iPad - page 309

Engadget has confirmed the reports of “extremely trusted sources” that the iPad’s iPhone OS 3.2 contains support for a host of long anticipated features, including video calling, file downloads and even SMS messaging.
According to their sources, the current beta of iPhone OS 3.2 includes hooks to accept and decline video conferencing, as well as flip a video-feed (for a front-mounted camera) and run the video call in either full screen mode or in a small window.

More than that, iPhone OS 3.2 currently hints at file downloads and local storage in the browser, which means you can finally slurp down a link to, say, an MP3 or eBook and use it in iTunes or iBooks. It also has hooks for iPad-specific SMS messaging.

This is preliminary code, and none of this functionality works right now, but at the very least, it implies some future developments in both the iPad and iPhone. It’s the video conferencing stuff that’s really interesting though: the iPad contains no camera, so either Apple’s already programming video conferencing support for the iPad 2G, the next iPhone is finally going to get a secondary forward mounted camera… or both.

Of all the criticism being leveled at the iPad — no multitasking, poor text input, lack of 23rd century Federation replicator technology — I’ve yet to hear anyone complain about the attractive $499 entry-level price. But just in case you aren’t convinced that the iPad is ridiculously, absurdly cheap for its feature set, behold, the inevitable infographic, put together by Darren Beckett.

There’s criticisms to be leveled at the Infographic — it ignores, for example, comparisons to various Android and Intel Atom based tablets in favor of attacking e-readers — but it still gets the point across: the iPad beats the competition, spec for spec, at the cost of a very slight price premium. In fact, in direct comparison, only the Barnes & Noble Nook seems to be appropriately priced in comparison.

For what it does, the iPad is simply the cheapest tablet out there. Don’t expect a mere infographic to finally put to rest the inexorably critical mutterings of the so-called “Apple Tax,” though.

A lot of commentators on the iPad noticed the similarity between Delicious Library and the iBooks virtual bookshelves for the display of e-book titles. So did Delicious Monsters Wil Shipley.

Talking to the Washington Post, Shipley seemed upset… but also seemed to understand.

But the thing about iBooks is, it’s a book-reader. So, of course they looked around, found the best interface for displaying books (Delicious Library’s shelves), and said: yup, this is what we’re doing…

Shipley then notes that he actually understands why Apple couldn’t write him a check: it would have been taken as a legal admission that Apple copied his design, and since Delicious Library’s UI isn’t copyrighted or patented, it actually would open up culpability, not close it.

As inevitable as the dawn follows the night, a LEGO simulacrum will follow the announcement of the latest Apple product announcement. Here, then, in dimpled, rainbow colored blocks, the necessary LEGO iPad, courtesy of Flickr user Brickjournal and his plastic brick ingenuity.

Although it’s hardly as killer a feature as carrier unlock, one of the main reasons I still jailbreak my iPhone is so I can cram five icons into the dock… so when the iPad was first demonstrated, and showed only four available icons in the dock, I actually winced.

No need to fear, though, because this time, Apple has us all covered: a reader wrote into TUAW and pointed out that the iPad SDK allows up to six icons in the dock.

You might assume the iPad supports this behavior because of the larger screen, but the iPhone crams five icons into the dock just fine. I’ve always assumed, in fact, that the iPhone only allows four icons so that each dock’s icons is symmetrical with the columns of icons above.

I wonder two things: will the iPad, then, allow up to six icons per row, to make everything symmetrical with the dock? Finally, will the next iPhone update expand the dock similarly? Fingers crossed on both accounts.

You can tell Jay-Z is disappointed he doesn’t have one. And then he remembers he has his own brand of vodka and millions of dollars.

Via Engadget

Though the announcement of Apple’s iPad has met with the typical mixture of hyperbolic praise and hyperbolic criticism (no one can talk sensibly about it), there has been one consistent complaint that most would agree is valid: a device this powerful should be capable of some form of multitasking. But I think I have the answer.

Here are two interesting but conflicting opinions on the iPad, pro and con.

Con: Tech author Rafe Colburn says the iPad is a scary harbringer of the closed future of consumer computing.

“General purpose computing is too complicated for most people anyway, and the iPad’s descendants along with similar competing products from other companies will offer an enticing alternative. So I see the death of the traditional, open personal computer as a likely occurrence.”

