News tagged ‘айпад’

We're continuing to cover news from the MWSF 2010, and this time the talk will be about MacSpeech Scribe app, MusicSkins accesories, Kanex adapter and CarMD device.

MacSpeech is known for its MacSpeech Dictate program that allows user to speak to Mac and wind up with formatted text. At the MWSF company released MacSpeech Scribe (US 149$), which turns recorded audio into RTF-files (that are readable by any word processor). It doesn't create text with punctuation and you have to train the program by correcting its mistakes, but with the Nuance engine from the previous app it looks really impressive.

MusicSkins was also present at the MacWorld 2010. This time there were vinyl skins not only for Apple devices, but for any gadgets known (at least they say they add 5-10 devices to their roster per week). Company reps told us the accessories for the iPad are also ready to be printed, but before it’ll go to the market they want to make sure their production will work well and fit correctly to the device. At this moment skins for iPod and iPhone (US 15$) and for the Macbook (US 30$) are available.

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US patent organization just granted Apple a patent filed back in 2004 on capacitive multitouch displays. Patent #7,663,607 describes a "transparent capacitive sensing medium configured to detect multiple touches or near touches that occur at the same time" by way of two sandwiched layers of conductive lines hooked up to an appropriate circuit, and also covers a specific type of multitouch display with a similar two-layer capacitive sensor made of glass.

There are other types of capacitive sensors on the market, but Apple's touchscreen is still the best. While the implications of this patent are still unclear, it's certainly gives hard times for many Apple's competitors.

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9to5Mac has posted a quick 6-minute run-through of the iPad's browser features:

For those who haven't had a chance to play with the iPad Safari simulator (or the real thing) here's a quick 6-minute run-through of the iPad's browser features:

Opera had finally demonstrated new Opera Mini for the iPhone at the Mobile World Congress.

In comparison to the default iPhone browser it looks pretty quick - Opera Mini loads the New York Times like 5x faster than its rival. Its main disadvantage is that it lacks the all-important feature pinch-to-zoom, and the only alternative is a method of double-tapping the webpages. Generally, the iPhone owners will find that the usual silky smooth scrolling through favorite webpages and responsive interface are maintained at the very best.

Unlike other platforms, the iPhone variant actually remembers the website you happened to browse last - the feature that will obviously be favored by a legion of iPhone admirers.

Company says as soon as beta tag is removed the browser will be submitted for approval. And it is not obvious whether Apple approve it or not, because it maintains the option of rejecting any app that "duplicates functionality" of the apps Apple builds into the iPhone. Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner has his own point of view on this:

"Opera Mini is the world's most popualr mobile browser and users on the iPhone deserve a choice."

Steve Jobs’s attempts to convince publishers to provide the content in a useful digital form were not that successful and the negotiations initiated in February have "stumbled."

Some newsmakers report of "friendly" talks, but speak of Apple's business model as a crucial change for the publishing business. They aware of the impact iTunes had had on the songs industry in 2003. Then the number of downloads of single songs from Apple influenced the resulting purchases of the singers’ albums.

Apple has been conquering the e-reader market long before the new iPad was on offer. So that is not a surprise that such companies as Amazon, which previously dominated the market have to increase their prices in response to the iPad’s outbreak.

MacWorld Expo 2010 started on the Feb, 11. We'll show you how that day and the MWSF generally started.

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More than 3 years after Steve Jobs announced the iPhone on the stage at Macworld 2007, Apple has finally secured the trademark. iPhone is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. – officially as of Feb 09, 2010. The registration number is 3,746,840.

The procedure, as you can see, required a lot of time, becasue Cisco in the US and Comwave in Canada were marketing VoIP products under the same name.

Now Apple has a new goal - iPad trademark.

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T3 is reporting that Mike Tedesco, Microsoft's Senior Product Manager for WindowsBU, stated that a version of Microsoft Office for the iPad is "something that we're looking at." Tedesco added that he couldn't make any official announcement today, but from the sounds of things, Microsoft is at least considering a version of Office for Apple's newest creation.

Bringing Office over to the iPad would go a long way toward establishing it as a legitimate productivity device.

If you are an existing member of Apple's iPhone Developer Program, you can login on their site and download the new SDK, which includes an iPad simulator for testing apps that are under development.

There are also available new iPad Human Interface Guidelines and iPad Programming Guide that introduces new iPad features and how-to about their implementing in applications. New user interface guideline outlines ""how to effectively use the new views and controls available to you to deliver unforgettable applications to your customers".

