News tagged ‘Apple iPad’

Analyst Peter Misek from Canaccord Adams had issued a report about Apple. It says that iPhones sales are better than expected, but the iPad production has some "manufacturing bottleneck", that can cause a delay of the sales start.

"An unspecified production problem at the iPad’s manufacturer, Hon Hai Precision, will likely limit the launch region to the US and the number of units available to roughly 300K in the month of March, far lower than the company’s initial estimate of 1,000K units. The delay in production ramp will likely impact Apple’s April unit estimate of 800K as well. It is also possible that, given the limited number of units available in March, the launch will be delayed for a month".

He also thinks such a delay won't affect iPad sales in 2010 and 2011 (approximately 1,2 million and 3.5 million units respectively).

After the unveiling of iPad in January most of us understood that it looks like enlarged iPod Touch. French web-resourse Begeek.fr decided to think about what should we expect from Apple in the next years,  so look what they concocted:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday the Associated Press announced plans to create a new unit named "AP Gateway". It will focus on creating an application for mobile platforms and particularly for iPad tablet device.

It is likely that their app will require a paid subscription, but at first it may appear as free, according to AP senior vice president Jane Seagrave.

AP Gateway will work with local news affiliates to create package of their own content.

Other publishers are still expressing concern over the profit that will be shared with Apple and the latter's unwillingness to report information about subscribers (which is important for marketing and tailoring publisher's content).

Since only one month remains to iPad's launch, such hardware manufacturers as SDI Technologies, Gelaskins Inc., Sanho Corp. and Griffin Technology gear up their production of chargers, sticker covers and other accessories for a new device. And it is not surprising - according to Poper Jaffray & Co, overall sales of iPod and iPhone accessories in 2009 were about $3.7 billion.

But while these companies want to release their products as soon as possible, some other accessory manufacturers are taking a wait-and-see approach. Jonathan von Rentzell, a representative for Blue Microphones commented on this:

"If you're making it for a product, you want to make sure there's a market."

Steve Jobs already showed 2 key accessories for the iPad - a case and a keyboard dock with charging function. Both of them are created by Apple and will be sold separately with iPad.

The Wall St. Journal published a small article about Adobe Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen's talk at the Goldman Sachs technology conference this week. Adobe's CEO spoke on his view of why the iPad wasn't equipped to play Flash:

Narayen said Apple's decision likely had everything to do with its business model as it tries to keep a proprietary, closed system so everything goes through its iTunes store, and has nothing to do with the Flash technology. He said about 85 of the top 100 Web sites in the world use Flash, and 75% of the video on the Web today is in Flash, including Google Inc.'s (GOOG) YouTube, News Corp.'s (NWS) Hulu and broadcasters such as ABC and Fox.

Flash will be on every Android device sold at the end of the year. It will also be on Nokias, Palm Pres, Windows Mobile, Blackberries and just about anything else with an ARM Cortex processor. Not to mention 98% of all the Macs and PCs (and Windows/ChomeOS Tablets) throughout the world. It looks like Apple has it's own vision of what is good and bad for the business.

Though iPad will be launched only in March, some geeks are already creating interesting accessories for it. Designer Hiphandmaids is among them - he created the wildly risqué quilted cotton sleeve and named it iMaxi. It snugly wraps around the iPad and keeps it dry and clean, while you're feeling embarrassing every time you open it. The author said about it:

"It shields your iPad from all those unsightly data leaks that would make any motherboard worry!"

Macrumors found interesting information in the latest Beta 3 iPad SDK. Apple's private framework which controls the camera, has 3 additional camera characteristics that are not found in the iPhone 3.x SDK:

It looks like Apple built in API support to test if your iPad had a Front Facing Camera, Zoom and a Camera Flash. The front facing camera could be used for video chat, while Zoom and Camera Flash are often requested features for the iPhone's back camera.

9to5Mac made further investigation and found the following icons which clearly show an interface to accept or decline a video chat:

The size of these buttons show that they will be used on the the iPad's screen rather than the iPhone.

It is still unknown, if these new features will be available in the first version of iPad. We hope to see them in future versions of the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Apple has added the ability to set the wallpaper for iPad Home Screen in the latest beta 3 of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK. Such functionality is not currently available for iPhones and iPod Touches.

On iPad in the Photos app when you select an image, you can choose to set it as the "Lock Screen" or "Home Screen" wallpaper (or both). It is also possible to have different images as the lock screen and home screen wallpapers. Here are the screenshots:

Yesterday Apple released new firmware and new SDK. Today 9to5Mac has posted an interesting video walkthrough of the Photos app from the latest iPad SDK (iPhone OS 3.2 Beta 3). Take a look:

Apple released the third beta of the iPhone 3.2 SDK for iPad. There are no official reports on what changes are included in the update. Here are several screenshots: the newly included Photos app and the Camera tab in the same application:

Rumors that iPad could have a camera have been around for a while. These new photos might be one more evidence.However the iPad has a USB interface for camera and SD card reader, so this might just be the interface for importing pictures.

Update: According to MacRumors Apple pulled the Beta 3 release shortly after its initial release due to a major bug.

Update2: It's back.

Update3:

• iPad SDK 3.2 Beta 3 Photos.app video walk-through
• iPad SDK adds ability to set home screen wallpaper
• Front Camera, Flash, Zoom and Video Conferencing found in latest SDK

Someone who calls himself Epoc is the author of this new concept of Time Machine integration on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Time Machine, the utility created by Apple was primarily designed for the Mac. It is intended for the automatic saving of the latest copies of documents, settings, videos, photos, music, etc. you happened to work with. In case you delete something you can always take a step back and restore everything.

The iPhone variant of Time Machine will be a very much welcomed application. Initially it is sure to consume much power and data, but we can expect its further modifications will be very interesting.

According to AppleAdvice forecasts the pre-orders of iPad can probably start on February 25. Initially only Wifi iPads will be pre-ordered, and only in the US. They vaguely cite some reliable source familiar with the issue that puts Friday as a traditional day for a new Apple product launch. Taking this into account, March 26 seems to be the actual day of iPad’s release.

One last thing to be done by Apple is to receive the official approval from the FCC prior to iPad’s sales in the US. If AppleAdvice forecasts are true we'll witness this approval next week.

These icons on the picture below were found by 9to5Mac in the 3.2 SDK. They seem to be a definitive evidence of video calling capability in future generations of Apple devices.

Searching for more evidence the source explored the code and also found a more direct mention of video chat in the telephony UI code:

And here is a reference to something called iChat:

So it is almost obvious Apple will bring video calling to their devices. But what will happen with 3G networks if millions of new iPhone users will start to make videocalls instead of common calls?

Hulu pushes its way to the iPad. According to the Hulu owners, they think of the ways to bring the services to the new Apple device. The ability to watch the stream video is more likely to be for a fee and available on subscription.

Adobe Flash support rates among the problems Hulu creators have to face. The iPad users will probably use a friendly ‘Flash-free’ version of the Web site. All in all, Hulu is not likely to be present on the iPad in late March.

Despite the fact that Steve Jobs and Apple representatives were not to be seen at the Mobile World Congress (Barcelona, Spain) this week, Apple CEO won the top title “Mobile Industry Personality of the Year.”

Among the other winners (19 categories) were BlackBerry (the creator of Enterprise Server 5.0) and HTC (for their HTC Hero).

The famous actor and humorist Stephen Fry hosted this week’s ceremony. He proclaimed himself to be Apple fan and was impressed with iPad after having seen it at San Francisco demonstration.