iPad - page 293

We’ve heard a bit about OnLive before, a client that promises to interactively stream spec-intensive games in real time to devices that can’t natively run them like the iPhone, iPad or OS X. Touch Arcade just got a chance to try OnLive out at this year’s E3, and the resulting video of the service streaming Borderlands to the iPad is pretty impressive, even if the current control scheme is pretty wonky.

The only problem is that, as usual, OnLive is being demonstrated in ideal conditions involving a local server, an extremely limited pool of players and a great WiFi connection. Latency is going to make or break OnLive, and there’s a lot of skepticism that the technology’s there yet to make this work under non-ideal circumstances, especially for twitch-based games like shooters and RTS titles.

We’re not necessarily optimistic, but we hope for the best: the idea of playing top-of-the-line PC games on our Macs and iPads without having to wait for an official port or upgrade our hardware is just too promising to ignore.

Yesterday saw the release of Google Earth for iPad, and I cannot put into words how awesome it is. Though there is no amazing new feature or killer new interface, using it on the iPad’s 10-inch, high-resolution screen is pure joy.

This app is one of the best uses for the iPad to date. I wholeheartedly encourage you to give it a try.

One of the members of the Goatse Security group, which recently exposed the AT&T security breach that exposed over 114,000 iPad 3G customers’ personal data, has been arrested for drug possession following the execution of an FBI search warrant on his home.

24 year old Andrew Auernheimer is now being held in the Washington Country Detention Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas for four felony charges of possession of a controlled substance and one misdemeanor possession charge. The drugs found at his house included cocaine, LSD and ecstasy.

It appears that the search warrant was prompted by complaints made by AT&T, who — in a recent letter to afflicted customers — blamed “hackers” for “maliciously exploit[ing] a function designed to make your iPad log-in process faster by pre-populating an AT&T authorization page with the email address you used to register your iPad for 3G service.”

That’s one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that AT&T’s security malfeasance exposed the private user details of over a hundred thousand customers, and are now busy hunting down and vilifying the benign group of security activists who alerted them to the problem before less well-meaning hacker groups could exploit the data.

Yeah, okay, this felt and leather iPad case doesn’t just look elegant, it’s functionally neat: the cover rolls back allowing the case to double as an iPad stand. But is it worth 75 Euros?

Not to me: this is a one hour DIY project at best. Buy a flexible leather folder at your local office supply store and some felt and some stretchy loops from a crafting store and then sew it all together at home. It’ll cost you less than ten bucks.

Big thumbs up to Hard Graft for giving me a DIY project for this weekend, though!

The iPad may be seen as an expensive bauble, but at least one has proved worth the purchase price by helping its owner recover stolen goods.

Recently in San Francisco, a man was followed by a 16-year-old girl. First she asked him for money. He gave her some change. She continued following him, hit him up again for more money. When he said he didn’t have any, she pulled a knife on him and took his wallet, iPod and iPad.

The victim managed to call police, who tracked down the thief thanks to the iPad’s GPS. Turns out the teen thief caught the 38 Geary bus to flee the scene of the crime. The wallet and iPod were also recovered. The 75 cents, the SF Appeal notes, went to pay for the getaway bus ticket.

Source:  SF Appeal

This is a heartwarming story: a developer of China’s most popular instant messaging client, TenCent, was invited by Apple to come to WWDC, only to be mugged upon arrival in San Francisco for his iPad. He managed to escape with just a few bruises, but his iPad was shattered. Luckily, a local Apple Genius took sympathy on him and offered to replace the iPad… and to end things on the perfect note, when the developer wrote Steve Jobs to praise the Apple Store’s great customer service, he got a nice note back wishing him a safe voyage home.

Stefan Magdalinski is well-known in British geek circles, having made a name for himself building websites like They Work For You, Up My Street and moo.com before moving to South Africa to work for mobile business directory Mocality.

Stef wanted to surprise his wife, who loves chocolate and Apple in almost equal measure. So he made the best possible gift: a chocolate-coated iPad.

Apple your idea about iPad file syncing using the manual file-sharing capabilities of iTunes is disappointing. Especially in my case — I sync my media content with my iMac, which by the way isn’t very easy to carry around, and I cannot sync that same content on my Macbook Pro. If I try to sync using iTunes on another computer my syncing options are to Cancel, Transfer Purchases, or Erase and Sync. None of these options are useful, but if I click Cancel eventually I can manually access the files shared on my iPad even on my Macbook Pro.

