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You'll prize my full size bluetooth white Apple extended keyboard from my cold, dead hands

I love the slimline metal ones, although it took time to get used to the 'bounce' of the Bluetooth one with my new iMac versus the extended one I had before. I'm a huge fan of the short travel—fantastic for typing with.

It's a little flabby, but that edit is much better at showcasing the kind of hard-arses action film Dredd is. Fingers crossed it goes down well in Japan. (I imagine it'll sneak a couple of million, but here's hoping for some kind of quickfire 'everyone must see this' phenomenon that sometimes happens when that country really grabs on to something.)

For the iPad (deep breath):

Capture (immediate video recording); Photogene (photo editor); WeatherPro HD; Animoog, Figure, GarageBand and NanoStudio (music); PCalc (calculator—Soulver is also worth considering for a different take on calculations); Dropbox; Dictionary; WriteRoom (Dropbox-sync writing tool); eBay; Facebook and Tweetbot; Reeder, Comic Zeal; Wikipanion; Remote (if you get an Apple TV, or even if you don't); Air Video; TuneIn Radio; BBC iPlayer; Flixter; TV Guide; TED; AppShopper; Tap! magazine (which I write for!); 30/30; Solar Walk; Pocket or Instapaper.

Games: Bit Pilot; Café International; Hero Academy; Letterpress; Pinball Arcade; Super Hexagon; Ticket to Ride; Gridrunner; Forget Me Not; Magnetic Billiards; Plants vs Zombies HD; Space Invaders Infinity Gene; Super Stickman Golf; Trainyard (fantastic puzzler); World of Goo HD; Zen Bound 2; Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

If you do Twitter, follow my @iphonetiny account, which regularly tweets about great apps, freebies and deals. Also regularly check AppShopper for discounts and free stuff.

On Anderson, I guess I wasn't too far off with my estimate, then. It's a pity the book won't quite wrap up 'old' Anderson (i.e. all the stuff before the current Meg era), but the flip side of that is a more complete set of strips from annuals, which I wasn't expecting, so: hurrah!

Crusade: not read that in years, but I recall it being OK. Still, most of the problems I've had with Anderson have been catastrophic events not remotely referred to in Dredd, and so whereas at one time the strips were clearly heavily linked, they ended up feeling like two entirely separate continuities. On their own, however, the run in my recollection varied from readable to very good indeed, and the 'Satan' stuff (included in the upcoming book) was when I read it a genuinely hard-hitting story with some great character work (including a [spoiler]typically glacial Dredd shift in attitude towards Anderson, which felt very right and also similar to how he was in the recent film[/spoiler]).

My copy of the iPad app still has individual issues available for download. Note Prog 2013 won't be in there yet, because issues don't arrive in the app until when they're in stores, so it'll likely show up on Wednesday.

Quite. There was one regular poster on this forum who used to enjoy making timelines (and tearing other people's ones apart) who put Slade into the MC-1 continuity, but that never really made sense to me.

It was one of the pseudonyms used to make 2000 AD appear to have more writers. See also: Grant/Grover. Very strange to see IDW omitting Wagner's name from the comic itself, though; as gdwessel said, here's hoping that's picked up prior to printing.

He's new, hence the amusing nods of "not in the official history".

Apple products are expensive, they are not - evidently, as they seem to be doing alright - overpriced.

Quite. It's about value and quality, not price. The same kind of thing exists everywhere in life: cars, instruments, media, even food. With Apple, you at least know that you're paying for something with high quality and also where you're the customer (versus other manufacturers, where corners are cut, or where advertisers are the real customer, or where profits on hardware are ditched in favour of clawing back money in some other way).

Android is everyone else, and that's ALOT of individual companies all releasing products etc too-  so Apple gets noticed for being the one-off.

Apple also gets noticed for being the first company to do this kind of device in the way everyone is now doing it, and for—generally speaking—releasing the highest quality units.

Ive never heard anyone say they cant use something because its on the wrong Android system

I speak with developers quite often, and they have a hell of a time with compatibility. As for never hearing anyone say they can't use something, try checking out any open thread when a major game's released on Android. It's like a car crash. (iOS has compatibility issues, too, but the level of fragmentation is much lower.)

I think with Apple you are not buying just a product but also into a brand, and one you have to subscribe to, as it were.

But that's largely the case with all tablets now. iOS works better if you fall headlong into Apple's system (iTunes Store, Apple TV, etc.), but Android hinges increasingly heavy on Google Play, Amazon's Android-based system is in reality more or less a kiosk for Amazon content, and Microsoft's RT devices are more or less following Apple's lead. Apple's certainly the most restricted (unless you jailbreak), but to counter that it also has by far the best selection of apps and games, so it's a trade off.

Basically I have an Iphone 3gs which 90% of the Apps - such as Dredd v ZOmbies- doesnt allow to download on to, and I cant update the OS anymore.

In which case, you should probably contact Apple support. The iPhone 3GS supports iOS 6, and therefore the OS should download and run fine. (iOS 6.1 beta is confirmed to work with it, too.) Games are another matter—many require the iPhone 4 or newer, because games typically require a system with more clout. This isn't any different on other smartphone platforms, nor other gaming platforms when you look at it generationally. You can't run 3DS games on your DS, nor Xbox 360 games on your Xbox.

