Denys Zhadanov of Readdle told me it wasn’t easy to solve the problem. But the company, whose tech staff is based in the Ukraine, has some other impressive chops to show in the market. Readdle built Terra, one of the best alternatives to the Safari app. Zhadanov said that Apple actually made Readdle slow down the speed of Terra when introducing new programming standards for iOS. I always found Terra to be a lot better Web experience.

Remarks takes a slice of ReaddleDocs’ powerful PDF annotation tools, includes a zoom mode plus a drawing engine. It offers pens and highlighters of different colors, floating text boxes, shapes and an eraser. We’re looking forward to testing the ability to annotate PDF documents that we’ll create from Word docs, printed to PDF files using the Mac’s inbred abilities. Zhadanov said an update to Remarks later this spring will let you pass your annotated documents into your Dropbox. Remarks is on sale at the Apple iTunes App Store.

The new social media capabilities for StreetPilot onDemand integrate Wikipedia, Facebook and foursquare. Users can display locations from these networks on the map and check in upon arrival at their destination. Clicking on one of the Wikipedia icons on the map will reveal detailed information about a location, such as the identity of an interesting building or landmark. Also new for the are visually refined 3D renderings of buildings to provide a better overview.

Garmin’s Tracker app works in conjunction with the GTU 10 tracking device to display its location on a map “to virtually follow anything from your loved-ones to valuables or the family dog. Users can set up a geo-fence to get alerts when the device crosses in or out of a defined area. The latest version of this app now also allows a continuous tracking mode, and enables users to send out map links to others.”

SmartPlans

Left Coast Logic is unveiling new apps and a cloud service at Macworld this week. The SmartDay organizer integrates tasks, events, notes, and projects into one app. The company’s SmartTime logic is behind the organizer. It schedules tasks directly into free time between calendar appointments. SmartDay Mac is the company’s first Mac app, but it includes a feature-set similar to its iPad organizer, SmartPad. The company is also unveiling a web version, mySmartDay.com, that synchronizes with both.

A new version of the SmartPlans app uses Smart logic at a higher level to manage multiple projects within the context of a weekly work balance. Version 3 adds business-oriented features such as milestones and dependencies, but the most significant new feature may be the way it integrates projects into the native iPhone and iPad calendars.

The CoPilot Live Team is making Macworld passes available for free. Apple fans just need to visit the CoPilot Live USA Facebook page and Like the company. To show their appreciation for its giveaway, they’re offering a few free CoPilot Live HD apps for the iPad. We’ve got their free iTunes store codes for the first couple of readers who contact us or send a comment. This is a $24.99 app, so go visit the Facebook page and come back for your codes. First come, first served.

The product fills a gap for the mobile device market. Apple’s AirPrint is available to iOS users, but the list of supported wireless printers is small indeed. At least compared to the 63 pages of printers supplied by Printronix at this month’s announcement. Neither of our office printers are on the list, but they’re fairly antique or not networkable.

The xPrintServer can be connected anywhere on your LAN (on the subnet on which your printers are located). Simply use the RJ45 cable and plug it directly into the LAN, router, etc. Your iOS device users should then connect to your corporate WiFi network – at which point the xPrintServer will auto discover and auto populate your available printer list on the iOS device. It supports any iOS device running version 4.2 or later, including iPad and iPad 2, iPhone (3GS or later), and iPod Touch.

Attaching the xPrintServer to your network won’t impact any existing networked printer settings or printers. Users can continue to use printers as they normally do.

The product will be sold through standard retail channels including Amazon.com, starting early next year. There’s a clever commercial online at YouTube to sell the concept to your IT manager or Computer Guy.

That kind of vendor-supplied documentation is fine, to a point. But this kind of training rarely gets as honest as an independent guide to a product. For example, if you look over those videos on the Apple website, you’ll find they’ve got a snappy 2 minutes on buying music via iTunes on the iPad — when what you really need is a primer on how to use iTunes on the Mac or PC to control what’s on your iPad. No such video exists.

