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Here’s a couple of screenshots from the iPad’s YouTube app showing the dramatic difference in quality between Wi-Fi and 3G.

The screenshot above is from video streaming over WiFi. And below is the same YouTube video playing over 3G.

I paused the video before taking the screenshots and tried to take them at about the same point.

The difference is clear. Over Wi-Fi, video quality is near high-def. Over 3G, it looks like a bad QuickTime movie from the mid-1990s.

Of course, this isn’t new — it’s just much more noticeable on the iPad’s big beautiful screen. This has been the case on the iPhone for some time, but on the smaller screen, the difference in quality isn’t as dramatic.

Meanwhile, our readers are reporting that Verizon’s MiFi delivers: there’s no difference in quality between Wi-Fi and 3G on Verizon’s network.

UPDATE: As our friend Chris Foresman of Ars Technica fame points out in the comments, 3G tops out at a paltry 64Kbps. ” It looks like crap on the iPhone,” says Chris, “so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it looks like crap 4x as big?”

Foresman says the 64Kbps number isn’t generally known, but is reported in Apple’s developer docs. AT&T had said there would be a limit, but didn’t say what it was.

64Kbps is pathetic for 3G. According to the International Telecommunication Union standards body, 3G specifies a minimum data rate of 144Kbps in high-mobility (vehicular) applications, 384Kbps for pedestrian applications, and 2Mbps (that megabits per second) for indoor (stationary) applications.

And here are the screenshots full size:

The honeymoon is over. I’ve discovered my first major disappointment with the iPad 3G, and I’ve only just started playing with it. Video over 3G on the iPad totally and utterly sucks.

The picture is noticeably downgraded on a 3G connection. The built-in YouTube app delivers video that’s very low-res compared to the video it delivers on a Wi-Fi connection. It’s barely watcheable.

And apps like the ABC app and Netflix won’t work on 3G at all. They both The ABC app launches a pop up that says: “Please connect to a Wi-Fi network to use this application. Cellular networks are not supported at this time.”

It may be better to get a Wi-Fi only iPad and invest in a MiFi, which appears to work flawlessly for delivering high-def video, according to reader reports on iLounge.

UPDATE: My mistake. Netflix does work over 3G. The video quality is clearly lower resolution however.

Here’s a couple of screenshots showing the difference:

The iPad 3G is the iPad everyone’s been waiting for. Let’s face it: the 3G data connection and GPS makes this the iPad you don’t want to to leave at home.

• There’s almost no physical difference between the iPad 3G and the Wi-Fi only iPad, except for the strip of black plastic on the back covering the 3G antenna, and the microSIM slot on the left-hand side.
• The contents of the box are the same (iPad, charging brick and sync cable). The only difference is a pin tool to pop the microSIM slot.
• Like the WiFi iPad, you must connect it to iTunes before it powers up. It will not switch on out of the box. There is no software update at present. The iPad doesn’t register itself with AT&T you call up the Settings menu and hit Cellular Data option.
• Signing up for a data plan wasn’t too bad. You type in username, password, and credit card details. You have to create a new account, which seems to be linked to an AT&T account if you have one (it pulled up my address that it had on file). The sucky AT&T connection in this part of San Francisco made it slower than it should submiiting the data and waiting for a response. However, the activation of the data plan took only a couple of minutes.
• Be warned: monthly data fees are ongoing unless you cancel. This is going to be easy to forget at the end of the month. If you cancel and want to re-enroll, you have to go thorough the entire enrollment process again. Kinda painful.
• Web surfing is pretty slow — but that’s because AT&T is overloaded and the signal weak here at my office. It’s not really a fair test. I’ll conduct more tests later at home.

Here is what the iPad looks like close up:

As expected, the iPad 3G has already been jailbroken — only a few hours after its launch.

MuscleNerd of iPhone Dev Team posted pictures and a video to YouTube showing a jailbroken iPad 3G running Cydia.

