I, like most, have been perplexed by the persistent rumors that Apple is gearing up to release a third iPad this fall. For those of you who don’t follow the product lineup closely, the iPad 2 was released just earlier this year, so Apple releasing a successor to that product so soon after would be a deviation from their more usual approach of shipping major updates to a product every 1 or 2 years.

I like Manton Reece’s take on recent speculation that it won’t be an iPad 3 so much as an iPad Pro:

This isn’t a replacement for the current iPad; it’s another layer to the product lineup. And like the awkwardly-named iPod Photo from 2004, I bet the iPad Pro is meant to be temporary.

But I disagree about the temporary nature of such a high-end counterpart to the iPad. Apple likes to segment the market and then keep it that way. There are four completely different classes of iPod for sale in the Apple Store, and iPhones that range in price from $49 (with a contract) to $649.00 (unlocked).  Mac Minis currently start at $699 while the beefiest Mac Pro starts at $4,999.

Apple’s segmentation seems to achieve the classic goal of taking a little or a lot of the customer’s money, depending on how much they have to spend. But many folks are inspired to buy in at several price-points for a single product line. I own a Mac Mini and a MacBook Pro. An iPod Nano and an iPod touch. An iPhone 4, and, well, my wife takes good care of my iPhone 3G. I also own an iPad. Will I buy an iPad Pro if it comes out this fall? If it puts my iPad 1 to shame (which the iPad 2, frankly, did not), then yes, I’ll probably buy one of those too.

I’ll be surprised if Apple doesn’t take the same approach with iPad that they usually do: the low-end unit is always surprising powerful for the price, but outdone by some whiz-bang innovations at the high end. No, they don’t apply this strategy to all of their products, but this isn’t some hobby for them. As Jony Ive says in a recent commercial, the iPad “defines an entire category.” Let’s see how Apple intends to fill that category out.

FastScripts 2.6 is now available, featuring 64-bit compatibility so it can “run with the big dogs” on modern Macs. I also fixed a few pesky bugs, and this marks the debut of FastScripts in the Mac App Store.

• 64-bit compatibility for optimal performance on modern Macs
• Add support for FKeys F17-F19, available on many modern Mac keyboards.
• Fix a bug where deleted folders remain visible in menu
• Fix an issue with case-change-only name changes causing duplicate menu items

Enjoy the update, and “keep on scriptin’!”

As Apple prepares to release Mac OS X 10.7 (“Lion”), some of you are probably wondering how Red Sweater’s software will fare on the new system.

I’ve been testing pre-release versions of Lion for months, and I’m happy to report that all shipping versions of my apps are 100% compatible with Lion. Even better, MarsEdit’s new full-screen mode is already adapted to work well with Lion’s built-in full-screen feature, and I have plans to improve the full-screen experience both in Lion and on 10.6.

After Apple releases 10.7, let me know if there are other ways I can change the software to work better with Lion’s features.

MarsEdit 3.3.1 is now available as a free update for registered MarsEdit 3 customers. New customers may purchase via the Mac App Store or directly from the Red Sweater Store.

This is mostly a bug-fixes-and-tweaks kind of release, of course the fixes might not feel so minor if they’ve been nagging at you!

• Media Manager now remembers and restores last-selected folder across launches
• Fix a bug that prevented custom text and background color preferences from working in rich text mode
• Add protections to avoid crashing on some malformed server responses
• Fix a bug where only the first paragraph was styled with e.g. multi-paragraph blockquote
• Fix a bug introduced in 3.3.1 that caused image uploads to Movable Type to produce invalid URLs
• Fix handling of Tumblr downtime to be more reliable and convey message to user
• Various bug-fixes to rich mode undo behavior

Enjoy!