In the final frontier of the App Store, the upcoming, Star Trek-inspired iPADD app boldly goes where no app has gone before beaming the tablet technology of the 24th Century to the iPad of the day.
Oh, sure, it’s just a neat little skin with some clever sound effects for a rudimentary journal program (the “Captain’s Log”) , e-mail, Twitter and Facebook… but even so, this is going to be a big hit at the Con.
Perched like Olympians upon the penthouse patios of the gleaming skyscrapers that perforate the very sky of the home of the brave, you Americans are noble and blessed creatures who almost always get the latest Apple products long before the rest of us unfortunate indigents of the Earth’s farther flung butthole shores.
This Saturday, for example, you will be unwrapping the gold leaf from Apple’s latest magic slab of aluminum, the iPad; meanwhile, here in Berlin, Germany, I will be spending my day hiding from the desiccating European sun in my ramshackle bamboo hut, my only past time listening to staticky iPad news over the wireless radio once given to me by a missionary I later ate, all the while compulsively blinking to keep the flies from laying eggs in the jelly of my eyes.
Still, hope is on the horizon for the strangely chattering aborigines of exotic foreign climes like Canada, Australia, Asia and Europe. Apple has promised an international iPad rollout in late April, and now it looks like we might have a date: April 24th.
The rumor comes from unknown site iPad In Canada. Their source has said that Apple employees have been told that April 24th has been marked as a “black out period” for staff, meaning that they can’t take leave on that date. If true, it strongly implies that at least Canadians can expect to get an iPad on April 24th…. and may be able to pre-order the iPad as early as this week.
The rumor should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt, but the date certainly aligns with what Apple’s been hinting. As for me, I guess I should begin collecting bartering my beads and pelts with the traders so I have the scratch to buy one by April 24th.
The iPad Guided Tours that Apple published yesterday are a great way of getting a better idea of what it will actually be like to use an iPad.
But they also show us how Apple’s own “My Documents” feature – first spotted by us back in February – will work.
The first shipments of iPads have arrived at the huge UPS facility in Louisville, KY, and will soon be heading to customers’ home towns.
The UPS shipping info for CoM’s iPad, which was ordered last month, says the iPad is undergoing “UPS internal activity” (whatever that is) in Kentucky. UPS ‘s all-points international air hub is based in Louisville.
We were surprised the iPad is already here. When we last checked the shipping info a couple of hours ago, the precious iPad was supposedly sitting in Shenzhen, China, where it was assembled.
Little did we know it was being airfreighted to the U.S. and would soon be rescanned into UPS’s system.
UPS system is unbearable, btw. The constant updates providing an incentive for obsessive checking and rechecking. I can’t wait until Saturday.
Although a few wishful thinkers held out hope far past Apple’s announcement, it’s pretty clear at this point that the iPad’s not going to have an OS X like dashboard out of the gate… but that’s not to say a third-party developer can’t step in to pick up the slack.
Cernegie Mellon Student Rich Hong has just released this teaser video for his widget-based dashboard app for the iPad. It looks and acts just like OS X’s own Dashboard capabilities, which is great. Just pluck this in your springboard and you”re golden.
There’s no telling if Hong’s Dashboard app will catch-on — third-party widget support will be key here — but it looks fantastic. In fact, with the right widgets, an iPad Dashboard app might allow for some remedial multi-tasking (say, writing a report while simultaneously referencing an article in an adjacent browser widget) until iPhone OS 4.0 creeps out.
[via Techcrunch]
You only had to listen to the gasps that filled the room when Steve Jobs announced the iPad’s price to figure out that Apple’s tablet is incredibly inexpensive… not just for what it is, but for an Apple product.
In case you needed further proof, though, check out this incredible infographic by Vouchercodes.co.uk that puts the iPad’s dirt cheap price in perspective.
How cheap is the iPad? Not only is it 43 times cheaper than the Apple Lisa (the most expensive computer Apple’s ever sold), but it’s the cheapest major new product Apple has ever introduced short of the iPod.
Early adopter or not, there is simply no reason to feel bad about picking one up at $499. Apple products just don’t come at a better value.
[via Gizmodo]
Artist Andrew Fulton wants an iPad, but like most artists, his means are meager. He shaves with a rusty bottle cap to save money on razor blades, he’s sold all the kidneys to the black market that he can, and his only nourishment is Mulligan Stew or the stray baked bean stuck to the inside of a discarded can. What’s a poor pencil slinger to do?
Well, Fulton’s happened upon an ingenious little plan to buy an iPad: sell Apple fans iPad-related art to raise money for his own device. His drawings are cute, quirky, marvelous and bizarre: I thought the iPad-slicing ninja was my favorite until I saw the tongue-kissing duo of blue-skinned aliens sucking face between Apple tablets.
He only wants $20 for a duotone drawing or $125 for a full-color strip. I’m sure some of our readers wouldn’t mind becoming a patron of the arts to help a fellow Mac fan get an iPad of his own.
[via TUAW]
With the iPad mere days away, no one’s likely to evacuate their various collection sacks if a new version of iTunes supporting iPad syncing drops this week. It’s a certainty, and MacRumors has a round-up of features to expect.
According to MacRumors’ source, the biggest change will be to add a new “Books” section for managing e-books, which will fuse with the existing “Audiobooks” category. To make everything easy, iTunes will automatically detect whether you’ve got an iPad or iPhone connected, to eliminate confusion as to whether or not books can be synced to the device.
Some big changes are also coming to Genius Mixes, iTunes 9’s auto-generated playlists, and will allow for more nuanced user control including the ability to rename mixes and rearrange them by dragging and dropping, as well as delete any unwanted Genius Mixes.
Another improvement is that all iPods will now have the option to auto-covert the bitrates of digital audio files to 128kbps AAC in order to save space and fit more songs on a device.
Expect the 9.1 update no later than Friday.
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.