iPad - page 304

Apple’s been pretty explicit that for right now, there is a maximum order of two iPads per customer… but no one told Apple founder, celebrity dancer and tech enthusiast Steve Wozniak. The affable beardo with the head bigger than the sun has told Newsweek that he’s buying three iPads this weekend.

On Woz’s part, one of the iPads will be the stock WiFi and another 3G model. He’s also ordered an iPad for a friend.

Woz seems to think the iPad will be a big hit: “The iPad could lower the cost of acquiring computers for students. I think it’s going to be huge in the education market. Think about students going off to college. They want an Apple product, but their parents don’t want to spend that much. Now they have the ideal thing.”

As for Wozniak, he’s mostly going to use the iPad for mobile web browsing. “At first I thought, this is not for me. I have the iPhone for mobility and a computer for my computer life. [But] with the iPhone there are certain things it just doesn’t do well, mostly in browsing. It’s horrible to navigate a map on an iPhone because of the screen size.”

Taiwanese chip and touchscreen maker Elan Microelectronics Corp. has asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban the import and sale of some Apple Inc. products —  including the almost-in-your-hands iPad —  alleging patent infringement.

Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch, MacBook, Magic Mouse and iPad use technology which the company claims infringes Elan’s patent “352” granted in 1998 for detecting the simultaneous presence of two or more fingers, Elan said in an email statement today.

“Our goal is to protect our technology and to stop sales of those products in the U.S.,” Elan spokesperson Dennis Liu told Bloomberg.

This isn’t the first time Elan, which bills itself as the “smart human interface expert,” tries to give Apple the eFinger: they filed suit against Apple in a California court over another touscreen patent, “353,” in April last year.

Apple has not yet commented on the suit.

One thing is certain: patent lawyers on both continents will be keeping a shine on their shoes. On March 2, Apple filed a complaint with the ITC against Taiwan’s HTC Corp. alleging its patents were breached, though the cases are not related.

As the launch of the iPad approaches, Apple has published a slew of guided video tours of the new device.

Published on Apple’s website, the tours include guides on how to use Safari, Mail, YouTube, and the iWork suite.

The tours also include a closer look at the iBooks app, which now seems to have previously-undisclosed features like word search, table of contents and a ratings/review popup. The tour also reveals a system-wide Dictionary.

All in all, the iPad looks really slick. I can’t wait for Saturday.

We’ve all heard the saying, “the only thing better than an iPad is a free iPad” (and if you haven’t, you have now, because I just said it). No, we’re not crazy enough to be giving away free iPads. But we know who are: the folks over at VIVmag.

The iPad has a lot of untapped potential as an image editing tablet… but the only way to load your images on-the-go is to lug a laptop around with you or spring for the iPad Camera Connection Kit, which gives users a couple of options to load images on their iPad: either by connecting their digicam through USB or, if all else fails, slap in an SD card and read your snapshots off of physical media.

It’s not a bad solution, though we’d prefer a USB slot. The only problem is that up until now, the Camera Connection Kit has been MIA on the Apple Store. Well, no longer: you can now order the kit for $29.00, with a ship date of late April.

I’m actually less interested than the iPad Camera Connection Kit for loading images onto my iPad — I’ll always be able to slurp in photos through iTunes — but I can’t help but wonder if the Jailbreaking community’s going to figure out a way to allow SD cards plugged into the card reader to function as expandable storage on the iPad. That right there is going to give a lot of incentive to people to hack their devices.

The iPad may be selling like gangbusters, but an interesting survey done by NPD suggests that it’s still not the ideal device for a slim majority of computer users: amongst surveyed 18-34 year olds, 51% said they would rather have a more conventional portable like a laptop or netbook than an iPad. Even Apple owners aren’t totally convinced: 44% said they’d rather have a MacBook than an iPad.

According to NPD’s vice president of industry analysis, Stephen Baker: “The most interested potential iPad customers see it primarily as a music device, or for its internet access capabilities.”

If you”re curious about how you’ll browse the App Store on your iPad, look no further than this video.

