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When the Apple Store went down last night it was like a Wednesday news reporter’s wet dream. Then I woke up, and found that all Apple had nocturnally emitted was Aperture 3.

A ‘personal assistant‘ app for the iPhone. I made my request and two weeks later a dismembered pole vaulter’s arm arrived in the mail. They’ve some work to do.

So Amazon are rethinking the Kindle. The guy in this video reckons it looks like something Mennonites made 150 years ago. I didn’t think they had e-ink back then, so I’m not sure that was possible, but hey, he’s the expert.

Here’s a thing to get stuff on your whatsit.

If El Jobso lets you borrow his iPad, do not use it to tweet.

If the fact that the upcoming iPad cannot record video is a deal-breaker for you, fret not. There may be something in the works.

Apple fans pay lots of money to be cool. I would say we pay fair market value for great products that work seamlessly with each other to enable our digital lifestyles… but I’m a rabid fanboy, so ignore me.

This week we look at Australian developer Syncode’s app for wirelessly syncing your notes, and a very stylish expense tracking app called Bills.

Synotes

Just a few weeks after the release of their copy-and-paste manager app, the folks at Syncode are at it again with an efficient note syncing app. To put it simply, Synotes can wirelessly sync – the vital function that the iPhone’s inbuilt Notes app lacks. It adds a couple of extra features that would otherwise be welcome additions to Apple’s app too. There are quite a few similarities between the Synotes and Syncopy apps, the largest being the way that your notes and clippings are synced – but while Syncopy requires an extra app for your Mac to manage clippings, Synotes includes access to a MobileMe-style web interface to deliver notes to your Mac. It’s practically perfect for accessing your notes from anywhere, since you can view them on any computer with an internet connection at any time. I’ll stick to reviewing the app itself, but if you decide to purchase Synotes, make sure you check out the web interface here.

Since it’s a note-taking app for the iPhone, it’s already presumed that Synotes will feel much the same as Apple’s aforementioned Notes app. Notes is one of the most used apps on my iPhone, which is what makes Synotes‘ contrasting interface so refreshing. Notes are typed against a bare white background in clear white text. Better yet, the font you use to create them isn’t Marker Felt – which, for me, lost it’s novelty as a note-taking font very quickly. Once completed or saved for later use, Synotes automatically pushes it up onto their server in a matter of one or two seconds. An important note for the uninitiated: the golden ⌘S rule taught to new Word/Pages users also applies to Synotes on the iPhone – save regularly if a long note is being written or work will be lost.

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Going by these job posting on the Apple website, it seems that Apple are opening a 4th store in Sydney, this time in Castle Towers Shopping Center, in the suburb of Castle Hills. This is also in conjunction with a Bondi store opening soon too.

There’s some discussion of this store opening on our forums.

Thanks to the dozens of people who sent this in!

Good Morrow fair readers. Hopefully the lark’s song did not wake thee too early and you all have a fantastic day…enough of the Shakespeare talk…here’s the news.

MacBook Pro…nice little laptop…we may be getting a new one tomorrow. That’s right, according to a French rumour site, Apple may decide to announce new MacBook Pros. Once again with rumours we always take them with a grain of salt and a heavy dose of skepticism.

Are you planning on buying an iPad on launch day and you’re not Decryption??? Well apparently you shouldn’t. Much like the original iPhone there are rumours that Apple may drop the pricing of the iPad a few months after launch….provided that it doesn’t garner enough interest. So resist the urges and you’ll be paying less in the long run.

How did Apple come to this decision I hear you say? Well turns out that interest in the iPad is waning. With phrases like ‘It’s only a big iPod Touch’ people are wondering whether or not they need this ‘third category’ and it seems that no matter how many times you play that video with Jony Ive (*swoon*) they’re just not interested. I suspect in the weeks leading up to the launch date Apple will ramp up the advertising to a fever pitch and all will be well.

Speaking of the iPad…will it change your mind about buying a MacBook Pro? Well according to this journalist it just might.

But what about the iPad Mini…the iPhone. Well turns out that the entire tech world messed up. See for about a week there was a 4G iPhone right in front of our faces and no one saw it because it was overshadowed (literally) by the iPad. Well apparently the new iPhone, according to a repair website, is going to be slightly taller with a new sensor button….yay!

Looks like someone accidentally ran GeekBench on one of the as-yet-unreleased i7 MacBook Pros. Oops!

Remember how the 27″ panel in the current-generation iMac was praised as “bizzare and incredible“? Perhaps it’s too much so – HardMac say that the firmware of the LCD itself is to blame for all the issues Apple has been having, including the dreaded yellow-tinge-of-death.

LaCie are probably better known for making hard drives, and being French. Not that there’s anything wrong with being French, of course – but they’re now making cases for the MacBook and upcoming iPad.

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While not strictly Apple-related, the biggest tech news to come out of Australia this week was iiNet’s win against the big bad movie studios. Three cheers for sanity!

