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If you like staring at silicon without its clothes on, you’ll love this: Chipworks has done a teardown of the iPad 2’s new A5 processor.

It’s a technical read, and frankly, I’m not Cylon enough to understand most of it. The most interesting detail for us laypeople is that it’s actually pretty honking huge: at 120mm, it’s actually more than twice the size of the A4’s 53mm CPU, allowing Apple to cram in more cores, transistors and a bigger GPU for more oomph all around.

According to Chipworks, the SoC is still pretty much off-the-shelf. It’s manufactured by Samsung, despite Apple’s rumored partnership with TSMC to build iPad 2 chips, so it doesn’t look like Apple’s given Sammy the boot just yet for daring to release their own tablet.

Ouch. If you haven’t ordered an iPad 2 yet, I hope you’re willing to wait over a month to get one, as iPad 2 shipping estimates have slipped again, this time to four or five weeks for most models.

iPad 2 shipping estimates have been slipping since mere hours after it went on sale online in the wee hours of Friday. Originally put up for sale online at 1AM PT with a 3-5 business day shipping estimate, that slipped in mere hours to 5-7 days, then to two weeks and now to over a month.

If you haven’t ordered your iPad 2 online yet, your best bet might be to drop by your local Apple Store on the way to work today. Rumor indicates that Apple Stores will open at 9am today to service iPad 2 sales on a fresh shipment, and I can confirm that, at least at the Apple Store I’m currently parked at, Apple employees are already bustling around inside.

Here’s an astonishing post from Kevin Rose, publishing an (anoymized) email from a friend of his who works for Apple in Japan.

Still haven’t bought your iPad 2 yet and wondering which flavor of 3G to get: AT&T or Verizon? Ma Bell’s now sweetening the pot if you’re willing to sign up with them. According to a mailing AT&T is sending around, they’re offering a free month of iPad data for a limited time, with no commitment or associated fees. All you have to do is call them up at 1-888-237-5888 and it sounds like they’ll hook you up.

AT&T phrases this offer as a way to “try your iPad” on their mobile broadband service, but of course, if you bought an AT&T iPad 2, you don’t really have a choice either way anymore.

In case you missed it, Apple stole the spotlight this year at SXSW by launching iPad 2 in a temporary popup shop right in the heart of Austin.

I had heard that Apple was opening a popup store at a secret location during SXSW, but the location wasn’t a secret for long.

Long lines, big signs, high fives—even dancing ensued once the twitterverse got wind of the popup’s location. It was a crazy fun time, so if you haven’t seen it yet, check the video and let your eyes behold the insanity of this brilliant iPad launch.

PS, excuse the video’s abrupt ending, my camera ate some of my video bytes.

Microsoft is killing the Zune player after five years of unsuccessfully trying to compete with Apple’s iPod.

The Zune is being discontinued thanks to weak ongoing sales, Bloomberg reports. It will not be refreshed when current units sell out.

When the Zune was introduced in 2006, in mold-breaking brown nonetheless, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer predicted the player would one day overtake Apple. But it failed to even crack the top five MP3 players. According to NPD, Apple had 77% market share in 2010.

“MSFT abandoning Zune last sign AAPL totally dominated portable music for the last decade,” tweeted industry analyst Michael Gartenberg. “Sony, Samsung, Dell all failed to move needle.”

Gartenberg also predicted that tablets will be the next Zune.

Pundit Paul Kedrosky said: “My main reaction to news that Microsoft is going to stop selling Zunes is … Microsoft still sold Zunes?”

Instead of selling hardware players, Microsoft will shift its focus to putting Zune on smartphones running Windows mobile OS.

With its world class design, Microsoft’s young hip image, and ground-breaking advertising like the spot below, is it any wonder the Zune failed to take off?

(This is a joke, btw)

Just like CBS I don’t know if this is real or fake. However, it is interesting and intriguing. The video shows a man who uses his iPhone, a video transmitter, and a repeater to hijack video billboards in Times Square.  In a sense it looks like he’s hacked the video feeds going to these video billboards displayed in Times Square.

