Smashed Window on Victim's Car (Image: Jacob Dayan)
We’ve reported a number of times about how Apple’s Find my iPad (or iPhone) feature has helped retrieve multiple lost or stolen iDevices. This week reader Jacob Dayan from Israel wrote to tell us his own successful, and moderately harrowing, story about getting his iPad back when he returned to his car to find his window smashed and a bag of items missing. From his blog:
“When I call my wife to tell her the bad news, it hits me. I can find my iPad! I ask my daughter Vered to log in to my MobileMe accounts, and within few minutes I hear the good news – the blue dot is active, my iPad is on the map! I start the chase, and Vered instructs me from remote. “Turn left … they are heading to the other cemetery… they are now approaching Rt 40..”.
Dayan follows the thief for 10 miles, until his daughter reports that the iPad is inside an apartment building.
A friend and I were talking today about the iPad 2, the Smart Cover, and the 31 magnets they contain today. We were pondering what would happen when we tossed the iPad 2 with an attached Smart Cover into our laptop bags right next to a MacBook with a standard hard drive inside. A co-worker of my friend had brought this up earlier leading us to the question, “Can the iPad 2 and Smart Cover magnets damage (or erase) our MacBook Hard Drive? ”
The clear answer is — No! The myth about magnets erasing data from hard disks or computers is mostly false and a hard one to shake since many of us were trained to keep the two apart. Let me explain why the myth isn’t exactly true.
The line for iPad 2s outside the Waikiki Apple Store. The same lines appear every day, one week after the iPad 2s launch. Photo by Jayson Smith: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaysonsmith/5537484729/in/photostream/
One week after the launch of the iPad 2, there are still overnight lines for the device.
Friday morning, there were 71 people in line for possible iPad 2s at the Los Gatos Apple store, according to CultofMac.com columnist Mike Elgan.
Mike called neighboring stores, and was told there were similar lines at stores in Santa Clara and Palo Alto.
It’s the same story at Apple’s stores all around the country. Look at the photo of the Waikiki store above. “Still no iPad2!” reports the photographer, Jayson Smith. At the 5th Avenue store in Manhattan, there’s a perpetual line of several hundred hopefuls.
Most are turned away disappointed. All these lines are for “possible” iPads. Although many stores have been getting fresh deliveries of iPad 2s every day, not all do. Still, standing in line seems quicker than ordering online. Shipping for online orders has been pushed back 4-5 weeks.
The Apple Store in Charlotte, NC, gave disappointed customers free Smart Covers when deliveries of iPad 2s failed to arrive, according to AppleBitch.
The store… told customers the previous day that an iPad 2 delivery was due for the following morning. However, when no iPads arrived, the customers in line, around fifty of them, were apparently offered a free Smart Cover by the Manager as an apology for the mis-information.
Some Apple stores have resorted to telling customers there are no stocks right off the bat. At one store in Los Angeles, this is how staff are answering the telephone:
Since Apple introduced iOS 4.3 last week, I’ve found a number of complaints about battery issues with the firmware update. I’ve even experienced these problems personally and I know many of you have too.
The update has caused issues with the battery life on my iPhone 4 and my iPad 2 is getting considerably less time out of its battery than my old iPad running iOS 4.2.1, so if you haven’t upgraded to iOS 4.3 you may want to wait until this issue is resolved.
According to users on Apple Discussions under the topics iPhone 4 – ios 4.3 – Battery Drain and iOS 4.3 causing battery drain, the iPhone’s battery life is severely shortened by the latest iOS update. As a result some users are also complaining that battery life is lasting 2 to 4 hours less than before the update was applied.
These toddlers can barely speak, but they sure can rock an iPad.
Check out the video above. In it, two-year-old Bridger shows his mastery of the iPad. Just watch him swipe his way through the Home screen to find the app he wants.
The videos in this post are just a sample of many toddler videos on YouTube, demonstrating the unbelievable ease two- and three-year olds have mastering the iPad.
The iPad's Smart Cover makes a great fridge magnet. Photo: Leander Kahney/CultofMac.com Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Thanks to its 21 built-in magnets, the iPad’s Smart Cover makes a great fridge magnet.
Just clip it to the fridge. It’s pretty sturdy. It clings to the fridge surprisingly strongly. There’s little danger of it coming loose, even when swiping your finger across the screen.
It’s another reason to invest in a $40-$70 Smart Cover when you get an iPad 2.
