Late last year, in November, rumors suggested that Microsoft was working on Office for the iPad and the Mac App Store but no solid details surfaced during that time. On Wednesday, The Verge reported that a Microsoft product manager released comments to Czech site IHNED.cz [Google translation] that Microsoft is in fact working to bring Office to iPhone and iPad in March 2013. In its report, the publication noted a press release from the Microsoft’s Czech Republic team that confirms that Office for iOS will be arriving soon.

In addition to Windows, Office will be also available on other operating systems, Windows Phone, Windows RT, Mac OS, Android, iOS and Symbian,” says Microsoft, while separately noting that there will also be a new version of Office Web Apps too. […]

The press release also mentions that Office 2013 will be made available to businesses in December, with a consumer launch scheduled for the end of February 2013. “Office 365 services and other Office products for mobile (phones and tablets) will be released from March 2013,” says Microsoft.

Soon after the announcement, numerous people began to refute the claim, including Microsoft head of PR Frank X. Shaw who mentioned that the Czech statement was not credible.

The information shared by our Czech Republic subsidiary is not accurate. We have nothing further to share.

With all of the rumors popping up on the web since late last year, it is very likely that Office for iOS will be arriving in the March/April timeframe and Shaw is refuting the claims in order to contain the rumors about the arrival of the suite of software to the iOS platform.

{Via MacRumors}

So we have all found ourselves searching for ways to use our iPad as laptop replacements. There are always a few hang ups that you can’t get past, say… Windowed Apps? Quasar, developed by Pedro Franceschi, allows you to do just that on jailbroken iPad.

Quasar is tackling something that I have heard repeated throughout much of the tablet world, where is my windowed apps? It allows you to resize windows, switch orientation and move apps freely around the screen. I mean, lets be honest, windowed apps is great but without those things we’d all be a little put off by it.

Quasar could make those pesky iPhone only apps somewhat usable on your iPad. I have always had trouble giving up my entire screen for apps that don’t bother to put together something for my iPad as well as my iPhone. The app runs $9.99 in the Cydia Store, which to me is a bargain.

Apps like this is what make having a jailbreak a pure necessity. Adding functionality like this is invaluable for those of us who strive to find even more uses for the already powerful iPad. Help support this app by checking it out on those jailbroken iPads!

{via Gizmodo}

Reflection Review for Mac

If you have an Apple TV and an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad running iOS 5 then you’ve been able to mirror your device on to your HD TV via Apple TV for some time now. Now, you can also mirror your iOS device to your Mac thanks to Reflection, a $15 app that can be purchased from the developers web site.

Once you’ve installed Reflection app onto your Mac and have it running you are ready to go with no additional app required on your iOS device you can start mirroring your device to your Mac immediately.

The process is the same as mirroring your device elsewhere, simple double-tap the home button, swipe twice to the right to reveal the volume control and the AirPlay button. After pressing the Air-Play button you’ll see your MacBook listed as one of the devices to mirror too and with that selected and the mirroring option enabled your device will appear on your MacBooks screen.

Only one device can be mirrored at a time and you can’t actually control the device via your Mac, but for grabbing screen shots or recording your iOS device it’s ideal. The results are very responsive too with little or no lag between anything you do on the device being reflected on the screen.

Reflection will automatically adjust the orientation of the screen as you rotate the physical device or you can force either landscape or portrait mode. You can also go full-screen and hide all other windows as well as controlling where the iOS device’s frame is shown or not.

The app works flawlessly and while it would be great if you were able to manually re-size the image mirrored image to suit your needs and even have built in screen capture capabilities it’s still a great bit of software.

If you are a developer, reviewer, blogger or just like showing of the cool stuff you can do with all your Apple hardware then Reflection is for you. The app works painlessly and very easily, and it’s also great for taking advantage of those games that utilize AirPlay for multi-player gaming such as Real Racing 2 and Gangster Rio without the need for an Apple TV.

What we like:

• One simple install
• Fast and Responsive
• Full screen mode
• Mirror games and videos

What to know:

• No ability to manually scale the screen
• No built-in screen capture functionality

Omnifocus for iPad Review: The End All Be All of Time Management Apps

Omnifocus is a great Task Management app for iPad that helps you get everything you have going on organized and put together in a manageable fashion. Omnifocus couldn’t have come along at a better time for me as my wife is due to have our first child soon and I have been running around trying to get everything at work and home in order. This app has made it a cinch to organize my tasks and develop a plan of attack.