He starts off with small video billboards at ground level and eventually works his way up to a giant CNN billboard high above the middle of Times Square.

Real or fake? Tell us what you think by leaving a comment.

[via CBS News]

Rocker Jon Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs is “personally responsible for killing the music business” with iTunes.

In an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, Bon Jovi says kids no longer enjoy the “magical” experience of buying and enjoying LPs because of digital downloads. He hates to sound like an “old man,” he says, but it’s all Jobs’ fault:

“Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it. God, it was a magical, magical time. I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’. Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.”

I’m an old man too, but I’ve never enjoyed music more. I much prefer my fantastic Sonos music system than my old record player. I do recall the excitement of buying a new LP every week. I doubt I’d get the same excitement these days, but that’s not Steve Jobs’ fault.

As for killing music, I’d say Bon Jovi has done more on that front than Steve Jobs.

Incidentally, Bon Jovi sits on a White House panel with Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. Both are members of the White House council for Community Solutions. Might be awkward at the next meeting.

The Sunday Times Magazine: LITD: Jon Bon Jovi, 48, rockstar (paywall)

Way back in 1978, Apple Corps successfully got Apple to agree never to enter the music industry in court… a ban that Apple was obviously successful at whittling away at, slowly but surely, over the next twenty odd years. That culminated in a 2007 settlement that resulted in most of Apple Corps’ trademarks being given to Apple, Inc… a settlement that ultimately led to the release of the Beatles catalog on iTunes back in late 2010.

Curiously, though, one Apple Corps trademark that Apple never got was for Apple Corps’ distinctive and fruity logo. That’s now changed, with Apple having applied for Apple Corps’ Granny Smith apple logo with the European Treademarks Office on March 11th, 2011, covering everything from computer hardware, online social networking services, musical instruments, games, clothing, advertising and broadcasting.

In trademark disputes, gaining control over your opponent’s official logo is what is called a fatality. After twenty three years, it looks like the dispute between Apple Corps and Apple is over once and for all.

Back in September, Apple filed a patent that would make the audio jacks in their iOS devices even smaller, using deflectable pogo pins instead of cantilever beams to extend into the jack’s cavity and conduct audio and electricity to your headphones.

It was an interesting patent, but Apple’s patents have a tendency to never materialize. This one did, though: according to Kevin Fox of Mozilla Labs, the iPad 2 is the first Apple device to use the new pogo pin audio jack.

Check out this video of the iPad 2 playing Chair Entertainment’s Infinity Blade on a 50-inch LG HDTV running at 1080p, thanks to the new iPad HDMI adapter. That’s a ten-dollar game looking just as lurid and beautiful in high-definition as a $60 Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 game.

Speaking to Jim Dalrymple over at The Loop, Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller says that demand for the iPad 2 has been “amazing.”

How amazing? Amazing enough that they’re admitting that there are supply shortages and they can’t produce them fast enough… at least by implication.

“We are working hard to get iPad 2 into the hands of every customer who wants one as quickly as possible,” said Muller.

Analysts are saying that Apple could have sold as many as a million iPad 2s over the weekend, based upon estimated shipping times online and the long lines outside Apple Stores for the iPad 2s launch.

This isn’t the first time Apple has admitted that they just can’t make iPads fast enough to satisfy demand: at Apple’s EOY earnings call in February, Apple COO Tim Cook admitted that he thought they could have sold even more iPads in 2010 if they’d been able to build more them.

Still trying to get an iPad 2, but unwilling to wait the current four weeks wait by orering online? Reports suggest you’ll have a chance to buy an iPad 2 tomorrow morning, if you get to an Apple Store early.

In line with AT&T, Verizon is also making calls and texts to Japan free.

Verizon said texts, wireless and wireline calls to Japan will be free through April 10.

AT&T is offering free calls and texts to Japan through March 31st.

Verizon also provided instructions on how to donate money via text to Japanese relief efforts.

Details in the press releases:

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.”

AT&T customers can call and text Japan for free through March 31st, the company said on Monday.

The offer extends to customers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and is in reponse to last week’s earthquake and tsunami.

