Greenlight misunderstand or are misrepresenting an important governance proposal Apple will present to shareholders at their annual meeting on February 27.

What sets Mailbox apart is its approach to managing the contents of your inbox.

Perhaps you are already an iOS master. Or maybe you consider yourself more of a novice. Either way, we feel confident that at least some of the tips and tricks for iOS 6 that we present below will be new to you. What’s more, we hope you love them—and benefit from them—as much as we do.

RunKeeper, the popular running, walking, and cycling tracking app for iPhone, has gotten even better recently with a whole new design, and funner, easier to use experience. And since it's Mobile Nations Fitness Month, the time couldn't be better to give it another look!

If you use a MacBook system and plug in external monitors or if you regularly change display resolutions, then you might find certain programs (particularly Apple's TextEdit) will sometimes gather all windows into a collapsed group at some location on your display. This bug does not happen all the time and is therefore likely difficult to track and fix. However, if it happens to you then there are some things you can do to restore your windows and at least review them.

Several business users have told me that they're growing weary of iWork for OS X's second-class citizenship and its lack of updates. Some have told me that they're abandoning iWork entirely if it doesn't get any update love this year. And it isn't just the dearth of new features, iWork's performance is starting to lag.

In our initial use, it’s easy to put on, works well, and looks great. We’ll be putting it through more-rigorous testing, so stay tuned for our review.

Dropbox, folder sync darling of iOS developers and users alike, has announced a new Dropbox Sync API that aims to make implementing in-app sync easier, but also safer and more constrained.

The numbers illustrate the persistence of Snow Leopard, which has gained a reputation as Apple's version of Microsoft's Windows XP, an OS that stubbornly sticks around.

Most crashes on a Mac affect just one application. But you may encounter a type of system-wide crash that brings down your entire Mac: a kernel panic. When this occurs, there’s no warning and no way to save your work or do anything else without restarting. And, because kernel panics can have many different causes, diagnosing the problem and preventing its recurrence are difficult.

To someone who has never used it, OS X’s Open and Save dialog boxes likely seem sufficient; but once you’ve used Default Folder X for a while, OS X’s stock file-navigation dialogs feel crippled and half-baked.

Users can free-up space on their machine by shifting files from laptop and mobile devices to their Infinite Drive. And because we’re talking ‘cloud’ here, all your files are available from any device.

Elsewhere: Ambient Nature Sounds is a nice little free app that lives on your menu bar and plays ambient sounds in the background while you work or relax.

Aimed at light projects such as photo collections and kid-created stories, Book Creator provides a simple layout system to integrate text, pictures and sounds.

Newly added is a Caching Server, which Apple says will speed up downloads for software from the Mac App Store—presumably by not requiring that connected Macs all re-download the same apps anew. Also new is a monitoring service for Time Machine, which logs which Macs have backed up, when they did so, and how large those backups are.

Yet another sign that self-publishing is making inroads into the traditional houses: On Tuesday Apple will include a feature that organizes a group of popular self-published e-books together and then gives them prominent display on iBookstore.

If you get crashed with a message containing that string, you may notice that iMessage just keeps rebooting. That's because that string is still hiding in your history. We have to get rid of it.

Apple Inc and other online retailers did not break California law by requiring consumers to provide their address and phone numbers as a condition of accepting credit card payments, the state's high court ruled on Monday.

Scott Forstall, then Apple’s iOS chief, stood onstage at the WWDC keynote last June and showed the audience a series of slides illustrating the many uses to which an iPad could be put. The one that resonated with me appeared for just a moment: It showed a boy with autism using an iPad.

That scenario plays out for me every day. I work with special-needs children, and I also have a severe visual impairment. The situation depicted is part of my every working moment. But I wondered if Forstall’s slide was just another marketing bullet point to those outside our community. Do other people know about the profound changes iOS has brought to those with disabilities?

The big new feature in this update is the addition of subtitles and translations.

Whether your eyes are aging, your young eyes need glasses, or someone that you provide computer support for could use a boost in seeing the screen, no one should have to squint when surfing the Web, reading email, or writing documents. A few key techniques can increase the font size in applications where easy-to-see text makes the biggest difference.

Unlike iOS 6, though, Mountain Lion doesn't give you an option for enabling/disabling notifications on a schedule. At least, it doesn't provide a built-in option for this. With a little customized help from AppleScript, Automator, and the Calendar app, it is possible.

I wouldn’t download a BBC app or an NPR app for my computer. Why would I want one on my phone?

At the end of the commercial for the upcoming "Star Trek: Into Darkness" film, Paramount flashed a quick promotion for its iOS app, complete with an AppStore.com link that takes people right to it. In function it's identical to what Apple already uses through its iTunes links, but this one's designed so that people can quickly type it into a mobile device or remember it for later.

A closer look shows the bug is inside Data Detectors, a feature that lets apps recognize dates, locations, and contact data, making it easy for you to save this information in your address book and calendar.

The more complex the task, the more our beloved 30-year-old personal computer is up to it. But there is now room above the enforced simplicity that made the iPad’s success for UI changes allowing a modicum of real-world “Pro” workflow on iPads.

But the heart of the Gigsky system is a forthcoming iOS app—due in the App Store “any day now”—that lets Gigsky customers compare available data plans on the road and purchase the one the makes the most sense. Users can even pre-shop and purchase data plans before leaving the country, if they want.

Inky has no calendar, to-do lists, or other auxiliary features, which likely makes it less than ideal for business use. But its sharp design, smart features, and overall plucky cheerfulness won me over. Mac email users should definitely give this fun, full-featured, and free program a try.

Path’s iOS app will use the embedded EXIF tag location information from photos in the iOS Camera Roll to geotag your posts, even when you’ve explicitly disabled Location Services for the Path application.

Overall, the Mac experience isn’t as sophisticated as what we get on Windows, but maybe that will change with a future update. For now, you do get all the Office applications Microsoft makes for Mac, and you can access your SharePoint and SkyDrive documents, albeit in a less than elegant fashion.

For the second time in a month, Apple has effectively blacklisted the current version of the Java Web plugin on OS X. The block comes just days after it was discovered that the latest version of the plugin, which had been rushed out to patch a critical vulnerability, can still be exploited despite its heightened security mechanisms.

Evernote just announced that Penultimate, an app they recently purchased, and which used to sell for a couple bucks on the App Store, is now officially free.

“Due to evolving regulatory requirements, Apple will stop selling Mac Pro in EU, EU candidate and EFTA countries on March 1, 2013,” an Apple representative told The Loop. “After that date, resellers can sell existing inventory but Apple will no longer ship Mac Pro in those countries.”

iOS 6 made some strides in toning down the UI, more silver than blue, more blacks than silvers, and I thought on the iPhone especially, it felt more relaxing and pleasant to use.