Pro: But Facebook iPhone developer Joe Hewitt is extremely positively about the iPad’s closed system. To his mind it’s a major asset:

“The one thing that makes an iPhone/iPad app “closed” is that it lives in a sandbox, which means it can’t just read and write willy-nilly to the file system, access hardware, or interfere with other apps. In my mind, this is one of the best features of the OS. It makes native apps more like web apps, which are similarly sandboxed, and therefore much more secure. On Macs and PCs, you have to re-install the OS every couple years or so just to undo the damage done by apps, but iPhone OS is completely immune to this.”

I’m with Hewitt. The IPad is a cloud computer par excellence, and we will likely be able to run almost any software we want on it, but it’ll be on a server somewhere and not on the iPad. Colburn notes this too, but thinks it’s a bad thing.

Why is there no Adobe Flash on the iPad? Adobe says it’s not because it’s buggy, as an Apple source claimed this afternoon to CultofMac.com.

It’s because Apple is protecting revenue streams derived from content like movies and games. If users could watch free TV shows on Hulu, they wouldn’t buy them through iTunes.

“It’s pretty clear if you connect the dots: the issue is about revenue,” says Adrian Ludwig, an Adobe group product manager for Flash, during a telephone interview on Friday afternoon.

Well, that didn’t take long — app developers have already begun rolling out versions of their apps that’ll expand the capabilities of the iPad, still a good two months away from store shelves. One of the first is ActivePrint, from developer Pocket Watch.

Currently, ActivePrint lets iPhone users pop out things like photos, web pages, plain text and clipboard contents. But Pocket Watch says the new iPad SDK will allow printing of office-type stuff — like word processing docs, spreadsheets and presentations — to any WIndows PC.

…wait, what? You heard right — currently, ActivePrint only outputs to printers connected to a Windows machine. But not for long, the developer says: Mac compatibility should be out in March.

Just in time for your new iPad.

UPDATE: Adobe says Flash is not buggy and that Apple is protecting revenue streams from content like movies and games.

Flash will not be coming to the iPad — not now, not ever — says a source inside Apple who is part of the iPad development team.

Instead, Apple will rely on HTML 5 and CSS to play rich media, such as YouTube videos, on the web.

“Flash is too buggy and will crash the whole device,” says the Apple source. “Apple’s done no deal with Adobe.”

Adobe is so bothered by Apple excluding Flash from the iPad, it put porn up on its blog to prove the point.

Abobe’s official Flash Blog has a post entitled “The iPad provides the ultimate browsing experience?” which shows how several popular websites would look without Flash content. Right at the top is a screenshot of Bang Bros HD, a hardcore porn site.

As you can see, an iPad without Flash is going to be pretty much useless for HD porn.

“Millions of websites use Flash,” the blog post says. “Get used to the blue Legos.”

UPDATE: We checked, and there’s an MP4-based version of Bang Bros, which works fine on the iPad as is. So even Adobe’s most desperate tactic isn’t true.

Following up yesterday’s revelation that the iPad SDK contains photo capturing ability, despite the lack of onboard camera, comes this juicy little screenshot, showing the iPad displaying an iPhone-esque “Touch to return a call” bar across the top of the screen.

Since there’s no chance the iPad is going to operate as an enormous mobile phone (I wonder who the exclusive carrier of the iPad in Brobdingnag would even be?) I think this pretty much confirms what I guessed: the iPad SDK has some residual iPhone features still loitering shiftlessly about, and everything will probably be polished up before the iPad’s release. About your business then.

[via Engadget]

See that New York Times article displayed on the iPad in the official Apple demo image to the right?

It’s called 31 Places to Go in 2010: you should click on it and check it out. When you’re done, come back and tell me what’s wrong with the iPad demo image.

Yup. Exactly so. The iPad doesn’t do Flash, but yet the New York Times’ piece contains a slideshow powered by Adobe’s plugin.

This doesn’t mean the iPad secretly runs Flash: Apple’s clearly trying to move the web away from it as a standard plugin, not just because it threatens the App Store but, as Apple themselves noted on Wednesday, the Flash plugin was responsible for more crashes reported to Apple across all of OS X than any other source.

It looks like Apple just fudged the truth a little in their iPad promo images. That’s worth a scolding cluck or two, but there’s no doubt in my mind that sites like the New York Times are already hard at work making sure all of their content works on the iPad without Flash. Not so much a fib, then, as a look at the future.

[via Apple Insider]

Before you can even get your hands on one, Northern Film & Media is offering £40,000 (about $64,500) for iPad application ideas from developers in England’s North East.

Dev teams — which can include some members from out of the area —  have until February 24 to come up with revenue-generating ideas that don’t duplicate the device’s standard app functions, aren’t kissing cousins of iPhone apps and are launchable by summer, 2010.

