When the iPad was released I wondered whether this device was really going to take off. Since it was an Apple product I figured it would initially be a big hit since their previous major product release, the iPhone, had been so successful. But the bigger question I had was whether the tablet device itself was ready for prime time.

Apple didn’t invent the tablet. There were plenty made before the iPad came out. There were also touch-screen laptops / tablet PC’s in existence as well. But none had proven that we should add another computing device to our homes. The iPad was different because of its size, the app library and of course because of the company behind it.

I wasn’t the only one who had their reservations about tablets. When Bill Gates was asked about the iPad he said the tablet isn’t there yet, that it isn’t quite ready to be a serious computing device. He stated that you needed to have better user input like a tablet PC has. Sure he may be right that the iPad isn’t quite a laptop replacement. Sure he is right that the iPad might not be a serious computing device. Sure he may be right in suggesting that for him the iPad is like a toy. But while he sits there trying to create the perfect tablet, Apple is readying the release of the iPad 3 and is raking in billions of dollars in tablet sales.

The iPad still can’t handle flash based websites like sites with embedded flash videos or sites with flash games. It’s difficult to edit pictures and movies when compared to a laptop. Typing with speed is also a problem. So yes, the iPad can’t do everything. But then again, neither can a smartphone and you won’t hear anyone complaining about their existence.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that kids love using the iPad and that it’s full of games. You can use the iPad to research stuff, read books,  check your mail and more. In fact, this post itself was created on an iPad. I’m sure there are countless people who use the iPad for business and wouldn’t even know what an angry bird is.

So is the iPad just a toy? No, the iPad is what you make it. Toy or not, there is a clear demand for these products, and it’s not just a fad though. Many have purchased a tablet, then purchased another upgraded model. Clearly, the tablet is here to stay.

Whenever I buy a product, like a refrigerator, television or a computer, I am offered the option of buying an extended warranty by a pushy salesperson. Warranties are how some stores make their money. The profit margins are often times so small that the store makes more money on selling warranties than on selling the actual item itself. I have always stayed away from purchasing extended warranties for any product. I do not to buy AppleCare for my Apple purchases either. Let me tell you my reasons why.

I’m Already Covered The First Year

Apple products already come with a limited one-year warranty and 90 days of free telephone support. If I bought a defective product I will most likely figure that out in the first few months, within the warranty. As far as phone support goes, one of the only times I would need to use telephone support is to set up my new product. If I bought an iMac I’ll want to learn how I can edit photos or use the gestures on the magic mouse. These things I would normally need within the first few months after my purchase, when phone support would still be free.

Apple Care Is Too Expensive

Apple products are expensive so you would think that it’s wise to protect them with AppleCare. But I take good care of my items so I generally do not need to buy an extended warranty. One reason why I stay away from AppleCare is because of the high cost. If you have a MacBook Pro, an AppleCare protection plan will set you back $349. If in the span of 5 years I buy 2 MacBook Pro’s, I would pay $698 total for warranties I may not even use. If something goes wrong with one of them the cost of taking my MacBook to the repair shop is probably going to be less than $698.

Do It Yourself

Whenever I’ve encountered a problem in the past I would research and try to solve it myself. Usually you can type in your symptoms into Google and you’ll get some good suggestions. You can also go to any of the popular Mac forums, describe your problem and get some helpful suggestions to fix the problem. If you need a new part you can order it, find a do-it-yourself tutorial online and fix it yourself at home.

I Can Get A Replacement

Another reason why I don’t buy AppleCare is because I can always get a replacement if my product has problems after the free one year warranty is up. With products like the iPod Touch or the iPad, they release new versions every year. An easy way to decide whether to upgrade or not is to see how your item is working. If it’s working fine skip the upgrade and wait for next years edition.

I Can Sell It On eBay

If I drop my Macbook Air and the whole thing is a mess, I can sell it for parts on eBay. It will surely still get me a few hundred bucks. I can use that money toward the purchase of a new Macbook Air. If it’s been 2-3 years since my last laptop purchase, I’m probably due for an upgrade anyway. It seems like every year or so the processors go from 1GHz to 2GHz to 3GHz, the hard drive goes from 100GB to 500GB to 1TB and the RAM goes from 2GB to 4GB to 8GB.