No Starch Press has produced a “My New iPad 2” book, written by Wallace Wang, to help. We reached out to a first-time iPad user  who’s running a travel agent business, Ron Wilcox of Seabird Cruises, to tell us how this book stacked up for him. He added, after reviewing it, “now just try to get it out of my hands.”

I’ve often found instruction manuals to be frustrating and confusing.  Many are written with an assumption about the level of understanding that the reader already has about the subject. Online manuals tend to be exasperatingly user-UNfriendly, but manufacturers are so fond of the format that good print manuals are often difficult to find.

However, this manual, for this user, was pretty close to perfect. The index was detailed and complete. As a reference manual, it was quick and easy to locate information specific to a particular function.

Screen shots were clear and plentiful. The step-by-step instructions were very specific and easy to understand. If a set of instructions for a function included part of the instructions for another operation, there was no assumption that the user knew the previously-described operation. All steps were repeated clearly. The instructions for a particular operation didn’t require knowledge of any other operation covered earlier in the book.

Each chapter concluded with a section called “Additional Tips” for using the functions covered in that chapter. While interesting, this section sometimes mentioned a way of using the iPad but failed to explain that particular usage/function or even refer the reader to another source of more specific information.

Wang, the author of the book, has penned several others for No Starch Press on Mac and Apple products. His bio indicates that he’s also had a stand-up comedy career — just the kind of edgy, indie voice that makes a new computer like Apple’s tablet easier to embrace.

Looks like the B&N Nook may be the $250 slab we have discussed. Given recent software upgrades and a cottage industry into making them full Android slabs, the Early Majority market seems to be defined as under $250, powerful enough to read, surf and play a few games.

If it weren’t for the blasted “take up all the supply” deals that Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook negotiated for tablet components, maybe Lenovo could afford to build a sub-$250 tablet. It’ll happen one day, and the people who waited will be glad to pay less. For the next year, the cheap tablet is something like what we call a jackalope here in Texas, a mythic cross of jackrabbit and antelope. You can imagine one, but that’s as far as you’ll get.

Guy is reading from Crossing the Chasm to get that Early Majority Market label. The book was written 20 years ago and has not been refreshed in this century. But even by those aged measures, the Nook won’t be measuring up. While people are “rooting” their Nooks to turn them into Android tablets, they’re playing with a toy that doesn’t have a strong future. It’s the old Windows world dream of getting some big part of $500 worth of value by spending $250, just because there’s a lot of demand. This chestnut is the “nice try Apple, and very clever: but cheap, primitive copycats will overrun you.”

No product is perfect, but it will take bigger treads than the Nook’s to do that running. I’d be betting on something besides any book reader that needs its users to slap a new operating system into it. There are some other Nook problems, and all of them point to strengths in Apple’s tablet model.

– Barnes & Noble, the Nook’s maker, was hoping for a buyout this summer and had to settle for about $200 million in fresh investment. This sounds a lot like Palm, which was building the iPhone killer WebOS until it got bought out by HP. And then got killed by HP in the wake of the TouchPad debacle.

– About 270 people comprise the Nook technical team. Apple probably has more than that in California alone.

– Barnes & Noble is suing the content providers who stock the Nook with many of its books. B&N hates the $9.99 or better pricing Apple negotiated with the top six publishers. Apple negotiated, while B&N pushes back with a lawsuit.

It might be worthwhile to see what tablet Amazon brings out this fall. But compared to a real tablet, it is likely to be a primitive device that performs the browse and email and listen and watch functions that make up the biggest part of iPad ownership. It takes passion about a product — not an operating system like Android or just the content — to give a tablet purchaser lasting value.