They’re putting up the cash in the hopes that locals will make a mark on the iPad:

“The iPod changed the way we thought about music. The iPhone transformed our attitudes to mobile phones, and opened our minds to all the things they could do other than call people” Tom Harvey, Chief Executive of Northern Film & Media said in the presser.  “What does the iPad transform? You decide. Newspaper and magazine reading? Gaming? Writing and painting?”

The location requirement is fairly strict but may be skirtable: the app must “be developed by teams where at least 70% of the team’s talent have their base in and 50% of the budget is spent in the North East.”

Complete info and application download here.

The iBooks service/feature for iPad is conspicuous in its absence from Apple iPad web pages outside of the USA, and the American site’s rather ominous “iBooks is available only in the U.S.” footnote made people ask whether Apple was going to fumble the ball. PC Pro today got confirmation from an Apple spokesperson about the subject from a British perspective, the statement being: “iBooks will be available in the UK, but the timing of that will not be announced until the iPad goes on sale”. In other words, pretty much as John Brownlee guessed here, yesterday.

Here’s hoping the timescale is ‘very soon’, rather than it taking as long to get British iBooks (and those for other non-US territories) as it did movies and other non-music media in iTunes. Here’s also hoping that PC Pro gives its headline writer a slap—titling an article ‘Book service in doubt for UK iPad’ when the Apple spokesperson confirmed the feature will be in no doubt is, to say the least, inaccurate link-bait tosh.

Guest commentary by David Barnard, owner of App Cubby, publisher of the popular Gas Cubby and Trip Cubby apps.

Much has been written about all the iPad surprises, disappointments, features, missing features, hype, expectations, future, etc. adnauseam. But not much has been written about what the iPad says about Apple. I’m excited about the iPad because of the many ways it demonstrates that Apple just gets it.

Palm almost gets it, Microsoft may be on it’s way to getting it with the Zune platform, Blackberry doesn’t have to get it, and Google just doesn’t get it.

What’s this “it” I’m referring to? Humans.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCHzgRPXRCM&feature=player_embedded

There’s some pretty good jokes is this Barely Political mash-up of President Obama’s State of the Union address and Steve Jobs’ iPad presentation.

Via Giz.

Enough of my dumb opinions. I thought it would be interesting to find out what some Mac and iPhone developers make of the iPad. What are their first impressions? What do they intend to make for the iPad platform? Do they have any concerns?

I got in touch with a whole bunch of developer contacts and asked them if they’d like to share their thoughts with you, the Cult readers.

Here are the replies I got.

Ken Case of OmniGroup revealed that the company is working on iPad versions of apps like OmniFocus and OmniGraffle:

“We’re really excited about Apple’s iPad, and are looking forward to updating OmniFocus to take advantage of the larger screen size. We’re also looking at creating iPad adaptations of several of our other productivity apps, such as OmniGraffle.”

Manton Reece of Riverfold Software (maker of Clipstart and Wii Transfer):

“I was so annoyed with the closed nature of the App Store that I stopped developing for the iPhone. The iPad will still have those frustrations, but the large screen opens up a whole new class of applications. It’s impossible to resist.”

Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems (maker of Tinderbox):

“The iPad announcement leaves many things unclear. Does iWork depend on private APIs, or will developers be able to write first-class applications? Will individual books be subject the the approval process — leaving 40 overworked Apple employees the additional task of approving or rejecting books an magazines?

“Since 1982, Eastgate’s been publishing original hypertext fiction and nonfiction. These works — many of which are now studied in universities throughout the world — can’t be printed and can’t be simulated in ePub. But, if we bring them to iPad, would that be vetoed as duplicating the built-in book functionality?

“In short, the app store is a source of grave concern for software developers. That said, the iPad is the most exciting personal computing development for a decade. It will transform our notion of computing and redefine the idea of the information appliance.”

Steve Jobs will never pitch a product more effectively than he did at the announcement of the iPhone. He said he was introducing three products: “A revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a break-through internet device. And they’re all one product: The iPhone.”

I thought back to that legendary pitch when I saw Steve affix one of his weakest lines ever to the iPad, a device I think actually has remarkable potential:

Image via Gizmodo

That’s right, the selling point is that it’s “Our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.” Really? Your selling points are advancement, magic, revolution, and cheapness? The best thing that line has going for is that device and price rhyme. First of all, almost no one buys magic. More importantly, Apple should never make price a central selling point; other companies can make cheaper knock-offs and then Apple has to re-convince people that that higher prices are justified. Once you try to become the price leader, you can’t really try to go premium again.