Omnifocus for iPad has an amazingly sleek interface that is very intuitive yet in depth. It allows you to easily add tasks and projects in a quick method or in depth method. The quick method is great for just simply getting tasks down so that you don’t forget them. Omnifocus allows you to then come back later to add detail or add additional tasks with detail so you can develop a method of carrying out the tasks.

Projects and Contexts are two things that you will quickly become familiar with in Omnifocus. Projects are a way of organizing several smaller tasks beneath one main goal to make that goal easier to obtain. The contexts give you a way to associate the tasks with something, be it a task for home or for the office. There is also a “Map” option that helps you find out when you are near where a task needs to be carried out.

Perhaps my favorite options are the Forecast and Review options. Forecast takes all of the tasks that you have due and organizes them on a calendar and lets you know what you need to get done today. This helps me so I am not stuck looking at some looming task down the road. The review option allows you to review completed tasks and evaluate them which is often a part of the task management process that is overlooked that can be invaluable. This really helps me be more structured and organized and has been greatly beneficial to my productivity.

The true beauty of this app is that it can sync up with my iPhone app as well as an app for my Mac. Thus making me just as productive on those devices as when i have my iPad in front of me. You are given several syncing options: Sync with Omni Sync Server, Sync with MobileMe, Sync with OmniFocus for Mac via Wi-Fi and Custom Sync with WebDAV. You don’t have to sync as the app is great on the iPad on its own but i suggest giving the iPhone and Mac app a whirl if you like the iPad app as they are all amazing.

I have only found two cons in my dealing with Omnifocus. First the price is going to be an issue for some and I get that. It’s not cheap but I feel that the app performs up to its price tag so I would be glad to pay it. Second, is that there is no PC support. It works well with the Mac but for those of you that love iDevices but use a Windows machine due to cost constraints, you’ll have to use only the iPad flavor. However, I will say, the iPad version is like a full on computer version.

Overall, I have been very impressed with how much this app has helped me become more organized as I thought I was a pretty organized person to begin with. The downfall to many productivity apps is that you spend more time trying to make them do what you want them to do than you save from actually using it.

• Highly Functional
• Intuitive
• Sync

What to know:

• Cost
• Have to purchase on each device
• No Windows support

CNET on Wednesday reported that Verizon is looking to make 4G LTE compatibility a requirement on all smartphones released in the future. Verizon’s 4G LTE provides faster data speeds and would be a major step up from 2G and 3G speeds currently operating on many smartphones.

This report has led to speculations about Apple releasing a 4G LTE compatible iPhone 5 in order to comply with Verizon’s network standards. Verizon’s proposal of “a hard requirement” to make all phones 4G LTE does have some exceptions, with the company noting that their Push to Talk network will remain operating on 3G speeds until further notice.

From now on, nearly every smartphone, wireless hot spot, tablet, and Netbook that Verizon offers will come with LTE guns a-blazing. Yes, Virginia, that includes Windows Phone and BlackBerry devices, too.

There will be the occasional exception, however. For instance, phones on Verizon’s push-to-talk network are 3G-only for now, and will remain that way until further notice.

Verizon’s clear, unyielding stance on 4G–“a hard requirement,” according to Verizon–may partially explain why it has picked up only one Windows Phone so far.

The report also goes on to mention that Verizon is leading the market with deployment of 4G LTE, with over 200 million people in 190 markets. Verizon plans to complete its LTE roll out by late next year, and is now pushing its slow roll-out by forcing users to 4G LTE enabled smartphones. AT&T has also announced plans for a 4G LTE network but has not set any specific goals for smartphone plans and accessibility’s with the network.

By late 2013, 4G LTE may become the standard on many US carriers including Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, making 3G the current 2G. As smartphones demand more speed and reliability, 4G LTE is definitely the next big step in cellular data.

{via MacRumors}

FileXChange Review: A great way to move files between your iPad and your computer, whatever flavor they might be.

Setting up FileXChange is super simple and the instructions are clear. You open the app on your iPad, and then open a browser on your computer, type in a numeric URL, and that’s it. You can now effortlessly move files to and from your iPad. You can even use your files right within the app without opening other apps, including documents and multimedia files.