The picture above is an edited version of a photo that I made while I removed my iPad 2 from its box to create a gallery of photos for Cult of Mac recently. The arrow, which I added to the original picture, points to an anomaly the most obvious out of a handful of them on the display of my iPad 2. I purchased the iPad 2 last Friday on launch day.
Once that gallery went live I started receiving comments from readers stating that it looked like I was encountering a back lighting issue on my iPad 2. I honestly wasn’t sure what was going on because to my eyes the anomaly had a yellowish tint to it. I thought it was just the adhesive problem that plagued some iPhone 4 users last year. That problem actually disappeared on its own as the adhesive dried and dissipated.
Unfortunately that isn’t the case for me, since according to the Genius at the Genius Bar this afternoon the problem is with the backlighting after all and it isn’t a problem that will go away.
I made an interesting discovery today. I took my original Apple iPad case ($40), you know the black one, that the original iPad was inserted into making it kind of like a book or folio. It turns out that my iPad 2 with black leather Smart Cover (see my in-depth review) fits perfectly and tightly inside.
Wow I thought this a great opportunity to recycle something I didn’t know what I was going to do with after upgrading to the iPad 2. So hit the read link to find out how you can recycle your old iPad cover yet retain the unique Smart Cover and all its magic.
Is it fair to compare the progress of international deal-making among government policymakers to the innovation cycle of a technology company headed by a man known as the company despot?
iPads for resale on New York City street (Image: Robert Miller/New York Post)
If you’re unable to get your paws on a new iPad 2 even at an Apple flagship store, you may be fighting organized grey-market forces. The New York Post reports today on a group of scammers who use strength in numbers to buy iPads from the Fifth Avenue Apple store in New York:
“The illicit, highly orchestrated scheme was in full gear yesterday, with a ringleader doling out massive wads of $100 bills to about five cohorts. The sidekicks then went up and down a line of about 200 Asians outside the store and around the corner, handing out the money.
“The scammers in line then went inside and bought iPad 2’s — wiping out the store within minutes.”
The slabs of scarcity are then sold on the street for up to $2000, or immediately sent to Asia for resale.
When it comes to iPhone photography, some folks are Hipstamatics while others are Instagrammers. For the latter bunch there’s now a new app for iPad called Instagallery (iTunes link) that lets users do all kinds of fun stuff with the Instagram API.
Users can view all Instagram photos as a gallery on the iPad, see popular photos, or sign in to to see photos from those people they follow. They can view their own photos, “like” photos, read and add comments, see what users their friends follow, and more.
Instagallery was developed by InfinitApps, costs $1.99 and is available in the iTunes App Store.
Adobe’s Photoshop Express application for iOS has been recently updated to version 2.0, and introduces a brand new camera pack available through an in-app purchase. The camera pack costs $3.99, and for that you get three great features that promise to deliver professional results and better photos, including noise reduction, a self timer, and an auto review mode.
Find out more about these features after the break!
Rarely consumed with a desperate rush to issue any new music of their own, electropop pioneers Kraftwerk have come up with a better idea: get the fans to do the work for them.
So the Kraftwerk app lets you inside the Kling Klang Studio, in a manner of speaking, giving you access to some cheerfully bleep-tastic musical buttons in exchange for nine of your fine American dollars.
Given that the App Store is awash with sequencers, loopers, samplers and other electronic music apps, many of which offer quite a lot more in terms of functionality, this one might be left to the fans only. But for those who value the looking-cool as much as the making-sounds, perhaps it’ll be nine bucks well spent.
Apple's Smart Cover for the iPad 2. CC-licensed photo by N0fX: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nofx/5520596353/in/photostream/
Apple’s new iPad 2 is basically one big screen. So the very first accessory that many of us will look for is a protective case for our new iPad 2s.
On launch day I wasn’t aware of any other case options besides Apple’s very own iPad Smart Cover which was available for $39 (polyurethane) or $69 (aniline-dyed Italian leather). The Smart Cover isn’t even close to being a case since it just protects the iPad 2’s display. The sides and back are completely exposed and unprotected. It’s elegant, thin, and doesn’t add a lot of weight or bulk to the iPad 2.
The Smart Cover is very thin and fits the iPad perfectly. It’s so thin it feels like you haven’t really added anything to the iPad at all. Perhaps that is just an illusion after owning the first iPad, but regardless it just doesn’t add a whole lot to the iPad’s weight or thickness. That is how it feels without going crazy weighing it, measuring it, etc. It just feels right.
One of the drawbacks of the cheaper, WiFi-only iPad 2 is that it doesn’t have GPS — so it can’t run any of those beautiful fullscreen navigation apps.