But the tagline was also a summation of the one problem that kept coming up for me as I watched the iPad announcement: the device simply does not have a killer app. A killer app, is the use that shows why a new technology is worth buying. For example, microwaves didn’t start selling until microwaveable popcorn was introduced and PCs didn’t sell until spreadsheet software was launched. The iPhone’s killer app, quite honestly, was Safari; the iPhone could certainly do a lot more than browse the web, but for many people, seeing the New York Times home page in multitouch made the sale.

The iPad? Well, I’ll say that the most impressive thing I saw today was the New York Times home page all over again. It’s even better than mobile web browsing than the iPhone. So what? That’s not enough to get me to spend $500. But not to worry. I believe the killer app for iPad is on the way, and possibly by launch. It’s called iLife.

“Stop, hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.”

— For What It’s Worth, Stephen Stills

That sound, the one emanating Wednesday from the stage at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and reverberating throughout the blogosphere and interwebs, the one heard in literally millions of conversations at lunch counters and water coolers and dinner tables across the globe, was the sound of another ding in the universe.

Once all the snickering about feminine hygiene finally dies down, once Apple finally puts the iPad into the retail chain that saw 50,000,000 people walk through the doors in the most recent fiscal quarter, once people — aside from jaded technology journalists and geekazoids — get the iPad in their hands, Apple’s description of it as a “magical and revolutionary” product will begin to come into focus.

Why?

With every new Apple product announcement, the press releases for third party accessories inevitably start rolling in. Here’s one of them, courtesy of bag maker Tom Bihn: a couple of iPad bags!

Neither’s particularly radical. The Cache costs 30 bucks is basically just a laptop sleeve rezised to fit the iPad’s dimensions.

The other is the Ristretto, a vertical messenger bag, which costs $120, and comes in olive, plum, black and cocoa.

Nothing too exciting here: these are just quickly redesigned iPad-specific versions of existing products. But, hey! At least you can get them shipped to you now in as little as one business day… unlike the iPad itself.

Yesterday, I speculated that the reason Apple didn’t put a camera in the iPad was to help you look thin, but as many commenters mentioned, another possibility is that Apple had another supply chain breakdown, like the one that robbed the iPod Touch of its camera in June.

Maybe that’s right. Techcrunch spotted that the iPad SDK has reference in the Contacts app to taking photos with a built-in camera.

There’s a few interpretations here. This could just be a legacy feature, having to do with the fact that the iPad runs on the iPhone OS. It could also have to do with the iPad’s ability to connect to external cameras through an accessory. Or maybe the camera was pulled at the last minute, just like the iPod Touch’s.

My guess is it’s a legacy goof. What do you think?

Although I was underwhelmed with the iPad overall — a natural reaction, I think, given how much my gig reporting on iPad rumors over the last couple months engorged my expectations — one thing I think the iPad did with its combo of a long battery life, great display and iBooks e-reading app was punch a steaming hole right through the chest of Amazon.

But I may have spoken too soon… at least as far as it concerns international iPad customers like myself. iBooks and eBooks aren’t even mentioned on the Australian iPad listing page. Other countries’ iPad pages feature similar omissions.

Now, obviously, this is simply an issue of getting deals inked with international publishers, but still, it’s troubling, and gives Amazon the leg up in at least one regard: after all, at least the Kindle’s e-reading functionality is now global, although it took them a couple years. I only hope we’re not looking at a similar 2 year delay for the iPad to do international e-books.

[via Gizmodo]

In yesterday’s purgative disgorging of iPad news, it was easy to miss some of the details about Apple’s iPad accessories… and what they cost. Here’s a quick run down of four of them.

The first accessory was the iPad Keyboard Dock, priced at $69. Although it also functions as a charging and syncing dock with stereo out, though the addition physical keyboard is what is likely to make this the most popular iPad accessory: it will theoretically allow the iPad to be used like a netbook… but in some ways, it feels like an omission of defeat by Apple: “Yeah, we want you to be able to work on this thing… but we just couldn’t figure out a good software data entry solution. Sorry.”

The iPad Case, costing $39, seems like a similar admission of data entry failure: you’re just not going to get as good a look at the screen when typing on the virtual keyboard if it’s flush with a surface. The soft, rubbery case solves this problem with the addition of a triangular kickstand. This will also likely make watching movies when the iPad is on a surface in front of you a lot more pleasant.