Crossing the Chasm devotees assume that nothing changes about technology markets, at least not since the book was last re-written in 1999. Guy notes, “Companies who dominate the Innovator and Early Adopter phases of the technology adoption life-cycle are rarely those who dominate the Early and Late Majority.” It all is so much chaff in the face of a product that only succeeds with a meld of content and software and hardware. Plainly, if you’re reading from Chasm to figure out the mobile success story, you’re on the wrong page.

Chasm worked great for the 1990s, and even for the computers which didn’t need a content ecosystem to succeed. The book predicted a healthy final act for Hewlett-Packard’s HP 3000 minicomputer, calling it “Late Main Street.” (You gotta love those snappy labels.) It was a good label until HP decided that it would gobble up Compaq for its PC business, then jettison some older product lines which were still profitable. HP turned its 3000 business into Too Late Main Street. That computer’s market is surviving, but declining.

The Kindle is going to rewrite that last-century silicon strategy. I was an Early Adopter of the Kindle. I needed an iPad, and Apple had only built the iPod Touch up to then. Bought mine at $369, ouch. But the Kindle is hanging on and even is rumored to be getting Android inside. Amazon believes in hardware, but only as much as it needs to sell content, all those books. If they’d get serious about selling apps, music or movies, they’d make a worthy competitor. Nevertheless, that innovator has become an Early Majority Market product doing well in the e-reader space. (No need to point out the innovative Sony ebook devices. They never had a content storehouse, and so as products they languished on shelves.) Looks like the Kindle is about to become pretty entrenched.

If you’re seizing on B&N to break the ice on sub-$250 tablets, set aside some budget. You’ll be buying something else soon enough. Buy three of these cheaper tablets and you’ve spent enough to get an iPad.

But maybe not; maybe consumers won’t cast off their cheaper tablets, and instead will use them for several years. My iMac is now 3.5 years old. I switched out my MacBook Pro after six. My iPhone 3GS will probably see three years of service, put it could last much longer than that.

Cheaper copycats don’t win for anybody but the makers of them. I define “win” for the consumer as being able to afford anything beyond “primitive.” Nothing I’ve mentioned above is “primitive.”

This constant chaff of “it was clever while it was early, but it will be irrelevant” is just fantasy — the desperate hope sold to mobile device makers who don’t want to work so hard, so they can sell primitive products. Netflix is another example of a company not the very first in the market (streaming), but the one that made a product everybody needs to have. The company’s name has come to stand in for the term “streaming content.”

That’s what innovation will do — reward shareholders, plus establish the leadership in the market. You don’t have to open a new market like Apple did with tablets. You can deliver success just by finding the best value for the consumer, not the lowest price. Then marketing it expertly, and then do your groundbreaking with content. Like Apple wresting phone freedom from carriers’ control. Or iTunes, dealing to sell legitimate music when Napster was stealing it. Or Amazon, which outstripped the Sony ebooks by leveraging e-book deals with all major publishers.

The Nook is the best of the non-Kindle devices, and it seems both these products want a lower price point with fewer features to compete with the iPad. Great. To call them tablets, however, does more than drop the price point. It cheapens the concept that HP tried at and failed — or the one where the Lenovo products are showing great promise. (Lenovo even has one model aimed at business and another at consumers.)

Meanwhile, Nice try on the Nook. Barnes & Noble has been for sale all summer. From Publisher’s Lunch:

Liberty Media CEO John Malone said, “It would be a bit of a flier for us, on whether or not Barnes & Noble can play competitively with the likes of Apple and Amazon in the digital transformation,” he said. “That’s really the bet.”

So Liberty decided to bet its $204 million on B&N, rather than buy the company out. The buyout is said to have stalled because Reuters said “the two sides could not agree on how to value the Nook, with recent volatility in the stock market making it harder to figure out valuations.”

There’s a lot to value in the Nook’s success. Pub Lunch: “A dramatic strategy to design and build quality ereading devices, leverage their large store bases to sell ereaders, and provide in-store extras in ways few other physical retailers can, and expand the digital content universe in such areas as kids’ ebooks, digital magazines, and color newspapers.” 630 B&N College Bookstores will now sell the Nook. More than 60 percent of eTextbook purchases were made at B&N College stores.