Everyone was looking forward to magazine content on the iPad, and Apple didn’t deliver. TUAW complains.

The Flash war rages on this week. Can HTML5 replace the need for Flash in all browsers? Gizmodo doesn’t think so. Meanwhile, you can dream about what an HTML5 video future might look like with Sublime Video.

Apple’s still busy filing patents – this week, an intelligent iPad bezel and location based social networking/video calling stood out.

Sebastiaan de With posts a rather excellent user interface roundup of the iPad.

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We’ll try to forget yesterday’s inexcusable misdemeanour of incorrectly naming an Apple product, and instead, move on with the news…

Nehalem Mac Pros are all-powerful and all, but how about the fact they take a 20% performance hit when playing back audio? I’m sorry, come again? How something like that slips through the cracks is completely beyond me…

Daring Fireball. With comments.

Amazon bought out some multi-touch company, in the hopes that they’ll be integrate existing technologies into the next-gen Kindle. Well, that’s what I’d expect them to do – here’s to being able to rip out the pages of your favourite book, one by one!

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Cheers to Ram City for sponsoring the MacTalk Podcast – check them out if you need RAM!

Lauren Watson (prerecorded), Alex Reid (Al Aero), Christopher Kahler (arkenstone), Kieran McIlwain (Exocet) and Anthony Agius (decryption) invite you to drink some Red Balls whilst listening to this podcast.

• iPad – Name
• iPad Wall Idea
• iPad – 3G
• iPad – CPU
• iPad – looks & design
• Are we buying an iPad?
• Microsoft’s Origami & Courier
• eBooks, iBooks, Kindles
• HTML5/H264 on YouTube!
• Macworld 2010 – it’s on!
• 27″ iMac Issues Continue – a dude at Gizmodo is very upset about it
• iPhone OS 3.1.3 – forum thread
• Apps: Waveboard, Hourface, Color Oracle, Machinarium, eBay

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Forget the iPad, I am honoured to present the upcoming gPad, with all the super cool spy images to satisfy you excitement.

As the gPad is such a huge announcement, there are reports that HTC has teamed up with Google to make this awesome new device.

Oh no wait a minute, it now looks like that HTC has apparently abandoned the tablet for the moment. Now that was quick!

That concludes our gPad coverage today. In other news:

If your iPhone or iTouch is looking a bit ill, plug it into iTunes straight away as iPhone 3.1.3 is waiting patiently for you.

For all you guys with the new 27″ iMacs, Apple has released yet another update to try and resolve the screen issues that users are facing. Let us know if it does the trick.

Google today released an update for the Nexus One enabling ‘multi-touch’ on some of their apps such as GoogleMaps. I can already feel a lawsuit in the works.

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This week we look at the Apple Design Award-winning task manager Things, and an official app to come from the movie reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Things

Things is a task-manager for the iPhone. There’s a good chance that you already know this, since it’s been one of the most celebrated and well-regarded iPhone apps of all time – an impressive feat, not only because there are over 140,000 apps on the App Store now, but also considering the number of high profile task managing and to-do apps for the iPhone. I’ve previously reviewed Put Things Off as a low-cost simple solution to task organisation woes, but Cultured Code’s Things is at the other end of the spectrum. It’s more expensive, with a more advanced (yet surprisingly simple) way to manage what needs to get done.

Things‘ user interface is remarkably similar to the iPhone’s Settings app. That’s fantastic, because it means you already know how to use Things as soon as you open it. There’s so little that you need to learn to be able to effectively use the app that even the newest iPhone users could manage creating, tagging and choosing the right folder for tasks. The simplicity of Things is in sharp contrast with quite a few other to-do apps (not just on the iPhone, but on other built-in smartphone task managers too). Want to create a new task? Tap on the bottom left corner and you can instantly create it. Then it’s just a matter of adding some tags, a due date and/or a folder to put it in – all optional extras that aren’t required to use the app at a basic level.

Despite having a similar interface, Things‘ quick and easy method of adding tasks and editing them is quite unlike anything else. Every function of the app is explained graphically through efficient use of icons and buttons (the Things app icon in itself is a delightful way to indicate what the app is all about). If users open the app with tasks overdue, they’re displayed in the ‘today’ folder by default and the app put a badge on the app’s icon once Things has been quit. In terms of sharing your created tasks (a useful feature for group collaberation work), Things offers a simple ‘Send Email’ feature that’s quite self-explanatory. In the future, I hope Things will include more sharing options – such as the ability to share tasks on Twitter or Facebook.

If you’re really looking towards creating a brilliantly efficient way to effectively organise and manage your tasks, you can’t go past Things. I was disappointed to learn that the app doesn’t yet support push notifications to display tasks outside of the app once they’re due, but I expect it will be added in a future update, and in my opinion, will make the app near-perfect. It’s so easy to use that any lack of advanced functionality is almost immediately cancelled out. Combined with the use of Things for Mac (an expensive US $50 additional purchase from the Cultured Code website), Things becomes a solid task-managing application for your iPhone.

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