AT&T also said wireless customers will not be charged for international long distance calls or texts to Japan that were placed after March 11th.

And AT&T landline customers can apply for 60 minutes of credit for calls to Japan from March 11th to March 31st.

Here’s the details from AT&T’s press release:

The consensus on Wall Street is that Apple had a gangbuster weekend, some estimating the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant sold up to three times as many iPad 2 units as the first-generation tablet.

“We would not be surprised to see Apple sell closer to 1 million iPad 2s in the opening weekend,” Wedbush Securitities’ analyst Scott Sutherland (no relation to this reporter) told Reuters Monday morning. Sunday, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster estimated between 400,000 to 500,000 of the new tablets were sold by Sunday night.

Want to grab an iPad 2 but didn’t manage to get one over the weekend? Word on the street has it that Apple will be opening its Retail Stores one hour early on Tuesday to sell people a new shipment of iPad 2s.

The report comes from Apple Bitch, who says:

While no official announcement has been forthcoming from Apple, anecdotal reports from shoppers across the country trying get an iPad 2 this morning, say they were told by retail staff that even if the Apple Stores were re-stocked today, the iPad 2 would not be sold until tomorrow and for this reason, the Stores would open early for dedicated iPad 2 sales.  We have confirmed this with three retail stores.

In other words, if you want an iPad 2, it sounds like it’s a fool’s errand to spend a lot of time running back and forth between Apple Stores today, looking for a new shipment. Instead, prepare to wait in line first thing tomorrow morning. Could we have a mini repeat tomorrow morning of the long lines we saw on Friday?

The iPad 2 might cost the same as the first-gen tablet… but several components used to make it have actually increased in price: most notably, the price of the iPad 2’s touch display and the cost of manufacturing its new, dual-core A5 SoC.

The biggest component cost increase is for the touch display, which shot up almost $32 in price to $127, compared to the first-gen iPad’s $95 touch display.

John Gruber over at Daring Fireball said something recently that made a lot of Apple’s more seemingly incredible business decisions make sense to me: Apple wants to cut out the middle men by becoming the only middle man anyone using an iOS device needs to go through.

If you keep that in mind, it makes today’s latest news about Apple’s NFC ambitions make more sense. Reportedly, Apple has told carriers that the iPhone 5 won’t have NFC, as Apple is reportedly “concerned about a lack of a clear [NFC] standard.”

Vito Technology, developers of the wildly successful iOS astronomy app Star Walk celebrates the company’s 10th birthday this week with an update to its more recently released geography app, Geo Walk 3D World Factboook — and especially for Cult of Mac readers — an iPad2 giveaway.

Geo Walk is one of those apps that, while engaging and interesting enough on the smaller iPhone screen, finds new life and greater dimensions of engagement when used on an iPad.

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.

Did you get an iPad 2 after waiting in line Friday and Saturday? A prominent Apple analyst reported Sunday night New York City and Minneapolis Apple fans found only empty shelves. For those Apple tablets sold, the majority – 70 percent – went to new iPad owners.

“We believe this shows Apple is expanding its base of iPad users, which is critical to maintaining its early lead in the growing tablet market,” Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster said. Munster, who directed surveys of 236 line-waiters, estimates Apple sold 400,000 to 500,000 iPad 2 units – almost all in one day. That compares with the 300,000 first-generation iPads sold over its first weekend in 2010.

A common complaint by Android users is that iOS isn’t customizable. Well, jailbreaking removes that “issue,” and opens up a whole new world. Once jailbroken, users get access to thousands upon thousands of beautifully designed themes, a lot of which are being converted to an “HD” version for retina display support. A lot of recent themes feature HTML5 lockscreen animations, which are really quite spectacular. Hit the jump to check out 15 really cool themes.

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.

Here are the results.

Well that was fast! Just 2 days ago, the iPad 2 was released, and it’s now jailbroken. In the picture above, you can see a white Verizon WiFi+3G iPad 2 running Cydia. The jailbreak itself comes courtesy of @comex, the man behind JailbreakMe.com. Continue reading for more information!