PS: Are there reasons to get AppleCare? Absolutely. If you travel with a laptop AppleCare may be a good idea considering you might drop or damage your laptop during your travels. If you have a $2,500 iMac and use your iMac for work and need immediate fixes, I can understand how getting AppleCare is a great idea too. But it’s just not for me.

The iPad is not just a toy that kids can use to play Angry Birds. The iPad can help students in the classroom as well. Increasingly we’re seeing iPads being integrated into the classroom environment. News stories have shown iPads in elementary schools in helping kids learn math as they play some educational games.

But the iPad can be useful to high school students as well. One way in which the iPad can help students is by replacing their physical text books with interactive iPad textbooks. When you have textbooks on the iPad instead of in print there are countless advantages. Let me go through a few of the problems physical textbooks cause and the ways iPad textbooks can solve those problems.

Weight

Textbooks are often times heavy. High school students don’t just have one class, they have several. Each class can assign a heavy textbook. Carrying these books around can strain the backs of students. But on the iPad you can pack as many textbooks as you want and it won’t increase the weight of your iPad. Students can say goodbye to backpacks full of books and back problems forever.

Price

Textbook companies are after one thing: profit. To them, it doesn’t really matter how students get their books as long as they make money in the process. If they can make a profit then this concept will take off. One key concern for schools is of course the cost. Schools will be interested in the idea if it’s cost effective. Therein lies the problem. At the moment, there is not a big difference in price between print and digital versions of textbooks. Most of the cost of the textbook is due to the time and research it takes to create it, not necessarily the cost of printing them. However schools have to replace text books when they are lost or damaged, this won’t be the case if they’re on the iPad. That might be enough savings for schools to consider digital textbooks instead.

Updates

When you buy an app on your iPad you will almost always get free updates for life. It would be great if a school could buy a textbook on the iPad and get updated versions to use for next years’ crop of students. But the textbook companies aren’t going to go for the idea of free lifetime updates. Right now they make money by selling future editions of the textbook at full price and they don’t want that to change. It is exciting to think though about the possibility of having recent information being updated in a history book for example.

Interactivity

Physical text books are simple. They are full of text and sometimes pictures with captions. But the iPad is an interactive device. Textbooks can and should incorporate videos in addition to text and pictures. An interactive textbook can also have links to reference other parts of the book. You should be able to click on the references in a text book and the table of contents should take you directly to the section you want. An interactive iPad textbook can also let students jot down notes on pages and bookmark other sections of interest.

Until now, there has been no way for owners of an iDevice such as an iPad or iPhone to connect to a USB flash drive. USB flash drives have undoubtedly become a necessity for many PC and Mac users, as it allows for portable storage of important documents, media, etc. The lack of a USB port on Apple’s iDevices has made it impossible to connect a standard USB flash drive, although the iFlashDrive is now the first one in existence to change this. Unfortunately, the iFlashDrive does not come cheap at $99.95 for 8 GB of storage, $149.95 for 16 GB of storage and $199.95 for 32 GB of storage, although hopefully this will spawn the release of similar clones and increase competition in terms of pricing.

The iFlashDrive is compatible with iDevices as well as Macs and PCs (or anything with a USB port) thanks to the use of the thirty-pin connector in addition to USB. It allows users to move data from their iDevices to any USB-capable device or even another iDevice. There are only two slight downsides to the iFlashDrive: that you’ll need to install an application from the App Store to use it, and that it’s size and design takes up so much space that it will likely block the use of other ports on your PC or Mac while in use. For example, when using the iFlashDrive on a MacBook Pro, you will be blocking the second USB port as well as the SD card slot.

However, an additional feature that might make up for the iFlashDrive’s faults is that the application that users must download from the App Store allows users to sync their data to and from Dropbox, and soon Evernote and Box.net as well. Although HyperDrive, the company behind the iFlashDrive, has a lot of work to do in order to improve the product’s design and hopefully drop the price down to something reasonable (who would really pay $200 for a 32 GB flash drive these days), this is still truly a significant product release as it is the first of its kind. Hopefully we’ll either see some improvements or some competition in the near future so that making the purchase is truly justifiable.

The iFlashDrive is available now for purchase in its three storage capacity options from HyperDrive.