Meanwhile, B&N’s Nook app that’s been selling content on 20 million iPads had to dump its in-app purchasing during July, just like everybody else’s app. You now gotta head to the B&N website. But that’s a matter for B&N’s profitability, not Nook prospects. Unless profits have anything to do with growing the Nook empire.

Nook is doing well, now that it’s moved beyond selling books. My brother has rooted his Nook, and loves the fact that he didn’t have to pay the $499 for an iPad — or the $369 for a refurbished, full warranty iPad 1. You get the idea. Some people are not gonna pay a lot for that muffler. How many? It might tell you a lot about the scope of “mass adoption” that a $204 million Liberty investment is supposed to move the needle for Nook’s mass market. That’s about 180 days budget for just advertising the iPad and iPhone.

We just saw HP fail at a tablet. That Compaq buyout has run its course. After 10 years of flogging a low-profit PC business, HP can’t afford the dead weight on its other computer operations. It’s announced that its PC business is not really something it wants to continue, and so keep its stock in the range that makes it an attractive takeover target. When you’re trading at 5.2x earnings and your share price is $25, a majority chunk of your company can easily fall into competitors’ hands. (Especially somebody like Oracle, who now sees HP as a competitor it can bully easier than ever.)

Guy explained that he believes the Chasm buzzwords are essential to being a part of conversation at Silicon Valley cocktail parties. This century’s market parties use fresh intelligence to replace the Chasm chatter about mobile computers. For any that don’t, it’s closing time at the bar.

Urban Tool’s Pocket Bar is flexible, but my iPad had to ride bareback to fit into the best compartment

The Pocket Bar looks like a good match for the iPad, taller than the tablet but with just about the same width. The bag is woven with a nylon and elastane cloth that has some stretch and a waterproofed quality. Inside there’s a full cotton interior to protect sensitive gear. The main pocket is roomy in its thickness, but it’s mouth is a bit tight on the width of the iPad. Only the most spare of iPad cases can squeeze their way through the zippered opening. I stripped off my ZooGue case and let the tablet ride bareback, for the first time in months, inside the Pocket Bar. It was an easy slip in and out at airport security.

The outside of the case is dotted with pockets that stretch to fit mobile phones, point and shoot cameras, wallets and more. A key lanyard is clipped on the outside, and another key yo-yo is inside another pocket. The array of outside pockets is one of the best features of this bag. I was about to discover another one when I stepped off the BART on Powell Street. It was pouring, a classic February California rain.

I zipped the top of the Pocket Bar tight and re-clipped the adjustable strap across my body on the diagonal. The iPad now rode nearly under my arm, but I had to pinch the zipper flap tight. Though it zips side to side, it doesn’t seal the bag completely, but my tablet stayed dry over the six blocks of gusting that I walked though to the cable car station.

Pockets, pockets, so many useful pockets

I had no use for the removable leg strap that can tie down the bottom of the bag while you’re walking. It works like a holster tie, but I’m not cool enough to pull that look off. You can even attach the strap around your waist, but that creates an odd bounce in your gait if you’re carrying an iPad in the Pocket Bar.

The best part of using the Pocket Bar is its versatility. There’s so much stretch and give in the pockets you can put mobile items and iPods anyplace. I wished for a wider mouth on the main pocket and a fully-enclosed zipper. What’s offered isn’t wide enough for an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper; maybe the A4 Euro size fits cleaner. I folded some of mine, and tended to use another iPad case in daily meetings. But the bag is lightweight, weather resistant, and its design is subtle. Even considering the cost, this is a special bit of luggage to make your mobile Apple device move easily through your travels.