FileXChange works with a variety of common file types including: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and most image, audio, and video formats. It also works between the iPad and Mac, Windows, Linux, and other iOS devices.

It doesn’t sync your files, but it could be used as a pass through to move files from one computer to another, say from a work and a home machine. The app could also be used as another possible location for backing up critical files. And it would be helpful getting files moved between one operating system to another. You can even share files with other people, as access to an account is not required.

This is a super simple, super powerful way to move and access files between your iPad and other devices.

Pros:

• Simple
• Let’s you access the files within the app
• Cross-platform

Cons:

• Have to be on the same local wifi network
• Syncing not included

If an official declaration of war was necessary, it was presented this week at the Google I/O conference. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) are at war and all of the afternoon coffee breaks between Steve and Eric aren’t going to change that. As the technology world moves from the desktop to the mobile world, the long truce that held between these two rivals dissolved as Microsoft moved to a place of importance but relative irrelevance. So now that the guns are blazing in round two of the Battle of Silicon Valley, who will eventually win the conflict? Will it be Apple with their superior user experience, vertically integrated products, and developed ecosystem? Will it be Google with its clout, emergent systems, and open standards? In fact, neither will be the winner or the loser. The real winner will be you and I, the consumers that use the products and services of both companies.

It is a generally accepted axiom of commercial and economic theory that competition breeds innovation. It is, in fact, the central underpinning of the free market system. When the iPhone and associated operating system came on the scene in 2007 it had no competitor, it had no comparison. It was utterly and truly a new thing, formed entirely to bring a new experience to the cell phone. There was WAP web browsing before the iPhone, there were even limited Java-based applications. The iPhone was born from the realization that consumers would be interested in using a true smart phone as a mini-computer instead of just a phone and limited entertainment device. Apple took that initial lead they grabbed by going in another direction and parlayed it into an environment they slowly iterated to add new features as they became comfortable with them. By the time the iPhone 3G came out in 2008 Apple was firmly astride the mobile market with a dominance and lead no one could question.

But a funny thing happened on the way to world domination, Google showed up. When the Android operating system was announced in 2007 it signaled a move by Google into the mobile space. Google wanted a share of the emergent market Apple had discovered with the iPhone they had announced earlier that year. At the time Android presented little threat to the iPhone OS. It was seen as a configuration heavy, geek friendly operating system while the iPhone OS was geared towards a managed, consumer friendly experience. Between 2007 and 2009 the iPhone OS grabbed a large share of the smart phone market, partially due to its innovative design and partially due to the lack of a viable alternative. When the Motorola Droid was launched in October of 2009 with Android OS 2.0, serious competition for the iPhone finally landed. In the interceding time since then, the innovation and competition coming out of both companies has heated up.

I don’t think it comes as any surprise that I am generally a fan of the iPhone, the iPhone OS, and the whole ecosystem Apple has grown around it. It’s my opinion that it presents the best integrated user experience. I would be the first one to admit however that with the inception of Android 2.0 Google has started to right the ship. As a consumer in the iPhone ecosystem I don’t view this as necessarily a bad thing and neither should you. Good competition breeds innovation and innovation ultimately benefits the consumer. While I wouldn’t advise Apple to start rushing features and services into their products merely to participate in a “me-too” race with Google, I might suggest that taking the competition into consideration might be a good idea. I think they’ve done that already with the inclusion of video conferencing, a front facing camera, and multitasking to the upcoming iPhone 4G / HD. In evaluating the competition and consumer demand, Apple has added features to the product they are comfortable with and that advance the product that much more. Competition spurred the innovation but the innovation wasn’t simply a move to imitate something the competition already had. That’s an important point. As I mentioned yesterday, Google’s Froyo announcement at I/O seemed intent on introducing features that were picked from a shopping list of things the iPhone OS didn’t have. The things Apple is bringing to the table in the new iPhone 4G and iPhone operating system may have been spurred by the competition from Android, but they are not simply extensions of what Android already offers.

The good news is this war will have a winner; you, the consumer. Much like an earlier war between Apple and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) produced improved versions of both Windows and Mac OS, this new conflict will ultimately breed innovations and improvements in the mobile market. I, for one, can’t wait to see what happens.

Do you think this newfound competition in the mobile space will ultimately benefit the consumer? Does either Apple or Google really have the clout to truly beat the other? Leave us your thoughts in the comments section.