Everyone thought that the iPhone 5 would be released last year. Instead, Apple gave the world the iPhone 4S, which is a great phone, but still leaves everyone wondering: will there be an iPhone 5 coming soon?

Well, there’s nothing substantive yet, but all signs are pointing to yes, the iPhone 5 is on its’ way in 2012.

Rumors have is that Apple will unveil their new iPhone 5 at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. If you’re followed much of Apple’s history, then you know that Apple likes to announce, or release their iPhones in June: the original iPhone release, and the iPhone 3G and iPhone 4 announcements come to mind.

So, this June 2012 should possibly give the world news about the often talked about iPhone 5. The problem is, no one is really certain what the new model will hold. Apple typically holds this type of information close to the vest and the iPhone 5 specs are no exception.

There are a few speculations, the biggest one being near field communication, or NFC. It’s the technology currently available in most credit and debit cards that allow you you to wave the card above a reader, instead of swiping it. If that technology comes to smart phones, most people won’t be surprised. It’s been suggested for years that a smart phone will one day be able to replace your wallet, and this is a step in that direction. If Apple includes NFC in the iPhone 5, they’ll have a big leg up on the competition.

Another speculation is that Apple is going to up the display and make the phone thinner. Both are significant: rumors about the display says it might clock in at 4 inches, which is bigger than past iPhones. The iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S were big hits because of their shape, but I doubt Apple fans will mind the new purported look of the iPhone 5.

There is also speculation that this thin phone will also have an aluminum case. So perhaps a thinner, sleeker iPhone is on the way? With the popularity of the Motorola Droid Razr, it wouldn’t be a surprise for Apple to decide to also go thinner.

If Apple ends up releasing an iPhone 5 that is thinner, with a bigger display, faster and with an improved camera, then move over iPhone 4S because we will have a new record-breaking phone.

iOS 5 added Twitter integration across various apps. But surprisingly you can’t sent a tweet using Siri. Maybe a future update will cure that, but for now there’s a workaround. Here’s a step by step guide on how you can tweet using Siri on the iPhone 4S.

1. Log in to Twitter. Go to Settings, then select the Mobile tab. Add and then confirm your phone number to your Twitter account.

2. Add a new contact on your iPhone 4S. Choose “Twitter” as the name of your new contact and 404-04 as the phone number. This is Twitter’s SMS shortcode.

3. Using Siri, say the following: “Tell Twitter Sending my first tweet using Siri.” Behind the scenes, Siri will technically send a text message to 40404 with your message. What that ultimately means is that you will update your Twitter status using just Siri.

Most people are familiar with the Guinness World Records, which has existed since 1951 and documents world records of all sorts through its literature. From the world’s tallest man to the fastest selling consumer electronics device, the Guinness World Records keeps track of it all. As for the latter, the current holder of that world record is Microsoft’s Kinect, which had taken the title just last year after it had sold an astonishing eight million units within 60 days of being publicly released.

Another consumer electronics device, if it can fall under that category, which has gained a lot of attention recently due to its large number of units sold is Apple’s iPhone 4S. Having been released on October 14th of 2011, the iPhone 4S has long passed the 60-day mark that the Kinect sold its eight million units within. However, as of now, the general public has not been informed just how many iPhone 4S units have been sold in that same 60-day period. What we do know is that Apple sold 37 million total iPhones in the fourth quarter of 2011, spanning from October 1st to December 31st. However, as this number also includes the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, we don’t even know how many iPhone 4S units were sold on their own during 2011′s fourth quarter. The only solid available number on the iPhone 4S is four million units which had been sold within the first three days of going on sale.

Even though exact numbers are being withheld for the time being, researchers have been taking the time to estimate what these numbers are without Apple’s disclosure. Survey firm Consumer Intelligence Research has suggested that an estimated 89% of those 37 million units sold are of the iPhone 4S, as the number of sales for the two previous-generation iPhones have undoubtedly dropped in favor of the newest iPhone model. This estimate is backed up by the iPhone’s high average selling price of $659 reported by Apple in its quarterly earnings report.