It’s a familiar and intuitive experience. In short, it’s more like browsing the App Store through iTunes on your Mac than launching the App Store on your iPhone, with apps displayed in multiple columns and big, beautiful Coverflow.

The one big thing that stands out to me about the video is that much like the launch of the iPhone App Store, developers are still experimenting with how to price, name and list their apps.

Understandably, iPad apps cost more than their iPhone versions… but expect a lot of fluctuation here, as App Store developers try to figure out if the iPad App Store can escape the $0.99 curse of iPhone apps.

It’s also interesting the naming conventions developers are using to differentiate their iPad versions from the iPhone apps are all over the place. Fieldrunners for iPad is listed right below Flight Control HD, and XL is also a naming convention that is gaining traction. Presumably the different naming schemes will be consolidated at some point… my guess with a little bit of strong-arming on behalf of Apple.

Personally, I prefer HD, which not only plays up the iPad’s higher-resolution display but also keeps extraneous characters down to a bare minimum.

[via Mac Stories]

According to 9to5Mac, Apple has started sending out shipping notifications to the earliest iPad pre-order customers.

WiFi only, of course. Curiously, even though it’s only March 29th, those who chose expedited shipping are being told to expect delivery on April 3rd. Don’t expect yours early… but do expect a lot of incremental iPad status updates like this in your newsfeeds this week.

What about you guys? Have you gotten your shipping notifications yet? Excited? Let us know in the comments.

According to Steve Jobs (as relayed by MediaPost), a mere four days after putting the iPad in eager customers hands, Apple’s going to launch the “next big thing,” a new “revolutionary” service to take the tech world by storm. But it’s not going to be a gadget. It’s an advertising network.

Meet iAd, another tin-eared Apple brand name that may be creatively bereft, but certainly gets the point across: a mobile advertising network for iPhone OS devices.

Of course, this won’t take any one by surprise who has been following the recent mobile advertising tiffs between Apple and Google. In January, Apple bought mobile advertising company Quattro for $275 million… a few months after Google had snapped up AdMob.

Apple’s also been warning developers from creating apps that use location-based data to serve up ads from competing mobile ad networks. Guessing that Apple would roll their own mobile ad network soon wasn’t a matter of prophecy.

At first blush, it seems weird that Cupertino would roll-out another big product so close to the iPad launch, but there’s little to lose here. Apple’s going to want developers to start building iAd functionality into their apps. This isn’t a consumer product or service, after all… it’s a developer service that will be completely invisible to most users.

As long as this isn’t another Mobile Me fiasco, launching iAd sooner rather than later shouldn’t take any of the luster off of the iPad launch.

Although Apple has slashed international shipping times for many countries, eBay auctions may bring iPads to early adopters before they can buy them in stores.

In Italy, where the official launch date hasn’t been specified beyond “end of April,” there are dozens of iPads for sale on eBay, the Apple Lounge found, where those willing to risk buying them online might get their hands on the device a few weeks early.

That same end of April date is also expected for the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Spain and Switzerland.

A CoM search found the same scenario on eBay around the globe from France, Germany, Turkey, Brazil to New Zealand: vendors pre-selling iPads before Apple at a mark up. eBay currently lists 2,650 iPads for sale on its international circuit, in addition to the country markets.

The 64BG model pictured on eBay UK above costs $699 from Apple but the price requested by the indie seller is nearly twice that, $1,050 plus shipping.

Due to what used to be long lead times outside US borders, black market Apple products flourished as fans have had to wait years to buy them from official retailers.

Of course, a healthy dose of caveat emptor is in order: best case scenario, these are the real deal pre-ordered in the US. Worst case: they’re pricey knock-offs.

Anyone willing to take a chance (and spend the cash) for an eBay iPad?

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__TR86PLiHw

You may want to put your Mac on mute — audiophonic doofus explosion incoming — but what you’re looking at here is the first working, untethered jailbreak of the iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touch G3… and if its developer is to be trusted, it should work on the iPad when it comes out next Friday too.

According to jailbreaking wunderkind George Hotz (aka geohot), the jailbreak should be out soon, although asking for a release date “won’t make it happen any sooner.”

