iPad - page 258

I’m sure you’re already aware by now that Spotify is finally available in the U.S., with over 13 million songs ready to stream on demand. But did you know that to accompany it there’s an awesome iOS app for listening to those millions of songs on the go? Spotify for iPhone is the first app in this week’s must-have roundup.

Coverjam Pro is another great app for music lovers that provides you with awesome slideshows of your favorite bands and artists while your listen to their music. It searches Instagram and Flickr for photos with the appropriate tags and aims to “enhance your listening pleasure.”

Google+ (yes, it finally hit the App Store!) is the official iPhone app to accompany Google’s latest social network, and “makes sharing the right things with the right people a lot simpler,” with access to your Circles, Stream and Huddle.

Two fingers are enough for many tasks – a Boy Scout’s salute or a Peace Sign – but it may not be enough for tablet users. Unless you are Amazon looking for ways to undercut the iPad price by offering cheap touchscreen displays. The Internet retailer’s foray into tablets starts with a device limited to just two fingers — enough to give a one-fingered sign of displeasure.

Research in Motion is axing 2,000 employees, or 10.5 percent of its workers. RIM also rearranged its management, the Canadian company announced. Now that the iPad is trouncing RIM’s PlayBook gamble, how long can the beleaguered company keep its head above water?

As iPad use continues to grow, assessing how we use them becomes an important topic of study. This includes what kinds of tasks we use the tablet for, and ergonomic issues related to using the device.

Boston University is launching a study this fall among children of military members in an effort to help improve their math skills and teach healthy computing. They are currently looking for additional iPads to help in their efforts.

Many of us are patiently awaiting the official Facebook app for the iPad to hit the App Store, having tried a number of third-party alternatives that just aren’t quite as good as the official app for the iPhone. Well now the Facebook app for iPad is here — but it’s hidden inside the iPhone app and you’ll need to do a bit of tinkering to install it.

As if there weren’t enough capacitive styli out there for the iPad, here’s another one from Kickstarter success Adonit (who make the Adonit Writer we previewed here in a Kickstarter Macworld story — review coming soon) called the Jot. Ah, but this one’s different.

Apple’s new 11-inch MacBook Air is simply incredible. Of course you probably already knew this puppy was light, and gorgeous, but the power that this tiny machine packs is truly breathtaking. Optimized for speed and portability, the new MacBook Air improves on its predecessor to prove that it’s the best notebook computer Apple’s ever made.

Despite sliding almost 30 percent, Apple’s iPad still leads triple-digit growth in tablet demand, finds research released Thursday. Android-based rivals, although growing to 30 percent of tablet sales, still offer only ‘patchy’ alternatives.

This morning, I slapped my parakeet on my shoulder, placed a patch over one eye, clamped a pipe between my teeth, tied one of my girlfriend’s scarves around her head, appropriated one of her blouses and wore it unbuttoned down to the waist and dusted off my early 90s parachute pants.

Why? Yarrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Sid Meier’s classic pirating simulation game, appropriately known as Sid Meier’s Pirates! is now available for the iPad.

Apple has held its earnings call for the third business quarter, and there’s plenty of new information and speculation to glean from what was said. The rumor mills are always churning, but rarely does the industry get as much actual hard data from Apple as it does during one of these earnings calls.

Apple’s success up to this point is phenomenal, but what’s even more interesting is the future of Apple’s business. We’ve gathered the main highlights from this last earnings call to give you a good idea of where Apple is headed in the coming months.

Calling all iPhone Fellinis: a contest for short flicks shot on iDevices is open for entries.

The official name is the Original iPhone Film Contest, but you can enter anything shot on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad2.

The Slim Case ($40) from modulR is a super sleek hardshell case for the iPad 2 that offers a ton of functionality. It’s designed for the home, for the car, for the office, and for everything in-between, with a number of attachments that make it the most comprehensive iPad case available.

After a couple months of questioning, tech giant Apple is expected to answer Wall Street concerns with a resounding successful third quarter, led by blockbuster iPad 2 sales and the return of the ‘Wow’ factor.

Could Apple’s introduction of iCloud to store music and other data online hurt demand for flash memory? That’s the concern of some who forecast the new service could “make a serious dent” in the NAND marketplace.

If you are one of CNN’s 50 million subscribers, you now have access to 24/7 live streaming of the main and Headline News CNN channels on your iPhone and iPad.

CNN has announced that its customers can visit CNN.com for mobile streaming 24/7, and that this same feature has been made available to the CNN for iPad and CNN for iPhone and iPod touch app in the App Store.

The Grey Leather Sleeve for iPad ($33) from newcomer Case Factori is likely the most precisely average case we’ve ever reviewed. It does the job politely, and without fanfare. Or much personality.

The violations of Apple’s verboten on third-party iPad giveaways just keep getting better: it seems  there’s now a push to incite women to strip in support of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s presidential bid.

The Telegraph reports that there’s a group of lovely young Putin backers bearing their fronts and other bits to earn him votes.

We loved Mac Magazine’s previous mockups of what they thought the iPhone 5 would look like, but I think their concepts of the rumored October addition to the iPad family — the Retina Display packing iPad 2+, otherwise known as the iPad 3 and the iPad HD — is even better.

The App Store has seen some awesome game releases in the last 7 days, and our favorites include two huge new titles from Gameloft, a thrilling new racer from the creators of Reckless Racing, and Captain America’s iOS debut. We’ve also got an awesome new dual-stick dungeon-crawling RPG from Crescent Moon Games that’s guaranteed to get you drooling.

Apple’s third-generation iPad could boast a display that goes way beyond full 1080p HD, according to a new report. The Cupertino company is said to be testing 2048×1536 displays from both Samsung and LG that would finally bring a Retina display to its much-loved tablet.

This week’s roundup of must-have apps kicks off with a brand new iPhone app from AOL Music that has been described as “Instagram for music.” AOL PLAY is completely free and focuses on music sharing and discovery, allowing you to listen to and share music with your friends on Twitter and Facebook, stream selected albums, and access over 47,000 SHOUTcast radio stations.

We also have an awesome new app called Trimit which will turn entire articles into a few short sentences, and Readdle’s latest iPad app that will turn any document into a professional PDF.

For the second quarter, more apps were developed for Apple’s iOS and Android interest declined. The key: all those credit cards available via iTunes, a new report claims.

Foxconn Electronics currently assembles a whole host of Apple gear, and apparently persuaded the Cupertino company recently to make it the sole producer of a third iPad expected to launch later this year. It seems that’s not enough for the China-based manufacturer, however. It has no intention of being as loyal to Apple in return. According to industry sources, it will also produce what could be one of the iPad’s biggest rivals: an Amazon Kindle tablet.

It appears Google is learning a lesson from Apple: mobility mean big bucks. The search giant told reporters Thursday Android could become “an accelerator” for the business. There are more than 130 million Android devices now, the company says.

The iPod, the goose that laid the golden egg for Apple, is dying, analysts say. As the iPhone and iPad take on many of its features, iPod sales are expected to drop another 7.2 percent during the June quarter just ended.