As the period between the day the iPhone 4S went on sale and the day Apple’s quarterly reporting period had ended consisted of 78 days, only 18 days longer than the Kinect’s record-holding period, and Apple sold 29 million more iPhones than Microsoft sold Kinect units within each separate time period, it is almost certain that Apple broke Microsoft’s world record. That is, if the iPhone 4S can be considered a “consumer electronics device” and that estimates are indeed correct or somewhat accurate at the very least. By the time the next Guinness World Records book is ready for publication at the end of the year, we will see if Apple’s iPhone 4S did in fact beat Microsoft’s Kinect for the world record of fastest selling consumer electronics device.

With OSX Leopard came a new featured called Spaces. Typically on a computer screen you would have one desktop. If you frequently multi-task with many programs you can understand how a desktop can become cluttered. With Spaces you can visually separate your applications into multiple desktops and easily switch between them.

Why Use Spaces?

An advantage of having multiple desktops is that you can separate work and personal applications. You can be working on one desktop and decide you want to take a break and check your Facebook page and write some personal emails. You can simply flip to that desktop with ease.

How To Enable Spaces

To use Spaces you’ll need to go into the System Preferences and then go to Exposé & Spaces to enable Spaces. Once there you have the option to add more desktops if you need more than 4. You can have many different horizontal screens (8 columns 1 row) or you can have a large box of spaces (4 columns 4 rows).

Assigning Applications To Spaces

You can also assign applications to Spaces. By doing so, an application will always open in the specific desktop you designate. If you open an application and want to use it in a different space you can drag it to a corner of the screen to go to a different space.

Accessing Your Spaces

There’s a variety of ways to access your different spaces. You can access Spaces from the menu bar. You can hit f8 and then click on the space you want. You can also hit Control and the arrow keys to get to the space you want.

When the iPhone 4 was released one of the apps that quickly emerged was FaceTime. The iPhone 4 was the first iPhone with a front facing camera which made making video calls effortless. One of the downsides was that you can only make video calls to other iPhone 4 users with FaceTime. Understandably the pool of FaceTime users you knew may have been low at the time.

But the number of FaceTime users continue to increase. More iPhones are being sold now than ever before. No longer are consumers limited to AT&T. The iPhone is available on various cell phone carriers like Sprint or Verizon for example. The release of the iPhone 4S with Siri set sales records and boosted the number of FaceTime users. With the highly anticipated release of the iPhone 5 on the horizon it looks like that upward trend isn’t stopping anytime soon.

But FaceTime isn’t just for the iPhone. The iPod Touch 4th generation and all future versions can also make and receive FaceTime video calls. The user needs to be connected to a wifi connection to make it work. Since no phone number is affiliated with the iPod Touch, an email address is used to make the call instead.

If you want FaceTime on a bigger screen you can now get that on the iPad 2. When the iPad 2 was released it featured a front facing camera which meant you can make video calls for free with FaceTime. As is the case with the iPod Touch you’ll need to be on wi-fi to make or receive a call.

Want FaceTime on an even bigger screen? Apple has now brought the simplicity of video calling to the personal computer. Now available in the Mac app store is the FaceTime app. Users with older versions of Mac OS X will have to pay $0.99 for the app while FaceTime will come bundled in later versions.

This sets up some interesting scenarios. For example, someone using their iPhone 4S can tell Siri to FaceTime you. Then you can answer the call on your MacBook Air when you’re on your desk in your home office. You will be able to make and receive video calls in high definition and talk as long as you want for free.

Now video calling with FaceTime has come full circle, allowing iPhone, iPod, iPad, MacBook and iMac users to all make video calls with each other.

Mac owners, do you want to replace the bland iTunes icon on your dock with something more appealing? How about if you could change the icon on your dock to a picture of the album artwork of the song you’re currently playing? Well there’s an app for that. Here’s a step by step guide on how to do just that.

1. First go to this url to download DockArt (it’s free): http://www.splook.com/Software/DockArt.html

2. Unzip it and you’ll see a DockArt.bundle file inside.

3. Open a new Finder window (Command+N) and navigate to the following folder: ~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-Ins/

4. Drag the DockArt.bundle file into the plug-ins folder.

5. Open iTunes and play a song to see the album art of the song you’re playing.

You can also make additional changes, such as changing the icon from a square to a round icon or tilting the icon. To do so, on iTunes go to View > Visualizer > Dock Art and put a check mark on it. Then go back there again and select Options to get to the DockArt settings to customize your dock icon.