GPS is limited to the more expensive 3G iPad models. But if you own a GPS-enabled iPhone, you’re in luck. The WiFi-only iPad 2 inherits GPS functionality when it’s tethered to an iPhone.
Leave it to Gelaskins, makers of some of the best looking protective “covers” for electronic gear on the market today, to have nearly 300 choices for personalizing your iPad2 already in stock.
Much of the artwork available for these striking gear condoms (printed on feather-light, flexible space-age material invented by 3M) is intricate, busy and wild — taking away, in some eyes, from the elegance of Apple’s iPad design.
Here, for readers’ consideration, then, are a dozen creations of a more subtle bent, which tend to both command one’s attention as artwork, while supporting a showcase for the latest iteration of Apple’s post-PC mobile communication platform.
Each iPad2 skin sells for $29.95 through the Gelaskins website, where you can see the whole mind-blowing collection — along with their vast inventory of skins for other devices.
A new iPad app for Cosmopolitan magazine, expected to debut later this week, drops the pretense that women read it for the articles: it features an interactive sex quiz with men groaning and lots of pics of shirtless guys.
Fashion bible Women’s Wear Daily got their hands on the magazine app featuring hot hunks and steamy sex advice to find that the $2.99 new app, called “The Showcase Edition,” contained only two articles.
Instead, there’s an interactive feature, already a favorite with magazine staffers, called “Decode His Bedroom Sounds,” which promises to help women understand what a “load moaner” really means — and whether she’s got one — by emitting what was described as “unholy sounds.”
Just marvel at the engineering behind the iPad 2’s Smart Covers. Between them, the iPad 2 and its Smart Cover contain an incredible 31 magnets.
Apple has made extensive use of magnets in the past – to hold a remote control to the iMac, for example, or keep the lid of a MacBook closed. But it has never used so many magnets in a product, or so elegantly.
The 31 magnets in the iPad 2 and the Smart Cover:
clip the Smart Cover to the side of the iPad
Keep the Smart Cover attached to the screen when closed
ensure the Smart Cover retains its triangular shape when folded into a stand
instantly wake the iPad and put it to sleep when opened and closed
It’s really quite mind-boggling. iFixit has the details.
One of the first things I wanted to try out on the iPad 2 was the cameras. I found them to be nice to have for convenience and Facetime calls, but less than adequate for photography. Let’s face it they suck at photography when compared to my iPhone 4 and Canon G12. The iPad 2 won’t be replacing either of these anytime soon. I think that is okay, because I don’t see myself wandering around trying to catch that special moment in time wielding an iPad 2. After all it is kind of big, right?
However, the cameras are there and I might as well make the best use out of them that I can. So I launched iTunes and I looked at the iPhone and iPod touch camera apps within my app library and installed some of them onto my iPad to test.
Couldn’t get an iPad 2 this Friday? Don’t want to wait 3-4 weeks for shipping? Money not an object? A black 16GB WiFi iPad 2 is currently – and honestly – listed on eBay as “the world’s most expensive iPad 2” for a mere $199,999.99 (with Free Shipping). Best offers accepted. Better act fast!
A quick search on eBay revealed that more common upper end end prices for the newest iWonder seem to be between $2,000-4,000. Similar models are available on craigslist in Boston and New York with prices topping out at between $1,500-2,000.
Less exorbitant resale prices are also available, so be sure to shop around. If you do spend several orders of magnitude more on your iPad than it’s worth, be sure to get a Swarovski Crystal iPad Case to match!
If you have an iPad (any model) running iOS 4.3 then you can easily add additional four or five-finger multi-touch gestures to your iPad. It will take only a few minutes and you don’t have to jailbreak your iPad to get them.
The only requirement is that you’ll need a copy of Xcode 4 and if you don’t already have a copy you can purchase it for $4.99 in the Mac OS X App Store. Registered Mac OS X or iOS developers in the paid development programs for either operating system can download a copy of Xcode 4 at developer.apple.com after logging in with their developer credentials.
However, you don’t need a developer account to activate these gestures either — at least for the time being. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple changes this later.
If you are using Windows you are out of luck that is unless you can find a friend with a Mac to help you out. Xcode doesn’t run on Windows.
It looks as though early iPad 2 adopters are being hit by a previous problem with Apple displays on the iPhone 4 that had yellow tinting appearing on the LCD or backlight bleed through.
These problems are being reported on various news sites and I’ve experienced one of them myself. My own iPad 2 Wi-Fi-3G 64GB AT&T model is displaying some LCD anomalies on the portion of the display closest to the Home button.