If geohot’s right about the iPad jailbreaking technique being similar to the iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touch G3, we could be looking at a zero day iPad jailbreak. Oh, good. I don’t think I could do without 5 Icon Dock HD.

Fans of classical literature rejoice. Project Gutenberg – the publisher of thousands of free, public domain eBooks – is coming to Apple’s iBookstore. Having previewed Apple’s iBookstore, AppAdvice.com reported this morning that the iPad book store will include free access to more than 30,000 public domain titles, including Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and if Apple doesn’t ban it, the Kama Sutra.

The report confirms speculation that the iPad would be compatible with free eBooks.

Brick-and-mortar media may seem tepid about the iPad, but their sales people are not.

According to the Wall Street Journal,  interactive iPad ads are selling for figures reminiscent of their paper counterparts, back before magazines made the endangered species watch.

Both Time and The Wall Street Journal are charging — and have sold — iPad ads costing from $200,000 – $400,000, depending on the length of the ad run.

Time will charge $200,000 for an ad in the first eight issues. Clients so far include Unilever, Toyota and Fidelity and three other unnamed “major advertisers.”

Ads in the pricey iPad edition of The Wall Street Journal cost $400,000 for four months.  Coke, FedEx and four other “major advertisers” are already on board.

People magazine said it took just two days to line up six advertisers for the first three months of its iPad edition, which won’t even launch until late July.

“Mind-blowing” games, video and interactivity are getting ad folks to write checks, Steve Pacheco, FedEx’s director of advertising, told the Journal. “You are taking something that used to be flat on a page and making it interactive and have it jump off the page.”

Via WSJ

Maintaining the pretense of objective journalist integrity by reporting in third-person upon itself, the Wall Street Journal claims that “according to a person familiar with the matter,” they’ll be charging you $17.99 a month to read on your iPad.

That’s ten bucks less than a monthly subscription costs… but that’s still a hefty price tag for digital content. My gut instinct is that only existing Wall Street Journal subscribers would be tempted by an annual $216 subscription… it’s not a price point that is going to attract new customers. That multimedia content better snap. What do you think?

Novatel have just announced some fantastic new functionality for their wonderful MiFi series of mobile WiFi hotspots: live iPhone and iPod Touch media streaming.

Using any application that supports UPnP/DLNA media steaming for the iPod Touch (e.g. PlugPlayer), the latest update will allow you to stream music and movies to your Apple handset from the MiFi’s microSD card slot.

With microSD cards now coming in capacities up to 32GB, what this means is that you can now pretty easily double the capacity of your media library if you’re willing to pick up a MiFi… and while the MiFi might be a redundant addition to your gadget bag if you’ve got an iPhone 3G, it would be an excellent way to keep your iPod Touch mobile and media rich without signing a two-year contract.

[via Gadget Lab]

Despite what Apple and even my fellow Cultists of Mac tell me, for me, the iPad isn’t a compelling gaming or productivity platform (at least primarily) and it’s not a viable laptop or even netbook replacement. For me, the iPad is a thing, attractive lozenge of aluminum and glass that will usually sit on my living room table on top of the pile of magazines and newspapers that are usually placed there. Despite Steve Jobs’ assertion that people don’t read anymore, the iPad is an e-reader, first and foremost…. and it’s going to be the best e-reader ever released.

It does not appear that I’m alone in this opinion. comScore recently polled 2,176 iPad customers and discovered that over one-third of them said that they mainly thought they’d use the device as an e-reader.

There are a few apps I find absolutely indispensable, and Instapaper Pro is at the top of the heap. When I find an interesting long article during the day (for example, this wonderful New York Times piece on the evolution of the science museum from wunderkammer to proslytizer) I just click Instapaper’s “Read Later” bookmark and give it the attention it deserves later, in a stripped down, paginated, ultra-readable iPhone-friendly format.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating what Instapaper developer Marco Arment had up his sleeve for the iPad version, and now he’s given users a sneak peek on the official blog. There’s no huge surprises here, which even Arment admits: “No multi-column reading, no fake book-page animations, and no giant newspaper graphics,” he says. Never the less, it looks perfect, right down to the dual-pane navigation view. Even better: Arment says that existing Instapaper Pro customers will get the iPad version for free.

