The iPad has earned first place in the J.D. Power and Associates customer satisfaction survey for the second year in a row, just a month after Apple’s iPhone secured the award for the ninth time. The popular slate scored 836 out of a possible 1,000 points having been rated on performance, ease of operation, styling and design, features, and cost.
Microsoft is planning a new lineup of Surface tablets that includes a 7-inch model designed to compete with Apple’s iPad mini and Google’s Nexus 7, The Wall Street Journal reports. The device will enter mass production later this year, according to people familiar with Microsoft’s plans, but it’s unclear when the company will bring the new slate to market.
Teardown specialists iFixit have published a new tablet repairability guide that quickly tells you how difficult it’s going to be to mend your broken Android, iOS, or Windows 8 slate. The guide features 18 popular tablets, which have been given a repairability score between one and ten. The higher the score, the easier they are to repair.
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s iPads are some of the hardest tablets to fix, second only to the Microsoft Surface Pro — the only tablet with a score of one. Amazon’s Kindle Fire’s, on the other hand, are relatively easy to repair, as are Dell’s devices.
Despite being labeled an “iPad killer” prior to hitting the market, Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire never really gave the iPad anything to worry about. However, it’s going to come back and take a second shot at Apple’s hugely popular tablet, and this time its chances could be improved by a larger display. If a recent FCC filing is anything to go by, the Kindle Fire 2 will be significantly larger than its predecessor.
If you have a tendency to drop your expensive gadgets, and you’re looking for something a little more robust than the iPad, you should probably check out Google’s new Nexus 7. According to this drop test from warranty provider SquareTrade, Google’s $199 slate handles drops and water damage better than the new iPad.
Following Apple’s Google’s leap into 3D mapping technologies, Amazon has acquired a 3D mapping startup of its own. The online retail giant today sealed a deal to purchase UpNext in a move that could signal the company’s intentions to bring 3D maps to its Kindle Fire slate without any assistance from Google.
If you thought that the new iPad would be the only tablet to sport a true Retina display, then think again. Microsoft is encouraging tablet makers to introduce high-resolution displays into their devices with support for resolutions up to 2560×1440.
Remember HP’s fiasco with the Slate, then the TouchPad? You’d think the company would run from the tablet market like a Silicon Valley investor with his hair on fire — but you’d be wrong.
Remember HP’s fiasco with the Slate, then the TouchPad? You’d think the company would run from the tablet market like a Silicon Valley investor with his hair on fire — but you’d be wrong.
Going around town today, I didn’t have time to plop myself in front of a television, and so I constantly checked my iPad when at WiFi hotspots to update myself on the exciting developments in Egypt.
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![Got Butterfingers? Get A Nexus 7 Instead Of An iPad [Video]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Screen-Shot-2012-07-20-at-12.38.36.jpg "iPad-cracked-screen")