MuscleNerd used the “Spirit” jailbreak, an software tool that promises untethered unlocking of Apple’s recent devices (iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3G, and iPads). The Dev Team has promised to release Spirit to the public soon. In preparation, be sure to backup your SHSH Blobs. You can find a step-by-step guide from Redmond Pie here.

Here is MuscleNerd’s video showing Cydia running on an iPad 3G.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFmy1rolqpw&feature=player_embedded

Via Redmond Pie. Thanks Taimur.

Less than a month since its release, there are nearly 5,000 apps available for the iPad, most are games but there are some important early sellers in the medical and finance titles.

Distimo, a start-up that analyzes app stats, tallied some 4,870 applications for Apple’s magical tablet to date. (You can download the full report here.)

Games dominate iPad apps, with 32% of the total at 1,577 titles so far, Entertainment and books trail far behind, together they total about half as many apps with 455 and 396 titles, respectively.

The first thing you’ll want to do on your brand new iPad 3G is sign up for a data plan. It’s pretty easy, and you can do it right on the iPad. It’s basically half-a-dozen finger taps (except for typing in your credit card number of course).

Here are step-by-step by instructions, courtesy of this knowledge base article from Apple.

Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch posted a brief reply about the break-up with Apple over Flash.

His post follows Steve Jobs’ lengthy public letter “Thoughts on Flash” where Apple’s CEO  said that despite a “golden era” the companies had “grown apart.”

Lynch titles his 200-word reply “Moving Forward,” and while he does say that if the companies had managed to work it out, Adobe could have provided a “terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch,” they’re not down with the legal terms Apple imposed on developers.

Last year, accessory LUXA2 released the H1-Touch stand for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which allowed you to position your handset on your desk like a miniature monitor. It looked great, but wasn’t particularly useful.

I don’t think the same can be said for the LUXA2 H4, a larger version of the same stand for the iPad. The reason for that is mostly because it allows you to easily position the iPad as a monitor when paired with a Bluetooth keyboard… and unlike the official Apple dock, the H4 has a swiveling mount that allows you to easily rotate your iPad from landscape to portrait orientation and back again.

The H4’s got a few strikes against it — those holding prongs, while keeping the iPad secure, don’t look very good — but all in all, it looks like a great solution for anyone who does a lot of typing or video watching on their iPad. $50 will get you one.

I’m waiting here like a kid at Christmas, pulling the curtains, hoping to see the UPS  Fed-Ex truck outside. Some of you guys on the east coast may have got yours by now. Let us know in the comments. And send us pictures; we’ll post them.

“The Future of the Web is HTML5,” Microsoft declared. The software giant, in throwing its weight behind the Apple-approved standard, also announced its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 will not use Adobe Flash for video playback.

“Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C,” the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced in on its Internet Explorer blog. “HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design,” IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch adds.

Just a friendly Cult of Mac reminder that if you haven’t already pre-ordered an iPad 3G, and if you aren’t already elbowing Greg Packer for elbow room at the front of the 5th Avenue store lines, Apple’s official retail stores will all be closed from 4pm to 5pm today to prepare the staff for the imminent launch of Apple’s mobile broadband capable tablet. 17:00:01 is the earliest you’re possibly going to snag one unless UPS Santa pays you a visit before then.

Here’s what we’re curious about: how many of you are intending on picking up an iPad 3G after work today? If so, please let us know how you get on in the comments. We’d also be interested if the intermittently available iPad WiFi is more readily available in the retail stores now that the 3G is available.

Anyway, that’s it: the last first-gen iPad release date. Except for us poor suckers in the rest of the world, that is, but hell… we don’t count.

[via 9to5Mac]

I’m surprised that they were still a contender, but according to Forbes, Apple has just reached a milestone: they’ve just passed Motorola as the largest phone maker in the United States.

How much would you pay for your favorite print magazine to appear on the iPad? That’s the question some magazine publishers are asking themselves, including the makers of Popular Science. Pop Science is charging $4.99 per iPad issue, or nearly half the price for an entire year’s subscription to their traditional format. What’s been the readers’ reaction? So far, so good.