Best of all, it looks like the Pocket Bar will provide a good fit for Apple’s other mobile gem, the MacBook Air. The Air is about two inches taller than the iPad but the same width. So unlike the iPad, the Air may be an even better fit for the design of Urban Tool’s case. There’s really nothing else like it out there — a sleek new generation of messenger bag slimmed to the size of a tablet or small notebook.

The MacBook Air's 11-inch model is a better upgrade from the iPad than the iPad 2

All around the world, people are clamoring for the iPad 2. Apple cannot build them fast enough. The company’s stock lost 7 percent of its value this week, simply on the news that iPad production has slowed in China. It’s clear this device is a hot ticket. But it is one that Apple won’t be selling me soon.

It’s not that the iPad is a bad choice for a business. I’ve worked on websites, articles, spreadsheets, databases, photos and communication (email, social networks and chats). But we already own an iPad, the original model, the unit .3 inches thicker than the iPad 2 you cannot get this month, if you didn’t order on Day One. Our iPad has proved itself to be a business tool that also has a fun side, a home computer as well that’s easy to use.

The iPad 1 has also proved to be a worthy competitor to the iPad 2, once you look at the device in the Apple Store while we’ve held our original iPad. What makes for a better upgrade from the iPad is the MacBook Air. You lose the multi-touch experience when you shift from the iPad to the Air. But I’m counting on Apple to bridge that gap somewhat when the 10.7 Lion release of OS X ships.

That’s why the MacBook Air is going to join the diverse collective of Apple products serving here at our offices. You can make a case for this by the numbers, as well as the feel of the user experience. Apple cares enough about your experience to bring a lot of thought to both the Air and iPad.

On the numbers: Buying an iPad 2 is a $545 expense, taxes included, at rock bottom. You’ll need to add some kind of external keyboard, an extra cost of $100 if you want one that keeps the iPad portable and light. Onscreen keyboards are good enough, but I write too much for a good-enough keyboard. We’re at a total now of $645, and we don’t have web-everywhere capability yet.

That comes through 3G, and stepping up to an iPad 2 3G will bring our total expense (including keyboard) to $779 with tax. Nothing is simpler than having 3G built into an iPad, but it comes at a cost — you need to decide if you want the Verizon 3G iPad 2, or the ATT model. And when you make this choice, you tie your iPad purchase to a carrier that you might change later.

Now I can walk away from a $199 iPhone if I change my mind about a phone provider. But an iPad 2 expense of $629 plus tax, with some chance I’d want to change my carrier at the end of the contract? Too much. That’s why the Air, plus some HotSpot charges, will win the budget battle here this spring.

I was already at $779 on that 3G iPad, and I own a 3GS iPhone. Yep, it’s ready for an upgrade. With a $219 upgrade to an iPhone 4, I can use a MacBook Air ($949, rock-bottom) in web-everywhere mode, for a total cost of about $1,200. And when I use the Air, I make no compromises that matter. It’s a complete Mac with a battery that lasts at least 5 hours on a single charge. It measures just two inches longer than the iPad, and it weighs less than an iPad plus a keyboard. For this tradeoff, the Air brings the widest range of software for any Apple product designed to travel ultra light.

You will get a different software collection for the Air; the clever array of apps for tablets is replaced by a vast selection for OS X. But that’s going to become a blended list over the next 18 months. What we can expect in the year to come is a strong link between iOS tablet/phone apps and MacBook apps. What you enjoy now on your iPad will have a good chance of appearing on your MacBook, once Lion ships. Apple will take care of some touch experience on the Air.

That last part is a gamble, but probably not a bigger one than spinning the wheel on carrier service, or the prospect of buying a fresh iPad this spring that doesn’t feel much faster than the original model. That’s surely the situation for business apps on an iPad, unless your apps run the range of GarageBand or iMovie.

What this purchase plan doesn’t provide us is a second iPad for the office and home here. That will make our iPad a negotiated computer resource, instead of becoming one dedicated to my lap while my partner Abby gets the hand-me-down iPad. When a more breakthrough model of iPad appears, it will likely make this a two-iPad home office. The Air, which even at rock bottom has four times the memory and four times the storage, looks like the stronger tool for mobile work if you want an upgrade from an iPad this year.