Apple also launches a new Universal Application binary format for iPhone OS apps. It will allow developers to create an app that can take full advantage of the features of the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. So the iPad and iPhone code will be wrapped into one app package making distribution and management much easier.

A new job offer on the official Apple website gives one more evidence that in future the iPad and iPod Touch will have a camera and will be able to record video. In particular, Apple is looking for an engineer for the team "Media Systems" who will test the possibility to take pictures, playback and record audio and video:

The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks. Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines. You will work together with the development team to ensure quality. Your focus will mainly be on performance testing and developing performance measurement test tools. You will be responsible for the development and maintenance of methodical testing strategies and accompanying test documentation. Day to day activities will include developing and conducting functional/system/regression testing.ad-hoc testing; creating and tracking high quality bug reports; and reporting on project progress.

Flash for iPhone has a long history. Back in March 2008 Adobe CEO announced that they start working on a Flash player for the iPhone. Last year Apple and Adobe again announced that they were working together. The problem is that we haven't seen any result of this work. This year we had iPad Flash-less introduction and very aggressive words from Steve Jobs calling Adobe lazy.

Adobe is keeping track of its download stats using a script installed on their official website. Statistics show that as many as 7 million iPhone and iPod Touch users have tried to download the Flash Player. That number is up from 3 million download attempts from iPhones and iPod Touches in June. These numbers are shocking. They clearly show that iPhone and iPod Touch users want Flash, despite Apple's decision not to support it. However don't be surprised if Apple decides to ignore Adobe once again.

It is known, that iPad has a restrictive DRM shackles, which makes Apple the only available supplier of software for this device. So if you buy an iPad, you will have to download software only from the Apple’s AppStore. Yes, there is a big possibility of jailbreaking the gadget within the first 48 hours after its shipping since it’s based on the already jailbroken OS iPhone, but still this is not the best way of downloading applications for most of the people.

There are people, who disagree with a DRM-based strategy of software distribution. Some of them created an Anti-DRM group named Defective by Design. They told us they created an online petition that has been signed for 8,800 times since its inception 4 days ago. DbD has already sent off their first 5,000 signatures in the form of a giant postcard, which is in the photo above.

DbD’s operations manager John Sullivan says their main target is to get Apple to remove DRM and DRM enforcement from all its media and software. This is especially valuable for the iPad designed to be widely used by non-technical people who might not be aware of DRM.

- What Apple is doing with software is quite different. This is a scary step … as Apple move towards this model in the future,

said Sullivan.

Giles Turnbull from the CultOfMac noticed one interesting thing in the video of Apple’s official iPad announcement event.

At 1:04 of the video (the picture above) Phil Schiller demonstrates the new iWork for iPad. On the picture we can see a Keynote and visible in the left corner of the screen button called “My Presentations”. When he moves on to Pages, “My Documents” can be seen clearly. And it really reminds of Windows 95!

Still it is not clear, is this just a Pages feature or maybe a system-wide folder that can be used by other apps. And eventually, “My Documents” may only be a working title with a possibility to be renamed when iWork for iPad will actually be released.

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iPad's announcement caused many people to wonder why Apple decided to use an ancient standard for video output rather than a more modern protocol, such as DisplayPort or HDMI output.

About ten years ago Apple changed Macs output from VGA to DVI standard that supported HD resolution displays and improved digital accuracy. Few years later Apple made another shift – from DVI to DisplayPort. So why Apple chose VGA output on the iPad? There are 2 main reasons:

1. Most of the video projectors support the iPad’s resolution of 1024x768 over a VGA port.
2. VGA is sufficient to handle the iPad’s resolution, and it is really cheaper and easier.

For more details – watch the video of Daniel Eran Dilger from the RoughDrafted Magazine:

Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope recently met with Apple executives:

Apple wants the iPad to be the best device for a few key use cases. For instance, the company believes it could eventually be seen as superior to both handheld and notebook devices for browsing the Internet, using the App Store, and consuming mobile media (video, photos, and e-books). Nevertheless, in other areas, notebooks, the iPhone, or an iPod may be more appropriate. This clear segmentation of capabilities suggests that cannibalization may be less of a concern than most currently believe.

Shope writes about the price:

it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated).

Sounds great. What do you think about $200 iPad? Would you buy one?