The tagline of “Come see our latest creation” doesn’t really confirm the nature of the event but it is clear that the industry is very much behind the view that this one will finally, after a number of false starts, be the event where Apple show us what they think a tablet computer should look like.

Oh yes and recent updates suggest there will be iPhone OS 4.0 launch and possible iLife 2010 !

Should be an interesting day… Hope Twitter have some extra servers ready in the wings !

Images can be edited/cropped etc using the built in editing tools then either saved in clipboard, stored in the Photo library or emailed out.

The really clever feature though has to be the Pastebot Sync app for Mac. This allows Pastebot on the iPhone to pair itself to one or more Macs running the Sync app and to wirelessly exchange text or images in either direction ! Images or text copied on the Mac are magically transported into the Pastebot clipboard where they can then be pasted straight into an iPhone app. Alternatively clippings saved on the iPhone can be sent back to the Mac and pasted straight into any app there. Really clever stuff and well worth the £1.79 just to see it in action !

You can create as many of these dialer icons as you wish effectively creating a quick dial contacts page on your iPhone.

Not a free app but for £1.79 it is certainly not expensive.

Apart from daily news and reviews Josh and Grant Brunner also record regular audio podcasts which are available on iTunes, there are occasional screencasts providing step through instructions and howtos and recently Josh has announced plans to begin a video podcast.

This site is nicely put together and is well worth a bookmark in your browser or favourite news reader. Recommended.

Thankfully with the release of 10.6.2 this issue has now been resolved and NHSMail is now fully accessible through Mail as well as via your iPhone.

To configure Mail go to Mail preferences, select Accounts and click on + to add a new account. Enter your email address and password and click Continue. Mail should auto-discover the NHSMail servers and auto-select Exchange 2007 Account type. Complete the new account preferences as normal and you should be good to go.

It is fairly clear that the NHS are beginning to promote the new improved NHSMail service heavily and this will only improve their chances of getting the service adoption rates up, especially amongst the growing numbers of NHS staff using Macs at home instead of PC’s.

Firstname Surname <firstname@domain.com>

This is pretty annoying and to be honest it is hard to understand why Apple decided that this was a necessary change to the original Mail app behaviour. Fortunately there is a fix to restore the default behaviour. Fire up a Terminal window and copy and paste the command below to restore normality !

defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO

Of most interest to the majority of people will be the Magic Mouse and the astounding new 27″ LED iMac. The Magic Mouse extends Apples multi-touch technology to the mouse, disposing of the roller ball for scrolling in favour of a mouse surface that is a multi-touch trackpad able to respond to most of the gestures possible on the MacBooks trackpad. Mac haters will no doubt love the fact that the device still sports no obvious buttons and will no doubt gloat over the apparent inability of the mouse to allow right mouse clicks, everyone else will quietly configure it to work exactly how they wish and revel in the usual Apple design beauty. Of course even amongst Mac fans the mouse has traditionally been something you either love or hate but personally I think this latest revision looks stunning and sets off the look of the iMac to perfection.

The new iMacs take the Apple desktop range to new heights and push the Power Mac further into a niche corner by delivering superb 21.5″ and a huge 27″ LED backlit screens, Core 2 Duo and Quad processors including the option of Intel i7 and the option to install a huge 16Gb of RAM. Apart from the internal specs the design of the iMac is largely unchanged from previous models apart from minor tweaks including a slight thinning of the aluminium stand, though you could clearly argue that the current design is still very much of the moment and therefore Apple have rightly not felt it necessary to mess with it.

The Mac Mini has received a performance hike with two new models sporting beefier processors and expanded memory and at the same time a DVD-less model complete with Snow Leopard Server has been launched, clearly an attempt to tempt smaller companies away from Windows server solutions. Finally a slightly slimmer and lighter white Macbook now receives a unibody casing ( ala MacBook Pro line ), LED backlight, a glass multi-touch trackpad and a 7 hour battery life wrapping off an impressive list of upgrades.

There is no doubt that the timing of these updates was planned to detract some media attention away from this weeks launch of Windows 7, though even the most fervent Mac supporter will have to admit that this week will inevitably be remembered for Microsoft’s new product launch ( though time will tell which is ultimately the most successful ! )

John’s iPhone App of the day – Tap Tap Revenge 3

My recommendation is Tap Tap Revenge 3.

Now in its tenth release and carrying some nice new features, one of the oldest games for the iPhone has received its latest major update.

If you haven’t played it before, Tap Tap is a rhythm action game that is similar to playing something like Rock Band or even Dance Dance Revolution. It has a single player mode, two player mode and a very good multiplayer system online.

It also features downloadable content to expand the game play. Unsigned bands are available to download for free, plus there are also downloadable content for signed original artists that are priced fairly reasonably. A pack of six songs by the Killers is £1.79 or two tracks by Lynard Skynyrd are 59p for example. But be warned, you WILL get cramp after tapping Free Bird for 9 minutes!!

You can also purchase items for your avatar using in game “money” that you earn from each performance and also there are lots of achievements to obtain as you improve.

This highly addictive game is definitely improved over TTR2 and, some good sensibly priced downloadable content help make this my recommendation.

Debbie’s iPhone app of the day – Disney’s Magic Mirror

My App of the Day is……… Disney’s Magic Mirror

Remember the famous mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs…… well now have your own.

Ask the Mirror any question you like by either speaking or typing and await your answer. Fantastic animation and official character
voices………..

All your answers for 59p!! Go on ask the Mirror………

Clearly I am not about to test out the premise but from what I can determine this issue is rare. The Apple support forum has a thread where a small number of posters are reporting this issue but it does not appear to be wide spread. Oddly all affected users claim to have selected the Guest account “by accident” ! How do you do this ? The Guest account is disabled by default. How many Mac users actually enable the Guest account ? I have certainly never felt the need to do this, if someone wants to check something on my Mac I let them use the account that is logged in. Perhaps I am more trusting than most ?

I have to say at this point that the reports seem to be greatly exaggerating this issue and clearly the Mac Hater community is having a little bit of a party today, using this as a wonderful piece of propaganda to bash Mac users and Apple. It will be interesting to see how this one develops.

Granted if this problem affected you, you are most likely going to be very upset at Apple and if it turns out that this is in fact a real bug in Guest account handling and not some weird interaction with another application and

9 to 5 Mac have their LivePanel up and ready to roll, Ars Technica will be posting here. There will of course be many other blogs re-playing the event either in real time or shortly after the fact.

Check back later for updates and comments on the outcome. Heres hoping for another “One More Thing” launch… Its been too long….