Its not like its THAT old.

The iPhone 3GS is now over three years old. It's still supported by Apple (which compares very favourably with the vast majority of Android devices, many of which get no major OS upgrades—by contrast, the iPhone 3GS shipped with iOS 3 (then called iPhone OS 3), and so has had three major OS upgrades during its life. Compared to a PC, that might be low; compared to other smartphones, it's almost unheard of.

I think Apples marketing strategy seems pointed toward those that can afford to be fashionable.

There's some truth in that, but Android smartphones are significantly more disposable on the market. A ton of manufacturers ship them with an old OS and don't enable any upgrades at all. There's less 'fashion' (although more so recently, especially from Samsung) in that market, but plenty of "upgrade for [new specs]".

I guess I think Apple develop stuff SO quickly, you have to play catch up, a game Im not interested in for the most part. If I spent 400 quid on something, Id like more than a season of use before its made to feel like its a poor relative of the latest.

A season of use? When did you buy your iPhone 3GS, then? I got two years' use out of mine before selling it for over 100 quid and upgrading to an iPhone 4S (which I imagine will also do me fine for at least two years, like every other iOS device I've ever bought).

Also, I often write for the Mac press and so am baffled by the Macs issue you mention. I know plenty of people using old Macs and they're perfectly usable running an older OS. In fact, at least a couple of major publishers are running old versions of the OS and cranking out magazines. The monitors issue is different, although I can't really comment on that without knowing which Macs and monitors were involved. (Typically, Apple hasn't been fast enough at getting adapters into the wild, although for both the Thunderbolt display and LED Cinema Display, it's been a matter of a few weeks before adapters ended up in stock on the Apple Store.)

Thing is, if you're looking at risk, you must look at history. So far, one iPad is unsupported by the latest iOS: the original one, released in April 2010. It is, however, still supported by the vast, vast majority of devs. By the time they en masse start requiring iOS 6, the original iPad will be at least three years old. I also suspect/hope this will be an outlier, and probably down to Apple wanting to keep its bill of materials down in the original model, which was, remember, a massive risk at the time. (The sole problem, according to devs, is the original iPad's lack of RAM impacting on its ability to push pixels, hence why the iPhone 3GS can run iOS 6 but the iPad 1 can't. Subsequent iPads have a more sensible amount of RAM.) Beyond that one admittedly big issue for owners of the original iPad, Apple pushes the new OS over the air to all devices at once. Everyone that can get it has the opportunity.

By contrast, only Microsoft comes close to matching this with its Windows 8 tablets (which are essentially the same price as Apple kit anyway). Elsewhere, RIM's dead as Jim noted, and Android is a mess. Plenty of Android devices come with old versions of the OS that can't easily be upgraded, in part because manufacturers add their own crap over the top of the vanilla experience; and Android devices have a terrible track record for enabling you to upgrade the OS—even Google not being anywhere near perfect about this. Fortunately, devs tend to not barrel ahead in requiring the latest OS, which is just as well because only a tiny fraction of users are able to run it. The knock-on effect there is, as Jim puts it, gimping the features, in order to ensure apps will work on devices (including new ones) that aren't or won't run the latest OS.

Of the BlackBerry that's on offer and a Nexus, I'd go for the latter without a second's thought. The Nexus is a decent tablet, after all. But don't be concerned that Apple will suddenly stop supporting the iPad mini or iPad 4 in a year, because that's just not going to happen. (The iPad 2, I'd say, is on borrowed time, but then the same would be true of any 18-month-old Android tablet you buy. Still, with 512 MB of RAM and no Retina display, it's likely the iPad 2 will run iOS 7. I wouldn't recommend buying one though—get one of the newer models if you go for an iPad.)

@Teivion: on iOS, it looks like ITV Player has no subtitles. iPlayer does, but only on the device—they don't stream via AirPlay. (No idea about over HDMI—I don't have the relevant cable.)

Anyone with a tablet to check if BBC iplayer and ITV player plays subtitles on their setup

iPlayer has built-in subs on iOS. No idea bout ITV Player, but I'll try later today and also streaming them to the TV (via an Apple TV). I know SRT files work in Air Video on iOS though.

You're going to discover a lot more things like that, and I imagine you're going to find a surprising amount of utility in the iPad. I've used mine for a chunk of writing and music sketches, and I know people using theirs for programming, office work and illustration. MacUser last issue even had one of their regulars showing how they created a vector logo in an app that costs a few quid (Inkpad, IIRC).

I also find there's something great about direct interaction that beats using a pointer (and unlike with the new Windows kit, all iOS apps are of course designed first and foremost for touch, hence the form-like inputs in spreadsheet app Numbers and similar UI niceties).

As a friend of mine said, they've republished, not reimagined. The lack of mobile optimisation is baffling, and even on a low-res screen, things like the arrows are poorly cut-out, showing a lack of attention to detail.

As for not being optimised for Firefox, that's utterly inexcusable in this day and age. It's not like the web standards movement is new, and so any new site aiming at the mainstream should work on the most recent two major revisions of Firefox, IE, Chrome and Safari, the most recent Opera, and also mobile Safari and the Android browser as a minimum.