Of course if you don’t own an iPad, the numbers skew toward getting the newest model. Lower initial cost, great array of apps, battery life and mobility that will not be challenged this year. So Apple gets about $1,200 of our new system budget this year — giving us an iPhone plus a mobile computer — instead of $679 for a tablet alone. If your budget has that kind of room, you might make the same choice as we’re making here. New phone, 11-inch MacBook Air — Apple’s stock will stay healthy if some customers make these choices.

Bento stays in sync between mobile devices like the iPad or the iPhone and your Mac

Over the last three years Filemaker, the division of Apple that builds database software, has created a database for the rest of us: people who run businesses instead of computer departments. With the latest release of Bento, it looks like the product is maturing enough to meet many common and unique needs to manage data.

Today Filemaker begins to sell Bento 4 for Mac, now available on the Mac App Store, as well as Bento 1.1 for iPhone, and Bento 1.1 for iPad. With many new features including the ability to print labels, export libraries with data, automatically add geographical locations to records and lock down forms, Bento 4 is a major next step for the popular personal database family.

“People just love the way Bento helps them organize their lives – especially their work tasks like managing contacts and tracking projects,” said Ryan Rosenberg, vice president of marketing and services for FileMaker, Inc. “We’ve enhanced the entire product line: Bento for Mac, Bento for iPad, and Bento for iPhone to provide you with a major productivity boost at your desk and when you’re on the go.”

Early customers have praised the product. (We’ll have our own review here soon.) “With Bento 4, I’ll be able to print address labels directly from records and synch my iCal to-do items using Bento 1.1 for iPad and iPhone,” says Robert Terry, educational journal editor, Richmond, Virginia. “It really feels like Bento can do everything.”
“I looked at multiple database applications for the Mac and the PC, and even considered web-based solutions, John Shin, independent insurance agent, Dallas, Texas. “None of them offer the flexibility, power, and convenience of Bento 4.”

In Bento 4, you can create custom labels or choose from more than 250 ready-to-use Avery and Dymo label formats for mailing labels, inventory tags, name badges, file folders and many other uses. Labels can be customized with information from your database and with images.

“With built-in support for a wide array of the most popular Avery labels, Bento makes it easy to print labels for business or home use,” said Brenda Dillon, Group Product Manager for Avery Dennison Office Products.

Sharing databases is simpler than ever using Bento 4. For the first time, you can export Bento libraries populated with data and share these with other users. Now sending a complete library to another Bento user is as easy as emailing a file. You can also share your great ideas with the world by sending your custom Bento templates directly to the popular Bento Template Exchange from within Bento 4. The Bento Template Exchange features over 800 free downloadable templates that bring to life the huge variety of uses for Bento.

Bento 4 is faster and easier to use. With faster launch times, the new version allows you to lock forms to prevent unwanted changes to a layout, easily switch from Table view to Form view, search by date ranges, and automatically create media fields.

While many software products allow you map an address, Bento goes one step further by automatically capturing the locations where your activities occur. With the addition of a new location field type, Bento 4 will automatically log your exact location using WiFi, GPS, or cell tower triangulation, depending on which Mac or iOS device you may be using when you enter or modify a record.  With automatic location fields, you can record the location of site inspections, log customer visits, track travel sites, or capture survey locations.

Mobile 1.1 versions also out now

Bento for iPhone and Bento for iPad have both received significant updates.  You can now record voice memos into media fields on your mobile devices and tie them to your records, perfect for capturing events, logging meetings for later review, and just capturing notes without typing.  Voice memos can be synched with Bento 4 for the Mac.

Bento for Mac users can make more use of their information on the Bento for iPhone and Bento for iPad.  Now you can sync iCal tasks from the Mac, edit simple list data on your iPhone, and use related records to link libraries.