Archive for March 8th, 2010

Apple aired their first iPad commercial during the 82nd Annual Academy Awards. The commercial shows people using the iPad and going through the various features (iBooks, Videos, Maps, Email, Photos, Safari etc). The song is There Goes My Love by The Blue Van (iTunes link).

Take a look at the commercial below:

The Apple iPad will launch on April 3rd with pre-orders starting on March 12th.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs attended the Oscars. No surprise, Jobs previously was CEO of Pixar Animation Studios and is now a member of the Walt Disney Company's Board of Directors.

Here are several pictures taken with Steve on the red carpet:

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Today we will take a look at an interesting accessory - external microphone for iPods and iPhones. As for the iPod everything it is quite simple - in order to record something you need an external mic. iPhone has it's own internal microphone. However the quality of the recording would be better with external one.

We performed a simple test: recorded the iTunes radio using Voice Memo application on the iPhone. First we used internal microphone and later we attached the external one. The quality of the external is slightly better. It is more sensible and the level of noise is lower which is good. Here are the sample recordings (m4a format): Internal, External.

This external microphone is compatible with:
- iPhone 3G/3GS
- iPod Touch 2G/3G (you need to download and install some recording application from AppStore)
- iPod Nano 4G/5G (with pre-installed software)
- iPod Classic 120G (with pre-installed software)

You can buy one for $3.12 at BudgetGadgets. They have free shipping worldwide. Use the coupon name VM5OFF5 during checkout, it will give you additional 5% discount.

More photos:

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Apple announced a launch date for the iPad. The result is very exciting - Apple stock (AAPL) closed at an all time high, almost 219. This puts Apple's market cap near $199 billion dollars.

This week Steve Jobs answered an email question from Sweden. The question was from Jezper Söderlund:

I'll keep it short.

I'm Jezper from Sweden, a long time Apple fan, currently about to replace the very last computer at home with a brand spanking new iMac i7. I'm also awaiting the release of the iPad. However, I have one question:

Will the wifi-only version somehow support tethering thru my iPhone?

Two devices, based on the same OS, with already built-in technology to share one data plan suggests a secondary contract could possibly be redundant.

From the look of your keynote, where the iPad sits well between my MacBook Pro and my iPhone, I was hoping the three of them could interact as seamless as possible.

All the best,
Jezper Söderlund

This is a very interesting question, since iPad's network settings with tethering were found recently. Here is Jobs' answer:

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Changewave published their latest iPad survey findings today. Quite interesting. For example, only 37% of iPad buyers are going to read ebooks, while 68% will use it for internet surfing. Take a look at other results:

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