Once Apple.de gets around to allowing me to buy an iPad, I think this is the app I’m most looking forward to giving a try. I intend on buying the stock 16GB iPad WiFi, and Instapaper is that rare app that actually gets better and more indispensable when you don’t have a mobile broadband connection. This is a must have program for everyone who loves reading, and reading’s going to be the thing the iPad excels at most.

It’s not easy being Steve Jobs: one minute, you’re the guy behind the world’s most admired company, the next you’re about to become a pin cushion turning a profit for a journalist as a sitcom.

Still, no matter what you think of Jobs, it’s cool that every now and then he takes a few seconds to answer email from everyday users.

He seems to have been busy with a lot of his famous, less-than-a sentence replies lately, but his answer to an Italian blogger at The Apple Lounge may be the first one he’s sent using an iPad. (Up until March 20, he was still using 3.1.2 iPhone OS.)

Apple has started promoting ten-pack, WiFi-only iPad bundles to educational institutions… but those looking for the usual generous Apple education discount will be disappointed here.

According to MacRumors.com, this is the breakdown of the 10-packs currently available:

BF822LL/A: iPad Wi-Fi (16GB) $4,790
BF825LL/A: iPad Wi-Fi (16GB) with AppleCare Protection Plan for iPad – Auto Enroll $5,580
BF823LL/A: iPad Wi-Fi (32GB) $5,790
BF826LL/A: iPad Wi-Fi (32GB) with AppleCare Protection Plan for iPad – Auto Enroll $6,580
BF824LL/A: iPad Wi-Fi (64GB) $6,790
BF827LL/A: iPad Wi-Fi (64GB) with AppleCare Protection Plan for iPad – Auto Enroll $7,580

In other words, at the end of the day, schools hoping to introduce their students to tablet computing and e-reading can only expect $20 knocked-off the price of each iPad, regardless of price.

Well… it’s something, I guess, although it looks like the real carrot here is the savings on AppleCare, since opting to buy a 10-pack with AppleCare knocks another 200 bucks off the price.

Either way, don’t think you can use this deal to get around Apple’s 2 iPads per customer rule: you’ll need an authorized education purchaser login to take advantage of the deal.

Developers will gather at eBay offices in San Jose for a weekend event aimed at creating applications for the iPad.

Organized BarCamp style, the first iPad DevCamps will be held from April 16-18. In addition to new apps, DevCampers  — experienced Cocoa Touch developers, web developers, UI designers and testers — will also squeeze their cerebellums on how to best migrate Mac OS X applications and test and optimize iPad applications. The weekend workshop costs $50, but the cost may be offset by sponsors.

It’s organized by Raven Zachary, who runs iPhone agency Small Society and fathered previous iPhone DevCamps.

Not in Silicon Valley? Satellite dev camps are in the works around the US (Colorado, Portland, New York, Boston) and the globe (Brazil, Switzerland, Munich) check the list for complete locations.

Don’t have the scratch to pick yourself up an iPad when it is released next week? Well, as long as you’ve got six hundred CDs lying around, we’ve got good news for you: thanks to a little company called iPodMeister, you can trade in your old, unwanted CDs and DVDs for pristine Apple swag.

It’s not a scam. iPodMeister was founded by a group of musicians and students who realized that they could make a lot more selling used CDs abroad than locally. They have pretty strict rules about what CDs or DVDs are eligible, but if it’s in its original casing with the original inset and as long as it isn’t a bootleg, they’ll probably accept your disc.

So how many CDs or DVDs will an iPad cost you? A 16GB iPad WiFi will cost you 600 CDs or DVDs, with the 32GB costing 700 and the 64GB costing 800GB. On the other hand, if you want an iPad 3G, you’ll need to drop 950 CDs or DVDs for the 16GB, with the 32GB costing 1050 and the 64GB costing 1150.

It’s not exactly a great trade if you’d be willing to try to sell your CDs or DVDs yourself, but if you’ve already digitized the vast majority of your music collection, this is a pretty good deal. And heck, if you haven’t digitized your old CDs, but still want in, iPodMeister will even rip them for you for the cost of another 100 to 250 trade-in CDs.