It isn’t clear why Apple didn’t add a simple thing like automatic file syncing, but that doesn’t matter now after I discovered Ecamm Network’s new Mac application, PadSync, which adds automatic syncing capabilities to the file sharing feature of the iPad.

In the last three months, the hippest flight accessory has become the iPad, as legions of travelers have brought the magical future of computing on board to the envy and occasional derision of those less fortunate. Well now, soon you won’t need to own an iPad to feel superior to those suckers lugging around “books.” At least if you live in Australia.

Jetstar, the low-cost subsidiary of Qantas, has announced that it will make iPads available to its passengers for $8.40 per flight, allowing them to watch a small selection of movies, play games and read some pre-loaded e-books. No Internet access, sadly.

Still, it’s a lot more appealing than paying extra to rent headphones, no?

TNooz via NYTimes.com

As a big fan of the sport, I’ve played a lot of soccer games on the iPad – from full 3D soccer sims like Real Soccer, to little 2D 1-on-1 games. However the most addictive pick-up-and-play soccer game I’ve played so far is easily Deadball Specialist HD by Full Fat Productions Ltd, which pushes your finger flicking skills to the limit!

We’ve known for some time that the iPhone and iPod Touch are not as secure as we would like them to be — and unfortunately the same can be said about the new iPad. The lack of built-in encryption leaves our personal data on any of these devices at risk. Luckily for iPhone and iPod Touch users third party vendors are supplying apps that help fill some of these gaps in security. One such app, which was popular on the Palm OS platform, is SplashID from SplashData, Inc., which stores all your passwords, logins, and banking details.

According to a new report by Reuters citing three inside sources, everyone’s favorite television streaming service Hulu is preparing a subscription-based service that will be available on numerous non-PC devices, with the iPad and Xbox 360 prominently named.

Other than that, there’s little information, but rumors in the past have indicated that a premium Hulu service would be subscription-based and get you access to a complete library of older content, as opposed to free Hulu’s library of newer episodes and randoms.

Since Hulu hasn’t announced anything at this week’s WWDC, if the rumor is true, it’s likely that they will announce their plans for the Xbox 360 console at next week’s E3 gaming expo.

The question is: Netflix is already available for the iPad, and it already offers a lot of old television shows available for streaming. Is there room for another subscription-based service on the iPad streaming much of the same content?

A few days after Tweetie for Mac was named a winner in Ars Technica’s design awards for best Mac OS X software, Tweetie and Twitter for iPhone developer Loren Brichter has said that an iPad version is in the works… and he soon plans to get back into the update cycle for Tweetie for Mac as well.

Yesterday, we posted an iBook that had been hollowed out and modded into a working iPad keyboard dock.

Today? The same concept, but accomplished far more elegantly with a vintage Mac Classic… complete with a custom MacOS desktop to keep things appropriately retro.

Up to 114,000 iPad owners have had their privacy breached thanks to a snafu on the part of AT&T that ultimately (but inadvertently) traded user convenience for security.

The vulnerability was discovered by researchers at Goatse security, who were able to write a script that harvested iPad 3G owners’ ICC-IDs (or integrated circuit card identifier, used to identify SIM cards to a network) and email addresses through the exploitation of a hole on AT&T’s website.

Steve Jobs says the iPad offers “freedom from porn.”

Some dudes say you can put that freedom where the sun don’t shine, Steve.

And to that end, these self-described “dudes” pwned iPad ads around Moscone center where WWDC 2010 is taking place this week.

You can see the video of their pornifying prank here.

They’ve sent a heartfelt (or maybe choose another organ) letter to Steve about it:

“You don’t want people looking at vaginas on a tablet device you named after a feminine hygiene product? Something smells fishy.”

Yuk, yuk. (Or maybe that’s just “yuck.”)

Providing you’ve got the wherewithal to jailbreak your iPad, Apple’s tablet makes a fine SNES emulator, thanks to SNED HD for iPad, which looks absolutely amazing at the iPad’s 768p resolution. Even better, you can pair it with the ControlPad app for iPhone for more convenient controlling with your iPad docked or balanced on your knees.

This antique iBook has been hollowed out and transformed into a working iPad keyboard dock, with a new Apple aluminum keyboard replacing the iBook’s and the iPad itself nuzzled into the iBook’s LCD display hollow, connected together through the umbilical of the official iPad Camera Connection Kit.