“We’re trying to make our readers not feel like we’re slapping them in the face as we explore this new world,” Popular Science chief editor Mark Jannot told the audience at Tabula Rasa NYC, a conference of publishing and media experts. While the iPad edition of Popular Science is currently $4.99, a year-long subscription to the print version costs $12.

Cupertino’s already got a history of stepping down on app developers who use Apple’s own app icons in their software, so clearly they are protective of their assets, but now words comes that Apple has filed trademark motions on a number of its official app icons.

None of them are new, so there’s no forthcoming features of future devices to spy here. Each icon is marked by a description as well as a list of colors, and an image of each app icon has been submitted in the huge size of 1000×1000 pixels, which means that Apple shouldn’t have to re-render any of them for the next decade to come.

You are looking at China’s next iPhome. It was found lost in an electronics shop in Beijing, camouflaged to look like the real iPhone 4G. We got it. We disassembled it. It’s totally fake, and here are all the details.

Although individuals have already demonstrated working hacks of Apple’s iPad, it seems like it’s taking them forever to actually release a working jailbreak… and if you’re an iPod Touch owner, it seems like it’s been even longer since the first working, untethered 3.1.3 jailbreak was demonstrated, only to never be released.

It looks now like everyone has something to look forward. According to the iPhone Dev Team’s blog, they intend on releasing an iPadjailbreak sometime soon after the iPad 3G goes on sale.

When Apple acquired music streaming service Lala year, almost everyone assumed that iTunes’ tenth iteration would find Apple’s music syncing software re-envisioned as a service which allowed users to stream their tunes from anywhere without actually having their musics locally stored.

That’s still a safe bet , especially as Apple phases out their older iPod models and shrinks down the footprint of 3G SIM cards to be installable in even the smallest chassis. But it did raise a question: would existing Lala customers be left high and dry by the Apple buyout?

No, as it turns out. While Lala has just announced that their service will be shutting down on May 31st for good, with no new users accepted. Lala’s going the extra mile by converting any money spent on streaming music into iTunes credit. That counts even if you have unused Lala credit. How generous.

Want to know when you’ll be sliding through the orange hued inkwell of a counter-gravitational portal on your Mac? Eager to know the date when you can start the fight against the insidious Combine under OS X? Fanatic about headshotting bile-spitting zombie after zombie within the safehouse of Snow Leopard? Keen to whack a bald, minigun-toting fat man in the back of the head with a baseball bat while cracking wise to him in a Brooklyn accent?

Sure you are, and when Valve gets around to releasing Steam for Mac, you can do just that through native Source-engine ports of games like Left 4 Dead, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal just by downloading them through their games delivery service. And just when are they planning on releasing Steam for Mac to good gamers across the world? We now have a date: May 12th.

Steve Wozniak is unhappy at the Mac launch, which resembles “Woodstock for nerds.” Part 10 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” a personal history of the original Mac by Macworld founder David Bunnell.

It was a Brian J. Hogan, a 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, who found Apple’s iPhone in a bar, according to Wired.com.

He now regrets not trying harder to contact Apple, and sold the phone to Gizmodo because they told him “there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press,” according to a statetment provided by his attorney to Wired.com.

Hogan has been interviewed by law enforcement investigators but has not been charged with a crime. His attorney says he is willing to cooperate with authorities…

… The person who found the phone “is very definitely one of the people who is being looked at as a suspect in theft,” San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told Wired.com Wednesday. “Assuming there’s ultimately a crime here. That’s what we’re still gauging, is this a crime, is it a theft?”

… A friend of Hogan’s then offered to call Apple Care on Hogan’s behalf, according to Hogan’s lawyer. That apparently was the extent of Hogan’s efforts to return the phone.

This article was supposed to be about my first real road trip with the iPad, and how it fared being unplugged and disconnected for a three-day journey. Instead that report goes on the back burner while I tell you another story.

Since 9/11 the airline industry has taken a lot of flack for things outside their control: long security lines, additional passenger screening, and any number of other complaints. In fact you usually only ever hear about an airline when something goes either absurdly or disastrously wrong.