[via New York Times]

Amazon’s Kindle used to be the best e-reader out there, but now that the iPad’s been announced, the e-reader’s slowly-updating, monochrome display looks like something the ghost of Johannes Gutenberg is ectoplasmically sliming digital type upon from beyond the grave.

No surprise, then, that they’ve already announced the Kindle for iPad app… or, officially, Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers (Including the iPad).

Make no mistake: this is basically a Kindle-compatible version of iBooks, right down to a re-skinned library screen. The New York Times describes it in action:

The Kindle app for the iPad, which Amazon demonstrated to a reporter last week, allows readers to slowly turn pages with their fingers. It also presents two new ways for people to view their entire e-book collection, including one view where large images of book covers are set against a backdrop of a silhouetted figure reading under a tree. The sun’s position in that image varies with the time of day.

The big question is whether or not Apple is even going to let apps like the Barnes & Noble reader or Amazon’s Kindle for iPad on the App Store. Both would compete with iBooks as an e-reading app, and Apple has a history of turning down apps because they duplicate existing functionality.

Even if Apple does let them in, though, Apple may not allow users to buy Kindle or Barnes & Noble e-books as in-app purchases, effectively hobbling them. In fact, I’m guessing that’s exactly what’s going to happen: Apple may be willing to let existing Kindle owners migrate over to the iPad, but there’s no way Apple’s going to allow Amazon to get a foothold as an e-book seller on their own platform.

Apple is now accepting iPad apps for a “grand opening” of the iPad App Store, according to an email just sent to registered developers.

“iPad will begin shipping soon and your opportunity to be part of the grand opening of the iPad App Store starts today,” the email says.

There’s no details about when the store’s grand opening will be. Apps have to be submitted by March 27 to be part of the grand opening. The iPad is due to hit stores on April 3.

See the screenshot for more details.

Thanks Thomas.

Back when everyone thought Apple’s tablet was going to be called the iSlate, HP stole the rumored name for their own iPad-esque wedge of aluminum and metal, the HP Slate, but the specs remained a mystery. Now Spanish gadget blog Clipset has the details on HP’s forthcoming tablet, confirming pretty much what we knew all along: it’s basically a netbook with the keyboard broken off.

According to Clipset, the HP Slate is driven by Intel’s Atom processor, and contains built-in USB ports, a memory card reader for expandable storage, and the poorly thought-out placement of a backwards-facing webcam.

That Intel Atom processor would be just fine if the HP Slate was being driven by a custom touchscreen OS like the iPhone OS, but instead it runs Windows 7, which runs chunkily at best on netbook processors and has a long way to go as a multitouch-driven OS.

The cost? €400, or almost $550, although my guess is that in the US, HP won’t dare go higher than the entry-level iPad’s $499 price.

It’s a nice try, but one that falls short. They might confuse some people: in chassis design, the HP Slate looks so much like the iPad that it resembles a Chinese knock-off more than a competing product. Caveat emptor. But there’s just no way anyone is going to mistake Windows 7 for iPhone OS.

[via Gadget Lab]

You may have beat the crowd to pre-order an iPad, but when you pick it up April 3, Apple still doesn’t know content will be available for it.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Apple is “scrambling” to firm up content deals just weeks before the device ships.

All of the usual unnamed insiders say that Apple has had a hard time lining up TV programs, digital newspapers and other content before the launch as media titans weigh the advantages of jumping on the iPad bandwagon against the potential threat to current revenue streams.

Talks are still on, according to these Cupertino deep throats, to secure discounted TV shows.  iPad users would get $0.99 downloads instead of the $1.99 and $2.99 they pay now at the iTunes store. Deals with newspapers, magazines and book publishers have all been put on the back burner for now.

If the numbers insiders cited in the story are correct — hundreds of thousands of iPads have been pre-ordered and Apple could sell more iPads in the first three months than iPhones in the first trimester after debut– the content owners could soon be the ones scrambling.

What, if any, content do you consider essential for the iPad?

Via WSJ