This user hack is a bit of a kludge, but we don’t care: we love it anyway. Sure, it can’t close without scratching the iPad’s display, and it would be even cooler if the iPad charged when the iBook was plugged into the wall socket. It reminds us of Lenovo’s now-cancelled Ideapad U1 hybrid tablet/notebook, and makes us wistful for the day Cupertino itself will try to merge the iPad with the MacBook into a single iBook-like device. We can dream!

ColorSplash for iPad by Hendrick Kueck (iTunes Link), who now operates under the name Pocket Pixels, Inc., is an app that allows you to make some very dramatic changes to your photos for its meager $1.99 price tag. The software uses a process called desaturation to convert your photos to black and white while letting you leave behind color within areas you select. The results are astounding.

There’s no shortage of wisecracking about the iPad; its introduction left us wading through a glut of humor (both insipid and genuinely funny). Wisecracking from the iPad, however, is much rarer.

That’s Adam Kontras — also known as the guy with the longest-running vlog, now plugging along for ten years — in the clip above, arguing with his iPad about which one of them is the “iPad comedian,” not coincidentally also the name of his new project.

After watching the back-and-forth, we’re still not clear which of the two can claim the title — but we’re pretty certain the whole thing is hilarious.

Update: Some of you may have noticed the name of Adam’s gig is actually “The iPad Comic,” and not the “iPad Comdedian” as claimed above; laughter can be disorienting.

It has made less and less sense by the day that the iPhone OS would continue to be called that as non-iPhone devices begin to run it. Jobs has just confirmed the earlier rumor of an iPhone OS rebrand: starting with iPhone OS 4.0, it’ll just be called iOS4.

From a humble blogger’s heart directly to Cupertino: thank you, my benefactors. You don’t know how confusing it was to talk about iPhone OS for the iPad on a daily basis. Having “Phone” plugged into the name of an increasingly non-Phone operating system was just ridiculous.

Anyone else wonder if this is the first blush of a reveal of a new iOS-capable Apple TV?

[image via GDGT]

As many of you know, the Steve Jobs keynote speech at the WWDC is going on right now. If you’re following along with our updates and updates from other sites, go join us on our Facebook page in the discussion section and post your thoughts, reactions, and comments about what he reveals today.

First, become a fan of the page, then join the discussion!

Here’s the link directly to our discussion forum on our Facebook page: Steve Jobs at the WWDC

Apple has just announced the initial figures of iBooks at this year’s WWDC, and in addition, they’ve got some great new iBooks features in the pipe.

In the first 65 days, users have also downloaded over 5 million books, or about two and a half per iPad… and five out of six big publishers in the United States claim that the share of eBooks going through the iBookstore is about 22 percent.

Next, some enhancements to iBooks. They’ve just added the ability to take notes to iBooks, as well as the ability to view and read PDFs. For PDFs, you get a whole new bookshelf.

That’s some good additional functionality that should make iBooks more interesting to people who live and breathe PDFs.

Image via GDGT

The iPad has been a huge success for Apple, and it was the first thing Jobs wanted an iPad-obsessed audience to know at this year’s WWDC.

To date, Apple confirms they’ve sold over 2 million iPads, which is one every three seconds. It is now shipping in over ten countries, and Apple wants to prove that they’ve got a revolution on their hands by showing the WWDC audience a video reel of the great coverage the iPad has gotten worldwide.

Additionally, there are now over 8,500 native iPad apps in the App Store. Apps account for 35 million downloads in two months, or about 17 apps per iPad sold. The guys behind Wolfram Associates’ Elements says he made more on the app in the first day of the iPad launch than five years of Google Ads.

Image via Ars

On the eve of WWDC, a speculative story on mp3newswire.net suggests some interesting possibilities for Apple in the video and media space given the explosive adoption of iDevices:

In 1959 5,749,000 television sets were sold in the US, bringing the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units. This number supported, through advertising, three national television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS (a fourth, Dumont, folded in 1956) and numerous local independent stations. Television was big business by the start of the 1960’s.

Now here are another set of numbers. As of April this year Apple sold 75 million iPhone and iPod touch units, devices capable of delivering video via Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Add to that figure 2 million iPads and counting. By the end of the year Apple should have about 90 million smart mobile devices in the wild.