Ted Landau writes his farewell column for User Friendly View, including a look back at the many different topics he has covered over the years.

What's happening with Apple these days? Has Apple peaked? Is it running on fumes, no longer cool or innovative, starting its downward spiral into oblivion? Or is Apple well-positioned to surge ahead in 2013, cementing its already strong position with a line of new products that will blow away the competition? Ted Landau assesses the merits of both sides of the debate.

When Ted Landau agreed to meet with Moshi to see their line-up of iOS and Mac cases and covers, he was less than enthusiastic. He left the meeting surprised and impressed — and now happily uses three of their products. For the details of what these products are and how they turned Ted's head around, read on... 

Ted Landau has seen the future…and it is filled with iPads. In two sizes. Original and mini. With today's iPad announcements, Apple has laid down the gauntlet in the tablet wars. In Ted's view, barring a few small but significant exceptions, there is no reason for anyone to buy a tablet that is not an iPad.

As we count down the hours to the all-but-certain announcement of a smaller iPad on Tuesday, Ted Landau highlights the key questions that should be answered by the media event.

Why doesn't the current crop of iOS devices, especially the iPad, support true multitasking? Ted Landau peers into Apple's past, present, and future — in search of the answers.

There's a loophole that allows apps sold in the Mac App Store to bypass Apple's sandboxing restrictions. And so far, Apple has not done much to prevent it. Ted Landau explains...

Passbook is a promising new app in iOS 6. Still, Apple could have done a much better job of guiding users through the often cryptic process of how it works. Ted Landau explains...

This article is ultimately about the iPhone 5, the people who initially found it "disappointing" or "boring," and the people who lashed out at those iPhone critics. In the end, Ted Landau also offers his own assessment of the new iPhone. But first...a word about the movies...

Ted Landau digs deep into all that is new and different in the Settings app for iOS 6.

Ted Landau's take on the iPhone 5. Suffering a bit from "Apple media event fatigue," he still manages to consider what's innovative, what's incrementally improved and what may be imitative of the competition. And what it all means in the end.

Pity the poor iPods. They are the equivalent of yesterday's news. At one time, they were the hottest items in the Apple Store. Now, not so much. With the expected arrival of an "iPad mini," one iPod model in particular presents a dilemma for Apple: the iPod touch. Ted Landau explains... #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }  

In the Apple vs. Samsung patent lawsuit, Apple won. Big time. Humongous. To which Ted Landau says: “Fantastic.” Here’s why…

In your Home directory, you have a folder called Library. It’s a useful folder, chock full of files that can get you out of jam or customize your Mac in ways that would otherwise not be possible. To demonstrate exactly what can be done, Ted Landau takes you on a tour of the Library.

You’re browsing the Web with Safari on your Mac. You come across a page that you want to save for future reference. How do you do this? The answer is: it depends. Ted Landau came up with a dozen different ways to save all or part of a webpage, each with its own pros and cons. To help figure out which one is best for your situation, here are your choices…

Apple…you’ve got some ‘splainin to do! What were you thinking when you made the wrong-headed decision to remove RSS support from Safari 6 and OS X Mountain Lion? You took a useful feature, one that was working well and causing no harm, and trashed it. Worse, anyone who now tries to access an RSS feed from Safari 6 is likely to wind up more dazed and confused than before.

If you use Apple’s iWork apps, and you sync documents across Macs and iOS devices, you want to get OS X Mountain Lion. The way iWork handles file sharing and syncing in the new version of OS X is so much better than before that it leaves all the older alternatives in the dust. Ted Landau explains the essentials of what’s new — and then moves on to show just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

A paradox: Some of the most attention-grabbing new features in Mountain Lion are ones that you may use only rarely. On the other hand, many of the “smaller” changes in the just-released 10.8 version of OS X will impact your work multiple times a day. One such example is how you save (and open) documents. Although you may view opening and saving as mundane tasks, Mountain Lion offers enough new wrinkles in how it all works to justify a closer look.

At last! The wait is over. There has never been an iOS app that can create or edit .rtf (rich text format) documents. Until now. It’s called, appropriately enough, RichText Edit. Not only does it handle .rtf editing, but its bubbling over with features that put in the lead for the best overall iOS word processing app you can get.

