Looking for more stickers to use on BlackBerry 10? How about being able to share them with other messaging apps besides BBM? Stickers++ allows you to do that. We’ve written about his app before and they developer has also previously done a free giveaway. And now the developers is ready to give another batch of 1000 free copies away.

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Whether typed notes or handwritten notes are your thing, these are the best note taking apps for iPad!

The iPad is a great productivity tool and that includes taking notes, whether you’re in the classroom or the boardroom. The only thing you really have to decide is how you want to take notes. If your needs are simple, perhaps a simple text based app will do. If you’re a student and want a better way to collect lecture notes and right down complicated formulas, you’ll probably want something more advanced. Follow along and we’ll help you decide which is the best iPad app to suit all your note taking needs!

1. Evernote

*For everything, everywhere**

Evernote is free, available for every platform you can imagine, and syncs across all your devices. With support for text notes, checklists, reminders, annotation and markup, collaboration, and more, Evernote is the Swiss army knife of note taking apps.

• Free with subscription options – Download Now
• Free (Mac version) – Download Now

2. Vesper

For elegance and tagging

Vesper supports text and images and can sync notes back and forth between iPhone and iPad. Organization is done with tags. Vesper’s layout is clean and beautiful. It may not have the advanced features others have, but if you don’t need them, you’ll appreciate Vesper’s elegance.

• $7.99 – Download Now

3. Notability

For students

Notability lets you sketch, draw, write, and type notes. You can also take audio recordings right inside the app, and upload and markup photos or PDFs. Everything you do is then synced between iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Notability has unlimited possibilities, which makes it great for students and creatives.

• $2.99 – Download Now
• $5.99 (Mac version) – Download Now

4. Drafts 4

For text time-shifters

Drafts 4 lets you write down text whenever or where ever the mood strikes you, then move that text to other apps — anything from social networks to word processors to communications to calendars — with just a few taps. It’s a great place to store what you need until you know where you need it.

• $9.99 – Download Now

5. Noteshelf

For the archivists

Noteshelf lets you take text or handwritten notes. You can also annotate PDFs, fill forms, and much more. Noteshelf also has a huge collection of pen, pencil, and paper options that just can’t be rivaled. If you always wanted a shelf full of notebooks but in digital form, you’ve always wanted Noteshelf.

• $5.99 – Download Now

6. OneNote

For Microsoft users

If you already use Office 365 or are tied into other Microsoft products, OneNote is simply works with everything else you’re already using. OneNote supports text, images, and to do’s. With multiple notebook support, powerful search, and password protection. If you’re using Microsoft, use OneNote.

• Free – Download Now
• Free (iPhone version) – Download Now
• Free (Mac Version) – Download Now

7. Simplenote

For super fast searching

Simplenote supports basic text notes with sync and nothing more. As you grow your collection you can organize with tags and pins. You can also collaborate and see previous revisions of notes if you need to. Simplenote’s search is super fast and efficient and if text notes are all you need, Simplenote does it best.

• Free – Download Now
• Free (Mac version) – Download Now

Your favorite note taking apps for iPad?

If you take a lot of notes on your iPad, what app do you use regularly and why? Be sure to let me know in the comments!

• Best note apps for iPhone

“It’s technology worn on the wrist. I sensed there was an inevitability to it.”

Apple’s Jony Ive is once again doing an Apple Watch focused interview in advance of the Spring forward event, this time covering everything from how he came to work in Cupertino to the responsibilities of designing for the wrist. From Nick Foulkes at the Financial Times:

However, it was not without some trepidation that he embarked on the watch. “It was different with the phone – all of us working on the first iPhone were driven by an absolute disdain for the cellphones we were using at the time. That’s not the case here. We’re a group of people who love our watches. So we’re working on something, yet have a high regard for what currently exists.”

Ive also elaborates on the charging mechanism built into the Apple Watch Edition box:

Thus, the box of the top-of-the‑range watch is aniline-dyed leather on the outside and a “sort of ultra- suede on the inside” – so far, so conventional, but there is a connector at the back that turns it into a charging dock when the watch snaps into place thanks to magnetic technology. “I like the idea that it’s all part of one experience, it’s all part of how we feel about something, and that each of these elements can play a positive and interesting role.”

There’s also an aside that mentions “both starting at $349″ but doesn’t make clear whether he (the author) is talking about “both” the Apple Watch Sport and stainless steel Apple Watch, or “both” finishes or sizes or some other aspect of just the Apple Watch Sport. Apple hasn’t officially linked any price point to any specific watches or collections — they’ve only said the product line will start at $349. Probably best not to set expectations any particular way and just wait for Monday’s event when all will, hopefully, be made clear.

Update: Looks like Financial Times was confused, all Apple’s said so far is the Apple Watch starts at $349.

Overall, while Jony Ive interviews are no longer a rarity, they’re still fascinating, so be sure to give this one a read.

Gatekeeper is OS X’s security against malware and adware, but it isn’t foolproof. A new warning shows how it can be exploited.

Since OS X 10.7.5 Lion Apple has had a security feature called Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper tries to keep the Mac safe from malware and adware. It isn’t foolproof, though. A new report shows how one adware installer manages to make it through OS X’s defenses. Read on for details.

Writing for The Mac Observer, John F. Braun explains how a fake Adobe Flash installer has managed to make it past OS X’s defenses.

In the case of our nefarious Flash installer, the attackers built an application that looks like Apple’s installer, but in the end is just another, normal application. Since the developers chose to identify themselves with Apple and get a certificate, Gatekeeper did nothing to stop us from running it.

