SPEAK TEXT

Your iPhone or iPad can read to you. Enabling the Speak option makes it possible for your iOS device to read aloud any selectable text. Launch the Settings app, tap on General, and then choose Accessibility. Scroll down to Speak Selection, and tap to turn it on.

Now, go into any app where you can highlight text. Your options include Mail, Safari, Notes, and many others. Select some text, and you’ll see a new option appear in the contextual menu (you may have to tap the right arrow to view more options). Tap the Speak command, and your iOS device will start reading the text aloud.

Quick Correct

When typing you may find that you enter a word incorrectly or that auto-correct changes it when you tap the space bar. Instead of deleting the whole word just tap the backspace key once to see the replacement options, then select the word you want to change it to.

Where's Hold?

If you're using an iPhone 4 or 4S, you’ve probably noticed that when making a call, the hold button has been replaced by the FaceTime button. You can still place a call on hold though.

To do so, tap and hold the mute button until it turns into hold. To resume the call, tap the hold button again.

Stream video to Apple TV

Beamer’ Can Stream Video In Any Format To Your Apple TV
http://www.razorianfly.com/2013/01/15/beamer-can-stream-video-in-any-format-to-your-apple-tv/

IPHONE TIP

Good Video on iPad/iPhone Accessories for Road Warriors

Must--Have iPad Accessories for the Road 

(Productive! Magazine Show #47)

Apple, Business, Travel, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iTouch, Accessories, Gadget, Technology

A good overview from Michael Silwinski on what accessories he takes for his iPad when traveling and a good method for packing them up.

You might find duplicating or utilizing many of his tips will make traveling with your iDevice more productive and encounter less hassles. 
[Click on the title above to see the video on what he takes with him on the road and how he organizes his accessories] 

Virtualization Software for Intel Macs -- Parallels Desktop 8 vs. VMware Fusion 5

From MacObserver

 Pitting Parallels Desktop 8 Against VMware Fusion 5

1:45 PM EST, Jan. 31st, 2013 · John Martellaro · John Martellaro's Blog

For many users, virtualization is an important capability on their Macs that allows them to run other OSes, for example, Windows or Linux, right along side OS X. The two leaders are Parallels Desktop and VMware's Fusion. MacTech Magazine has extensively benchmarked the two over the years and has consistently found a winner. Here some details on their latest report.

_____________________

MacTech Magazine has just released an extensive report, a continuation of a series launched several years ago, to pit these two major virtualization products against each other in a variety of tests that include:

• Top level results
• Launch and CPU tests
• Footprint and battery tests
• File and Network I/O
• Games
• Retina Support

The most recent report, for January 2013, has just been published, and it's a tour de force analysis. The scale of the project is described in the section that explains why some other virtualization products were not included.

This benchmark project is already huge with thousands of collected data points crossing four guest OSes (Windows 7, Windows 8, OS X Lion, and OS X Mountain Lion), five models of computers with mechanical hard drives and SSDs, and over 60 tests each run 3-5 times for most of the environments. There were several thousand tests to be completed, many with a stopwatch."

Top Level Results
Those users who have specific needs will want to look through report to see which product is best for them, but the 30,000 ft view from MacTech is that, once again, Parallels Desktop was the clear winner, especially in 3D graphics. The report states: "If you look at all the tests, including the 3DMark06 detailed tests, Parallels won over 68% by 5% or more, 56.9% of the tests by 10% or more, and 31.7% by 25% or more.
VMware Fusion won 7% of these tests by 5% or more, 3.7% by 10% or more, and 0.2% by 25% or more. In 24% of the tests, the two products were within 5% of each other (i.e., they tied)."
Here it is in a pie chart format.

Source: MacTech Magazine (with permission)

There is much more in the report, so I will just quote from the conclusion.

In the vast majority of our overall tests, Parallels Desktop 8 won. Again, if you count up the general tests (including the top 3D graphics scores), Parallels won 56% of the tests by 10% or more. If you include all the tests where Parallels was at least 5% faster, as well as the balance of the 3DMark06 graphics tests, Parallels increased the lead further."
If you are a traveler, Parallels Desktop has power management features that stretch your battery life. On the MacBook Pro, we saw about 40% more battery time on an idling virtual machine (a couple of hours of additional use in Windows 7) than we did on VMware Fusion in the same test."

TMO's Own Tests
In September of 2012, TMO's Jim Tanous conducted his own extensive benchmark analysis of these two products. Shown there were extensive comparison charts of performance in various tests, and Parallels Desktop 8 consistently outperformed VMware Fusion 5.
Mr. Tanous wrote: "From a purely performance-based perspective, Parallels has won this year’s competition of virtualization software on OS X. The good news for consumers, however, is that Fusion is not far behind in most categories and, while Parallels is indeed faster, Fusion is often fast enough for common tasks."

 

                                                               From TMO, September 4, 2012.

From my experience, virtualization is a very important technology for many Mac users, whether for personal or business use. If Apple were to contemplate, at some point, switching to the ARM architecture for Macs to take advantage of ARM's low-power capabilities, that will likely mean a modification of the ARM hardware architecture to support virtualization and a major rewrite in store for these two front runners. Time will tell.

John Martellaro

John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. He is a former U.S. Air Force officer and has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include skiing, chess, science fiction and astronomy. You can follow John on Twitter at twitter.com/jmartellaro.

RADIO BUY BUTTON

Radio Buy Buttons’ found in iOS 6.1 via newly jailbroken iPads, could mean new functionality coming.

Read More: 9to5

Smartphones May Be the Key to Bettr Health Care

January 30, 2013

The best tool to improve and keep track of your health may be in your pocket, says Dr. Eric Topol, a pioneering figure in “wireless medicine” — the practice of using apps and devices in health care. An article from NBC News describes how new apps for iPhone and other devices can measure vital signs and even detect whether someone is having a heart attack. “These days, I’m prescribing a lot more apps than I am medications,” says Dr. Topol. “The smartphone will be the hub of the future of medicine.” Read more:rock center

Why You Need Twitter for Your Business

This is an interesting article presenting why businesses need Twitter.
Why You Need Twitter In Your Business
http://wideinfo.org/why-you-need-twitter-in-your-business/