It’s now been over a month since Apple began enforcing its sandboxing policies for the Mac App Store. With the dust beginning to settle, what can we conclude? Ted Landau offered up his ideas ahead of the Independence Day holiday.

It’s now been over a month since Apple began enforcing its sandboxing policies for the Mac App Store. With the dust beginning to settle, what can we conclude? Ted Landau offers a perspective.

Fujitsu’s latest mid-size scanner is the S1300i. Happily, it maintains Fujitsu’s fine tradition of quality scanners. As an upgrade, however, it is barely worth a mention.

Splashtop Remote Desktop 2 is out. This is a superb app for accessing your Mac from an iPad. The upgrade offers a “new and improved” way to connect to your Mac over WAN and 3G connections. It works fine, but new users will have to pay extra for it.

Why is Apple taking so long to come out with signfiicant upgrades to the Mac Pro and iMac? Perhaps the answer lies not so much in what’s coming in new hardware, but what’s coming in new software. Ted Landau takes a speculative look at what Apple may have in store for 2013…

From the MacBook Pro with Retina display to iOS 6 to the new AirPort Express, Apple announced more than enough new stuff at yesterday’s WWDC to keep us busy. Even so, Apple revealed more than what was spoken on stage. There were “hidden subtexts” to almost every announcement. To uncover these messages, all you need to do is read “between the lines.” Ted Landau explains…

“How do I attach a document to a reply message in the iPad’s Mail app?” The brief answer is: You can’t. The more detailed answer led Ted Landau down a rabbit hole to various work-arounds, a consideration of why Apple hasn’t implemented this feature, and eventually to philosophical considerations regarding the nature and future of Apple’s operating systems.

Looking back at Apple’s unprecedented financial success over the course of this century, Ted Landau asks: What were the key decisions that Apple made over the past 12 years that contributed most to its astounding ascent? What were the pivot points? He put together such a list, consisting of six items. Here they are…

You’ve decided to use your iPad for word processing. Not just for brief notes or email, but for tasks that require extended typing. The question is: Which app(s) should you use? In search of the answer, Ted Landau sorted through a diverse collection of text/word processing apps. Here are the results…

Are point-and-shoot cameras, especially ones at the low end of the price range, reaching the end of their useful life? Is it time to declare that, for the majority of iPhone 4S owners, the phone’s camera is all they need? Yes. But not without a few important caveats. Ted Landau takes an in-depth look at the factors to consider before making your final decision.

Tickets for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference sold out in less than two hours, before most people on the U.S. West Coast were even awake. What was Apple thinking? Most likely, Apple miscalculated the demand. Ted Landau explains.

Cheaters, who hack Apple’s Game Center to enter phony high scores, are threatening to ruin the leaderboards. What’s Apple doing about it? Apparently nothing, and Ted Landau wants that to change.

How many ways does AT&T overcharge its wireless customers? Every possible way. From text messaging to hot spots, AT&T’s rate plans are so inflated as to enter into the realm of the absurd. Other carriers aren’t much different. If you’re not annoyed by what you pay, you should be. Ted Landau wades through the mess…

While much of the press has focused on whether the new iPad is “too hot to handle,” Ted Landau has been tracking another temperature matter: whether the colors of the new iPad’s display are too warm. After settingup his new iPad, Ted was immediately struck by how yellow the display appeared. Is this a feature or a bug? Read on…

Are Apple news media biased? Do they slant Apple news more positively and more often than other media sources? Does the tone of their articles typically suggest rooting for Apple’s success? Are their editorial positions significanly tilted in the direction of Apple? Do they seem a tad too quick to dismiss the merits of competitors’ products? The answer to all of these questions is: Emphatically yes!

Can an iPad replace a MacBook? For some people, maybe, but not for everyone, at least not yet. Ted Landau argues that while we continue to witness tablets’ gradual but steady eclipsing of laptops, there’s another far more intriguing question to ponder: Are iPads already better than MacBooks for many tasks? The answer is a resounding yes.

