Unsure of how Intel’s “Ultrabook” laptops will compete with the iPad and MacBook Air, manufacturers are “testing the water” by ordering less than 50,000 units for later this month. Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba and Asustek are reportedly uncertain how the revamped laptops will be greeted by consumers shifting to tablets and cloud computing. That sounds to us like they’re giving up and conceding victory to the MacBook Air before they even got started competing with it.
Apple has finally been granted certification to sell its 3G iPad 2 in mainland China, according to TheWall Street Journal. Up until now, the Cupertino company has only been able to offer its Wi-Fi only tablet, but it now has the ‘network access license’ needed to sell the 3G-capable device.
Happy Labor Day! If you’re stuck for something to do while you’re off work today, why not treat yourself to a new iOS game? Developers have been slashing their prices to celebrate the holiday, and there really are too many games to choose from. Here’s the huge list of reductions from just EA, Gameloft, Namco Bandai, Sega and Capcom.
Now here’s something else you don’t see every day: musician and entrepreneur Jean Michel Jarre has introduced the AeroDream One, an 11 foot tall technological marvel that combines an all-purpose iDevice dock and a 10,000W stereo system for the ultimate in colossal home entertainment.
Since the iPad first shipped in April of last year, the tablet has been slammed by critics as a content consumption device, a feature-limited Tablet PC and a pointless plaything for rich yuppies.
Apple itself positioned the iPad as a living room knee-top device, something for mindlessly flipping through apps or games while watching Comedy Central. Steve Jobs even introduced the iPad while sitting on a padded living room chair.
All this spin makes our friend, the iPad, come across like some kind of lazy slacker. In fact, the iPad has become a hard-working professional. But why?
For those who love their iPads but miss the warm, muted sounds of a 78rpm phonograph, feast your eyes on the iVictrola iPad dock. A successor to the iVictrola iPhone dock a few years ago, this acoustic amplifier uses the speaker outputs of your iPad and an antique Magnavox phonograph radio horn to playback anything from Bix Beiderbecke to Lady Gaga – no electricity required.
They’re running through the entire playbook over at Pogoplug for a touchdown (yeah, guess I’m jonesing for the football season to start). Their latest move is the Pogoplug Mobile ($80), out today.
The studio behind the famous Halo game series, Bungie, has released a new game for the iPad. Crimson: Steam Pirates is a free game in the App Store that takes you on a pirate’s adventure of sinking ships while defending your own. Ahoy!
Being an incurable germaphobe, the Chef Sleeve ($20) is a prescription for sanity when using my iPad in the kitchen. Yes, the plastic sleeves are meant to protect your tablet from culinary messes; but for me, it’s more about protecting the food from the tablet.
These devices might be awesome, but they're not worth your internal organs.
Apple could sell 20 million iPad 2 tablets the next quarter, more than doubling last quarter’s 9.25 million iPads snapped up by consumers. According to an industry publication, the tech giant may sell 25.5 million iPads during the second half of 2011, a 76 percent increase over the first half of this year.
The iPad makes an almost perfect portable media player; big, bright screen, great interface and a speedy processor. Wahay. Problem is, it’s hard to jam a decent speaker, let alone two, into that svelte aluminum shell — the result is sound from anemic speaker with volume that won’t top a moderately loud tea party.
Luckily there’s no shortage of auxiliary speakers available, and Logitech’s Tablet Speaker for iPad ($50) is one of the simplest, least expensive and most portable.
McDonalds. One goes there for burgers, french fries, and occasionally a tasty McFlurry. One should not go there to buy an iPad, however. A young woman has learned that lesson the hard way.
When HP killed its TouchPad, dropping the price to $99, the PC maker set off a firestorm of interest in the tablet that nobody previously wanted. Now HP said it will restart manufacturing for a limited time to meet what it says is “unfulfilled demand.”
Apple is reportedly working on a brand new new online diagnostics tool that could solve problems with your iOS device through your mobile Safari browser — saving you a trip to your local Apple store.
One of the absolute worst aspects of my television-watching endeavors has been the confusing use of multiple remotes. I’ve tried universal remotes but there’s always some function I need from DVD remote or DVR that is missing on the universal remote. Stepping up to the plate, the Griffin Beacon ($80) erases the need for five different remotes by providing users with one of the best universal remotes on the market, and interfaces it though iOS.
Grocery stores in the UK are about to get a whole lot more interesting. The Telegraph is reporting that the Sainsbury supermarket will start offering shopping carts to customers with built-in iPad docks.
That’s right, you’ll be able to check email while on your iPad while you shop. Just try to not hit anyone else in the aisle with your cart.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll be forever losing the charger for your Apple gadgets. Thanks to this solar powered iPad case, however, you may never need one again.
The HP TouchPad, which the company killed last week due to few sales and retailer rejections, might live again if the firm spins-off its PC manufacturing business, an executive in China said Tuesday.
We’ve seen Mac sales soar amid a flat PC market. Now its the iPad’s turn. Apple is expected to see back-to-back quarterly growth of tablet sales in September and December nearing 20 percent as rivals are rejected by consumers and clothes-lined by the courts.
That’s what the developer NetDragon is trumpeting about Conquer Online — a MMORPG already playable on the Mac, PC — when it arrives on the iPad. When? “In the coming weeks.”
Adobe has launched a great new app for iOS that carries a similar kind of functionality as its Acrobat application for PCs. Named CreatePDF, the new app allows you to create high quality PDF files from a plethora of different file formats — with just your iOS device.
From left to right: Griffin Stylus, Targus Stylus, Adonit Jot, Adonit Jot Pro, Wacom Bamboo Stylus, RadTech Styloid Plus+
The iPad’s screen apparently wasn’t designed to be sullied with anything other than human fingers. there’s an oft-refferred to quote from Steve Jobs saying as much: “If you see a stylus, they blew it,” referring to other touch-screen designs that rely on the stylus.
But we don’t always use Apple’s gadgets the way Apple intends. Most of the time, sure, we stick to the script, because the damn things are so well designed that any deviance ends up as a fool’s adventure. Using an iPad with a stylus, however, isn’t foolish. Whether or not you use one — to scrawl notes, draw, paint, as a way of circumventing long fingernails or just ’cause you like it that way — styli (or styluses, depending on your preference) are here to stay. Here’s a by-no-means-exhaustive showdown between a few picked off from the herd. All these styli are, of course, capacitive, which means they conduct bio-electricity from your hand, down the shaft and onto the screen.
For those in the NYC area, staying on top of Hurricane Irene-related developments on an iDevice just became a little easier as the two major NYC newspapers, the New York Times and Long Island’s Newsday, have dropped their paywalls for Irene-related news.
