News tagged ‘iPad’

Silicon Alley Insider reported recently that Steve Jobs visited New York City to meet with executives at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for discussions about bringing their content to the iPad.

Apple CEO held a dinner meeting with 50 representatives of The New York Times, though the visit to The Wall Street Journal was more low-key and the audience was very limited.

On Friday morning Steve Jobs also visited Time & Life Building to demonstrate an iPad to Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore and roomful of magazine editors.

It is obvious, that the goal of Jobs’ NYC visit is a content partnership. Since the iPad presentation, Apple has been working hard to broaden its content deals by pursuing book publishers and bringing textbook publishers on board. Currently the company apparently starts to focus its efforts on the magazine and newspaper industries.

Government officials are worried about iPad’s popularity, as it may prove a threat to national network infrastructure. And we're all informed by Steve Jobs that iPad will be available with AT&T unlimited 3G-internet access for only 30$.  Government warned that the device can bring wireless network to a standstill as new users may overload wireless networks. The director of scenario planning for the federal government’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative Phil Bellaria said that with iPad’s release modern networks will be overburdened by a data flow they were not built to handle.

… We must make sure that network congestion doesn't choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing or frustrate mobile broadband’s ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy.

In addition to that, analysts predict Apple can sell 2 million to 5 million units in the first year.

Debra Shinder from TechRepublic posted an article about 10 reasons why she won’t buy an iPad. As time passes by her thoughts provoke more and more passionate discussions on this topic. So here are these 10 reasons:

1. There is no physical keyboard (or you need to buy an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard).
2. One size doesn’t fit all (it doesn’t fill the gap between mobiles and netbooks as 9.7” inches is an exact screen size of netbook, and you cannot put it into your pocket).
3. It runs iPhone OS (so there is no multi-tasking).
4. There’s not enough storage (and you cannot expand it via USB-flashdrives).
5. There’s no HDMI output or camera (if you can watch video, why you can’t make videoconferences with your friends?).
6. There are no USB ports (and you would not be able to connect your own web-cam, for example).
7. There is no flash memory slot.
8. The price is not right (it just seems to be illogical to pay 200$ for additional 48 GB )
9. It is locked in. All apps are in AppStore, and good ones cost money.
10. It is all about network (why should people change their internet provider to AT&T just because of purchasing some new device?).

While Debra compares fully-equipped 829$ iPad with a powerful and though compact laptop, it seems like she’s looking for an ability to make use of all its capacities. On the other hand, TUAW critics and Apple fans say that iPad is designed to be an enhanced ebook-reader that makes it easy to handle everyday operations like checking e-mails or surfing the web.

What do you think?

SlideToPlay published several interesting videos where popular games are shown on the iPad in action. You can see games like Need for Speed Shift, Super Monkey Ball 2 and NOVA played on the big screen. Some of them are optimized for the bigger resolution, others are just a 2x bigger rendering of the exact same iPhone game you can buy now.

The titles of the first movie are Assassin's Creed, Sims 3, Tetris, and Paper Toss:

Here's the video of NOVA:

Read the rest of this entry »

Darren Beckett created a small table, comparing the entry-level iPad's cost and functions with popular e-readers like the Amazon Kindle DX, Fusion Garage JooJoo, Sony Reader and others.

While the iPad is as the most expensive on the list, it's fairly obvious if you need anything more than a simple e-reader, the iPad offers the most bang for your buck.

BroadPoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall calculated the real price of the Apple iPad. His numbers are based on the price of all components.

The flash memory and the aluminum case both cost about $25, while the Apple A4 processor is just $15. The total cost for 16GB Wi-Fi iPad (US$499) is just $270.50. Manufacturing adds $10 and warranty service costs add up to $20.

Thr 32GB and 64GB Wi-Fi models add even more margin. The 32GB model costs only $25.50 more than the 16GB, but the suggested retail price is $100 more. Apple will really make money on the 64GB model, which costs $76.50 more than the 16GB device but sells for $200 more.

iSpazio user Albe12 developed a new concept of what could be the next iPhone 4G. He combined the iPad design with current iPhone 3G/3GS one.

The case is partially made of aluminum. There is a small black plastic on the back, needed for the network signal. The phone has a wider high definition screen. Take a look:

Every Apple’s device has been embraced by pop culture sooner or later, and we have to admit the iPad is already one of the most popular devices.