The new iPad is here. Exactly how new is it? New enough that you should run out and buy one today? That depends. If you already own an iPad 2, there’s no need to hurry. Otherwise, it’s time to check your supply of cash. Regardless, the new iPad will cement and extend Apple’s lead over the competition. The iPad total package, hardware and software and price, represents the absolute best tablet you can buy — and it shows no sign of losing that distinction anytime soon.

A long time ago, in a tech galaxy far far away, the personal computer operating system war came to a close. The current mobile OS war is nearing a similar endpoint. Marketshare battles among application software follow a similar pattern. Except when they don’t. Ted Landau tells us what it all means…

If there was any doubt about the direction Apple intends to go with OS X, it has been erased. If OS X Lion (10.7) felt like a cloudy harbinger of what might be coming down the road, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) clearly reveals what’s waiting at the end — and takes us most of the way there. Apple’s plan is to make OS X look and run more and more like iOS. And, mostly, it works.

What if you really wanted to impress somebody with how amazing an iPhone can be? If you were limited to showing off only ten third-party apps, which ten would you choose? These apps needn’t be the most practical or most-likely-to-be-frequently-used. Rather, they should be knock-your-socks-off, I-can’t-believe-an-iPhone-can-do-this apps, the sort that will elicit a “Wow! I gotta have this” reaction. Here’s Ted Landau’s list…

Almost immediately after Apple released the Mac OS X 10.7.3 Update last week, some users began reporting a serious and anxiety-provoking consequence of the install: Every application on a Lion drive would crash upon launch, rendering the computer virtually useless. Ted Landau offers advice on how to fix this problem and avoid similar ones in the future. For all the details, read on…

Last week, the curtain came up and revealed a reinvented Macworld. Even the name was new: Macworld | iWorld. From the exhibit hall to the technical sessions to the midway to the evening events, Ted Landau takes a look at all that transpired and finds that it adds up to: success!

Apple is hoping to change the education with its interactive textbooks and iBooks Author app for the Mac. Despite an assortment of criticisms coming from the media, Ted Landau’s bottom line assessment of iBooks Author is that it is a winner. Here’s why…

To the vast majority of the world, we are living in the year 2012. To those of us who spend much of our time within the Apple universe, it may be more appropriately labeled as year 1 A.J. (after Jobs). This is the first year, since Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, that we begin to see how Apple will fare without him at the helm. Ted Landau looks ahead to consider how Apple might change in the new era.

When asked about the wisdom of a 7-in. iPad, Steve Jobs dismissed it as “dead on arrival.” Times have changed. Ted Landau explains why a 7-in. iPad not only makes sense now but offers a great opportunity for Apple to crush the competition.

Apple is taking some unwelcome detours from the path to simplicity. For instance, how many different locations does it take to accommodate all settings related to iOS’s Notes app? The answer is at least seven. Ted Landau offers an thoughts as to why Apple is proceeding down this path and what a better alternative might look like.

With the 2011 holiday season upon us, many many many people will be getting Apple products as gifts over the next few weeks. They will all have an opportunity to purchase AppleCare for their new devices — or not. As such, Ted Landau thought it was a good time to consider the AppleCare decision, with a focus on iOS devices. His conclusion remains essentially unchanged from a column he wrote 5 years ago: AppleCare is a bad bet.

Ted Landau received his Kindle Touch last week. Just in time. He was on the verge of canceling his order due to all the press negatively comparing the Touch to the Kindle 4. In the end, he was glad that he stuck with the Touch. The new model is a bit rough around the edges, but still a better choice than the other Kindle models. Bonus: On a different subject, you’ll find some thoughts on Android devices at the end of today’s column.

It’s that time. Time for Ted Landau’s second annual Top 5 Apple Stories of Year. There should be no suspense as to what story is number one. Regardless, we’ll count ‘em down.

A rumor says that music CDs may soon gasp their last breath. In related news, the current sales decline of traditional (non-touch) iPods is likely to continue. Ted Landau sorts out what it all means.

One of Apple’s mainstay principles — perhaps its key principle — has been to maintain a focus on simplicity and “ease of use.” This means that products, especially consumer-oriented ones, should require very little effort to figure out how they work. Ted Landau looks at iCloud’s varied features and asks “Is this what Apple means by ‘simplicity’?”