I don’t expect it’ll be too long before Apple rescinds this developer’s certificate. They’ve done it before for other certificates that have gotten abused in similar fashion.

From a security standpoint, the safest thing you can do is to only run software installers from vendors you know and trust. In the case of Adobe Flash, make sure the installer comes from Adobe and only Adobe — assuming you need to run Flash at all. If you’re new to the Mac platform, I’d recommend just sticking with what you can find on the Mac App Store for the time being.

• How to fix adware problems on your Mac

Truly, this is an exciting time to follow Apple.

With the company set to hold a media event on Monday — six months to the day since Tim Cook first stood on the Flint Center stage and unveiled the Apple Watch — we’re about to move out of our current period of vaguely-informed speculamalation and into the era of somewhat more informed speculification. At that point, we’ll be perilously close to the time when the Apple Watch really ships, and pundits can actually start complaining about the real product rather than jousting with straw men wearing extremely expensive timepieces.

My point is, are we there yet? No? Okay, then, with a very short amount of time to go before we know incrementally more about the Apple Watch, here’s my wish list for the next six months of the Apple Watch. You know, when we can actually use the thing.

It needs to last all day

Back in September, Apple didn’t really discuss the Watch’s battery life, other than to describe charging it as something you did at night. That suggests either solar power — let a thousand rumor-sites bloom at that very thought — or a daily charging cycle. It’s understandable that Apple didn’t want to get more specific than that: After all, neither the Apple Watch’s hardware or software were close to completion at that point, and power consumption and battery life are often some of the last things to come together before a product goes final.

The “at night” statement made the goal clear, though: Apple wanted Apple Watch to be a product that could last all day. And I imagine Apple engineers have been spending a lot of sleepless nights trying to meet that goal in the past six months.

It’s the right goal. In normal use — not tapping endlessly and keeping the screen active all day, because who does that? — the Apple Watch needs to get you roughly from the moment you get out of the shower in the morning to the moment you slip into bed in the evening. Anything less is a failure.

Does the Apple Watch need to last longer than a day? I don’t think so. Maybe I lack some important perspective here, but I always take my watch off before I go to bed, if not before — and thus, charging it overnight makes a whole lot of sense to me. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to get into a routine when it comes to charging a smartwatch: My Pebble runs out of battery all the time because I don’t need to charge it more often than every five or six days. Since I don’t need to charge it every night, I don’t… and then I forget to charge it at all.

It’s going to be a while before the Apple Watch or any other smartwatch with a bright backlit phone-style screen is going to last a week at a time. So for now, carrying a waking day’s worth of power is a worthy enough goal.

It needs to value the quick and glanceable

Last year, after wearing a Pebble for a year, I wrote on Macworld that “Wearable devices like this should be simple, and interacting with them should be effortless. If I need complexity, I’ve got that phone in my pocket, packed full of apps.”

I don’t dispute that the Apple Watch can do numerous things that we use our iPhones to do now. But I’d like Apple and its community of third-party developers to emphasize the simple action over the complex. The most important interaction with a smartwatch should be a glance — to check the time or quickly see what’s going on. The glance is powerful. The glance is why people started strapping tiny clocks to their wrists in the first place. If smartwatches are to replay this migration from pocket to wrist, the glance must reign supreme.

The second most important interaction with a smartwatch should be a quick one: On the Pebble, this was rudimentary — push a button, dismiss a notification. On the Apple Watch, it can be a much richer kind of interaction, offering taps and swipes and choices between different options — but these should still be quick. Tasks on an iPhone take a matter of minutes; on the Apple Watch, they should be over in a matter of seconds.

It needs to not get lost in its gimmicks

Coming out of the September 9 event that introduced the Apple Watch, I was concerned by the device’s lack of focus: The default screen shows at least 16 apps. I also tried hard to steel myself against Cranky Old Man syndrome but… The Watch’s 3D custom emoji builder, the sparkly draw-a-symbol feature, and the thing that sends your heartbeat to a friend don’t feel useful, they feel like gimmicks. Yes, they’re whimsical. Yes, I can see my daughter using that feature — assuming she and all of her friends were sporting $350 iPhone accessories — but it all seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse.

One of the beautiful things about the original iPhone was that although it didn’t do a lot, what it did do, it did perfectly. Apple prioritized fewer features in order to have them all be polished to the highest degree. What the Apple Watch needs to do well is provide glanceable information and simple interactions that improves the life of its wearer. If it does those things right, those emojis and heartbeats won’t matter as anything more than a bonus. But all the emojis and heartbeats in the world won’t appease an Apple Watch owner who has less-than-polished software on their device.

It needs to keep my phone in my pocket

At its core, the Apple Watch must provide useful information that reduces reliance on my iPhone. I want to be able to pull out my iPhone for serious interaction, but ideally the Apple Watch would dramatically reduce the number of times I need to do that during the day.

In addition to telling the time, the Apple Watch needs to relay my important notifications and allow me to act on them, assuming that those actions can be quick and easy. One of my frustrations with the Pebble was that I was able to see texts I was receiving, but not reply to them quickly. The Apple Watch seems to be capable of addressing that particular scenario. So what else can it solve? How many times during the day will my iPhone stay in my pocket because the Apple Watch is able to inform me and receive my reaction without me needing to dive deeper?

We’ll know soon enough

Two years with the Pebble has made me optimistic about the value of smartwatches, but also wary about overselling the technology. I’m optimistic about the Apple Watch, but guardedly so. If it can provide me with all the glanceable information I need and accept all the interactions I require — all while its battery stays charged — then I’ll happily accept those customizable emojis and creepy heartbeat messages.