Here is a Parry Gripp’s latest tune about the iPad, which represents an idea of how successful this device will likely be: we can argue about which kinds of nachos are ruling, but we can all agree nachos in general are awesome.

Here is an iPad papercraft for those, who want to have their own paper-based recreation of the last week’s event. Сlick on the plan and put it together by yourself. Enjoy!

A new photo of the iPhone 4G had been published by gadget blog Engadget just in a few hours before the iPad presentation, and because of the latter it has been lingering for nearly a week undetected.

Due to authorized sources the device on the photo is a prototype of the handset that will hit the market in about five months. As Engadget says, this fairly distorted shot is all that they have at the moment.

So it seems that iPhone appears without its iconic aluminum bezel. It looks like it is surrounded by a black plastic or maybe it's just rubberized somehow.  Also a whitish spot on the left of the earpiece grill points to a camera lens, but it may also be just a reflection from some other source.

As it was claimed by authorized sources from Apple, the new iPhone 4G will have a customized system-on-a-chip package (like an iPad has) and improved battery.

Enagdget reports that new facts about the 4th generation iPhone were discovered in iPad’s 3.2 SDK:

Buried way inside the platform simulator lies a set of folders dedicated to specific models of iPhone OS-ready devices, including the iPhone 3GS, second generation iPod touch, something called the "K48" (yep, the codename we were told was the internal name for the iPad), and... the "N89."

This "N89." is rumored to be the codename of the next iPhone. Previous versions of the iPhone were named the M68, N82 and N88.

They also have found a bit more than that:

Apple's just released firmware (3.1.3) also includes another new model, the "N80," which we're told will most likely be the next version of the iPod touch.

Rumors say that 4th generation iPod Touch is likely to ship this September, while the next iPhone is expected this June-July.

Along with a new firmware for iPhone and iPod Touch Apple released a new version of SDK - 3.1.3. It's a required update, otherwise Xcode will not recognize or work with your 3.1.3 device. You can download it at iPhone dev center.

As usual the iPhone SDK includes Xcode, the iPhone simulator, and other tools for developing applications for iPhone and iPod Touch. If you want to develop for the iPad, you'll need the SDK version 3.2 instead.

During the iPad demonstration when the iBooks was presented some of us could notice that it looks exactly like Delicious Library. And its developer Will Shipley noticed that too.

So in a few days later he gave an interview to The Washington Post, mainly to complain about the striking similarity:

- But the thing about iBooks is, it's a book-reader. So, of course they looked around, found the best interface for displaying books (Delicious Library's shelves), and said: "yup, this is what we're doing".

He said the he did not copyright the idea of wooden shelves and showing photo-realistic books on it. Because if he tried, it needed to be valued somehow, and then Apple would sent its lawyers and they would ask how much was the value and how it was determined.

But still it is flattering. He made something that has been acknowledged by a huge company known for their design potential. And Shipley say on that:

- But your [designs] aren't really yours. They have lives of their own. So when your designs do change the world, you have to accept it. You have to say, 'Ok, this was such a good idea, other people took it and ran with it. I win.'

Newsworthy events are often targeted by hi-tech criminals. The iPad wasn’t the exception.

On the last week terms like “Apple” and “iPad” were among the most popular on different search sites and services because of the Steve Jobs’ presentation. That caused hi-tech scammers to tune their booby-trapped webpages to show up near the top of search results with that terms. So when the user enters such words as “Apple iPad rumor” or “Apple iPad size”, he has a probability to go to the sites that will peddle rogue security software to him.

Moreover, some sites were tuned in such way they could define user’s OS and choose a different type of attacking it. Other sites send users to web pages that pose Google’s search engine and manipulate the results people see. The only way to stay protected from these scammers is to be attentive to strange sites and links, to have an up to date security software installed and the latest OS system patches.

[Via BBC]

Another rumors about Apple tablets started with TechCrunch article. Refering to them, Apple works on another larger tablet, that seems to be more like Mac than iPhone. It may be have a screen up to 15,4’’ size like one in MacBook Pro versions and run Mac OS X.

It seems strange, as previous ideas of Desktop-OS-on-Tablet weren’t so successful and didn’t gain any traction. TechCrunch claims this tablet can be launched in the next year. So now we can expect Apple to introduce some more multi-touch friendly changes to Mac OS X soon.