Today was another day of travel for me, upgraded to first class, I enjoyed my lunch and marveled at how enjoyable a traveling companion my iPad is, though I was a bit frustrated by a few games that required network connections to work (the AppStore needs to force apps to note that if it’s the case).

Everything went smoothly, no complaints. Got home, unpacked, changed into beer drinkin’ clothes, and got a phone call from some guy named Bo Hume. Figuring it to be a telemarketer or something, I answered gruffly, “Yes.”

“Is this Leigh McMullen.” Bo asked. Sure sign of someone who doesn’t know me, calling to sell me something, I nearly hung up on him

“Yes.” I said flatly.

“Sir, this is Bo Hume from American Airlines, are you still in the airport?”

I answered that I wasn’t, now a little curious, I travel a lot (executive platinum), maybe they wanted to give me a voucher or something for making me sit in the middle seat in the back of the bus on my way out.

“Well, Sir, the reason I ask is that I found a notebook, or pad or something I think belongs to you.”

My iPad. I hadn’t even realized I’d lost it.

Now stop. How the hell often does it happen that someone calls you to report that you lost something you hadn’t even realized was gone.

We make arrangements to meet, I rush back to the airport, Bo meets me outside, he’s exactly the kind of fella you’d want to have a beer with, even wearing a Dallas Cowboys hat, how could you not like the guy?

He gives me back my iPad, I say to him, “Bo, I really appreciate you getting this back to me, would you accept a small reward for your trouble.”

He smiles back, “No trouble, Sir, just thank you for flying American.”

No, Bo, thank you. Hopefully someone at American will see this, find some creative way to thank you and your whole team. You men and women keep the airplanes I rely on in the air and you do it 30,000 times a day, flawlessly.

Seriously, Thank you.

About 30 years ago, Monster began to carve out a name for itself selling cables-on-steroids to musicians. Recently, they’ve decided to take on the likes of Bose and Audio-Technica with a line of hip-hop inspired headphones called Beats by Dr. Dre.

In between the series of massive, battery-operated over-ear models and in-ear buds sits the Solos, a folding, on-ear set that seems to hit all the key points for a stylish set of traveller’s headphones: Fly looks? Check. Portability? Yeah. Sublime, bass-infused sound? In spades. It even has a microphone. In fact, the only thing missing here — except for in one component — is Monster’s legendary build quality.

Gay hook-up app Grindr, in the hot seat after a 15-year-old Canadian teen says he was assaulted by a 54-year old met via the free app, has issued a statement about the case.

App makers Nearby Buddy Finder are standing by their terms of use and parental control in the hopes of avoiding legal problems:

“Grindr has a very strict 18 years-and-over terms of use policy that all users of our service must agree to, additionally we actively monitor for potential violations of this policy and bar anyone who violates its terms.

We voluntarily have this policy in place to help protect the safety of minors. Unfortunately, as with any Web technology, people can find ways to bypass even the most robust control mechanisms.”

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Yesterday I installed Adobe’s new preview of Flash 10.1 on a couple of my Macs, and even though Steve Jobs has just dinged his old partners for being slow to release good Mac software, this release rocks.

Here’s why you need to install it on your Mac right now.

Most laptops and portable media players have pretty terrible bass, no matter how great their audio may otherwise be, but subwoofers aren’t exactly easily luggable devices. Digivoid’s latest device attempts to shore up your iPod and MacBook’s weak vibes.

The Zo Personal Subwoofer is a small gadget about the size of an iPod Nano. All you do is plug it into your device’s headphone jack through a supplied mini-stereo cable. You then plug your headphones into the Zo for improved sound, which is itself powered by an internal rechargeable battery.

According to DigiZoid, the Zo Persona Subwoofer offers bass that’s the equivalent of a 12-inch subwoofer. That seems like a little bit of a stretch to us, but if you’re interested, you can pick up a Zo to supplement your iPod’s bass for just $99.