An “en dash” is a hypen the width of an n while an “em dash” is a hypen the width of an m. Each has its usage in the English grammar which you can wiki to find out more. If you’re using two continuous hypens (–) in your writing, you probably meant to key in em dash but has no idea how to.

To key in en dash or em dash in your iPhone or iPad, press and hold the hypen key and then select the dash from the pop up.

For OS X, to key in en dash (–), press Option together with the hypen (-) key. For em dash (—), press Option together with Shift and hypen (-) keys. Please note that not all OS X apps and fonts support these two characters.

The birds are back with Angry Birds Space. Luckily, instead of cranking up follow-ups such as Angry Birds Season/Angry Birds RIO in the shadow of the original Angry Birds, developer Rovio took a bold step by venturing into space. And Space gives up a brand new out-of-this-world physics thus a different gameplay from the original series.

So, the birds are back, and the domination of the Angry Birds franchise continues. And you have to be warned that unlike past Angry Birds games for the iOS, in-app purchase is everywhere for Angry Birds Space. The version for iPhone costs $0.99 to download and the HD version for the iPad is $2.99. But this only gives you probably half of the game and you will be prompted to purchase in order to unlock new levels. For parents, this will probably be the most expensive Angry Birds game ever.

Angry Birds Space for iPhone

Angry Birds Space for iPad

The higher speed of the 4G LTE wireless in the new iPad means that you will consume your data plan faster. For the first time, 1080p movie is playing smoothly wirelessly when you are outdoor. But please don’t watch a HD video using your precious 4G LTE bandwidth as you will hit your monthly limit in no time. Unless you have an unlimited LTE data plan with your telco, it pays to be watchful of what you consume over the high speed 4G network.

There is no question that 4G LTE uses more battery life than 3G, as in general newer technology is not as power efficient as time-tested improvement in 3G hardware.

4G LTE is a great addition to the new iPad. With great feature comes the above minor minuses. Luckily it is straight forward to disable 4G LTE on the new iPad.

On the Settings app, tap on Cellular Data. Toggle the switch beside “Enable LTE” to turn off LTE.

Photography is one area where the Retina Display really shines. To find out the difference in the Retina Display of the new iPad compared with older iPad, photographer Duncan Davidson created in his blog post where tapping on a showcase picture will toggle between normal resolution and higher resolution of the picture. This is an easy way to check the improvement of the high resolution screen of the new iPad. Check out the blog post below on your new iPad.

An Example of Photography on the Retina Display

The new iPad is hot. We are talking about the sales number and not about the new iPad running warmer than iPad 2. If you are pondering whether to shell some dough to Apple, here are some pointers for your consideration.

If you already own an iPad 2, there might not be a need to upgrade to the new iPad. The new iPad comes with an enhanced A5X CPU. But much of its power is used to drive the doubling resolution in the Retina Display. Benchmark shows that there is not marked improvement in terms of processing performance in the new iPad compared with iPad 2.

The selling point of the new iPad to iPad 2 owners are the Retina Display and 4G LTE wireless. If you do not plan to subscribe to a 4G LTE plan, then the Retina Display is the main differentiating feature. Do not try to compare the screen in the Apple Store as the temptation would be too great. Resistance to upgrade though would prove futile to many.

If you own the first generation iPad, then the new iPad is a timely upgrade. The first generation iPad lacks a camera and some popular apps such as iPhoto can not run on it. In general, we would advice an upgrade to your iPhone and iPad once every 2 generation of model.

If you are new to iPad and you are looking to buy a tablet. Look no further. There is no better tablet in the market.

For the first time, Adobe has made available its flagship software Photoshop CS6 beta for free public download. This beta includes all the features in Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended edition.

Photoshop CS6 is 64bit only software and includes Adobe’s brand new DRM architecture and GPU-accelerating Mercury Graphics Engine. And Photoshop CS6 sports a dark theme throughout, the first change since its first release more than 20 years ago. The final release of Adobe Photoshop CS6 is expected first half of this year. Pricing is not yet available.

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta

Apple has released update 3.10 to its Digital Camera RAW. Digital Camera RAW is a system library software that allows applications such as Aperture and iPhoto to read camera RAW format files. This release includes RAW compatibility to a number of hot camera models on the market right now such as Sony NEX-7, Panasonic GX1, Nikon D4 etc. The update is available via Software Update.

This update adds RAW image compatibility for the following cameras to Aperture 3 and iPhoto ’11:

• Canon PowerShot G1 X
• Nikon D4
• Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GX1
• Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ35
• Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ38
• Samsung NX200
• Sony Alpha NEX-7
• Sony NEX-VG20

Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 3.10

Apple has released the latest update to Safari for Snow Leopard and Lion. One key improvement in this release running on Lion is the 11% Javascript performance boost over the last Safari version. This release also improves responsiveness during network activities and includes a number of fixes. You can update this release from the usual Software Update.

- Improve JavaScript performance up to 11% over Safari 5.1.3*

- Improve responsiveness when typing into the search field after changing network configurations, or with an intermittent network connection

- Address an issue that could cause webpages to flash white when switching between Safari windows- Address issues that prevented printing U.S. Postal Service shipping labels and embedded PDFs

- Preserve links in PDFs saved from webpages

- Fix an issue that could make Flash content appear incomplete after using gesture zooming- Fix an issue that could cause the screen to dim while watching HTML5 video

- Improve stability, compatibility, and startup time when using extensions

- Allow cookies set during regular browsing to be available after using Private Browsing

- Fix an issue that could cause some data to be left behind after pressing the “Remove All Website Data” button

In iOS 5.0, when you double-tap on the home button while your iPhone is locked, you get the above lock screen with a camera icon on the right end. You can then tap on the camera icon to activate the camera.

With iOS 5.1, Apple removes the double-tap gesture. Instead the camera icon is permanently shown in the lock screen. Tapping on the icon however will not activate the camera. You need to tap on the icon and swipe up to launch the camera app.

This might not look as easy as a single tap, but it is intuitive and is actually faster than double-tapping to launch the camera.

Remember iSight camera on your Mac? iSight is the name Apple used for the webcam on Mac computers before its transition to the current “FaceTime” or “FaceTime HD” camera naming. When Apple launched the new iPad, it refers to the new 5MP camera as an iSight camera.  And iSight name is prominent in iPad’s product literature. More than just the new iPad, Apple has just applied the iSight name to the camera in iPhone 4/4S. The camera on both the new iPad and iPhone 4S appears to be the same going by specification.

The iSight branding is expected to extend to the camera on the Mac during their next refreshes later in the year. It is safe to say that the resurrection of the name only make sense when Apple plans to make it a differentiating product feature. To speculate, Apple might be adding motion sensing detection technology into the iSight camera. This new technology might be enabled as part of Mountain Lion and in iOS 6. There might even be a standalone iSight webcam accessory for the AppleTV, with full gaming API support for its motion detection technology. Will Apple play catchup with Kinect? We will know for sure when Apple unveils iOS 6 in June.