Foxconn, the company that assembles almost all of Apple’s devices —- plus plenty more for the likes of Amazon, Dell, Microsoft, and Sony —- has confirmed today that it has secured a 46.5% stake in Sharp’s giant LCD plant in Sakai, Japan. The deal is expected to help Sharp improve its performance, and could make low-energy IGZO displays a possibility for future iPads
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Watching movies on the new iPad is pretty great. Getting those movies onto the iPad isn’t quite so great, especially if you live in a country that doesn’t sell iTunes movies, or if you rip your own DVDs. The forthcoming 3.0 version of It’s Playing for iPad, though, not only plays pretty much any movie format without having to re-encode it on your computer first, it also puts in some amazing new features not seen anywhere else.
Last week, we showed you how to create a stack to show all your recent items. Today, we’re going to show you a way to change the default look of all your stacks, to a list view. This might be easier on your eyes, might appeal to your inner aesthetician, or it just might be a neat way to change the way your OS X Lion Mac behaves.
Over in rainy Britain, members of parliament (MPs) might have something to smile about. The Commons Administration Committee has recommended that they all be given iPads and cellular data plans. This would cost a relatively small amount, around £260,000 ($415,000) plus data plans.
With more than 100 Android devices out in the wild and more being manufactured every day, OEM’s are running out of clever names for their devices. Of course they could always use the highly technical Android Phone Name Generator to come up with the next magnificent mobile moniker, but that would be too easy. Instead, it appears manufacturers are looking to the condom industry for their tantalizing trade names.
Well, it seemed like only a matter of time before Apple’s promises of 4G data on its new iPad got the company into trouble. Australia’s competition watchdog is now threatening to sue the Cupertino company over its ‘misleading’ advertising for the new device, which can actually only connect to 4G LTE networks in the U.S.
Despite promising that it would provide its rivals with royalty-free licenses for its nano-SIM technology, Nokia still isn’t convinced by Apple’s proposal for the next-generation of miniaturized SIM cards. The Finnish company has already spoken out against the tiny SIM, but following Apple’s offer of free licensing yesterday, it has labelled the plan nothing more than an attempt to devalue the intellectual property of its rivals.
For some iPhone 4S users, Siri is a novelty that quickly wears off within a week or two of unwrapping the handset. But believe it or not, 87% of iPhone 4S users are still using the intelligent assistant at least once a month, according to a new study. Not many of them are using it to its full potential, however.
The Guardian’s excellent iPad app has been updated to make it cleaner, faster and easier to use. The Guardian is the one Newsstand periodical I pay for because, even though you can get almost all of the same content on the website for free, the app is outstanding.
The new version makes it even better. However, there is one huge omission: support for the new iPad’s Retina Display.
BYOD is certainly one of the biggest technology buzzwords right now. The concept of users supplying their own iPad, iPhone, or even their own MacBook can create challenges for IT, but it can also provides advantages. Users choosing the devices and apps that they feel most comfortable and productive using is one. Businesses not needing to pay for mobile devices themselves or plans to support them is another.
One of the basic assumptions when it comes to considering, testing, and implementing a BYOD program is that the ability to bring personal tools into the workplace is something that users ultimately want and think will improve their work. The rest of the discussion, including practical issues like device or data management and the range of devices to be support, is predicated on this core assumption that BYOD is desirable on the part of users.
But what if that isn’t really the case? According to a report based on research in Australia and New Zealand, that may not be the case and it may actually be a form of peer pressure driving the BYOD revolution more than pressure from users.
Apple has released Safari 5.1.5 in Software Update with a fix for those running the browser in 32-bit mode. The small update doesn’t have any known changes other than the 32-bit fix, and it weighs in at a slim 46.4 MB. The update will still require you to restart your computer, sadly. The last public release of Safari was version 5.1.4 on March 12th.
Safari 5.2 is currently in the hands of developers. The next major iteration to Apple’s browser includes great Mountain Lion features like iCloud tabs, a unified address bar, and more.
Good battery life is essential for a mobile device to succeed in the post-PC era, and Apple’s iOS devices continue to pack upgraded internals and improved battery technology into every product iteration. iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users can use a handful of tips and tricks for conserving precious battery on the go. Many of the tips are pretty basic, but every little bit counts when you’re trying to make it through the day on one charge.
Here’s a roundup of tips and tricks for saving battery life on your favorite iOS device:
Apple recently announced the winner of its 25 billionth App Store download contest. Fu Chunli from Qingdao, China won a $10,000 iTunes gift card for downloading the free Where’s My Water? iPhone game.
After she won, Apple flew her to the Beijing to accept her award. Chunli was escorted to Apple’s Chinese corporate headquarters and then taken to the Sanlitun Apple store to accept her gift card and talk to the press.
https://youtu.be/AcZOpKZLnV8
This video is old — it hails from the original iPad’s 2010 debut — but it’s still a gorgeous piece of eye candy: a 3D, CGI tour through 35 years of Apple product design. Absolutely stunning.
[via The Loop]
It doesn’t take a huge stretch of imagination to picture some of the ways that the iPad can be used in the workplace. The idea of it as a sales tool, an electronic medical chart, and as a digital textbook device all come immediately to mind as common on-the-job iPad uses. But the iPad’s versatility lends itself to a variety of industries and jobs that you’ve probably never considered.
One example is agriculture management from the cab of a farm combine – one of the unexpected places to find the iPad that Hard Candy Cases CEO Tim Hickman mentioned to me during a recent conversation. His company, which also produces the ruggedized Gumdrop Cases, has received bulk orders for iPad from some surprising sources and has led to iPad adoption in places beyond where most of us would expect. I decided to follow up on that conversation with some research of my own.
With all of the questions surrounding the new iPad’s battery life and heat temperatures, users will be comforted to learn that Apple’s latest tablet can serve as a mobile LTE hotspot for a staggering 25.3 hours. That means you could technically use your iPad’s Personal Hotspot feature for more than a day on a single charge.
Popular multitasking tweak CardSwitcher has been updated to version 2.0 in Cydia for iOS 5. If you remember Palm and the webOS platform, the look and feel of CardSwitcher will be very familiar. For jailbroken iPhones, this slick tweak brings the card-like multitasking environment of webOS to iOS.
If you want a change of pace from the tiny app switcher Apple has implemented when you double tap your Home button, CardSwitcher 2.0 is something you want to consider. There’s also an included multitasking interface that iPad users will enjoy.
If you know your Apple history, you’ll probably know that NeXTSTEP, the grandfather of modern OS X, had a clever feature called the Shelf, a placeholder where you could temporarily drop files while dragging them from one location to another. Sadly, Mac OS X has never replicated this in Finder.
So today there’s a brand new app for OS X that seeks to fix this. It’s called DragonDrop, and you can buy it for five bucks.
Developer Mark Christian released it independently today after weeks of trying to get it into the Mac App Store. Apple weren’t interested, and rejected it every time.
Is your iBooks library starting to outgrow those beautiful bookshelves that Apple provided for you? Have you purchased way too many Jim Butcher novels, only to find them crowding out your beloved Harry Potter collection?
Well, there’s a simple way to manage a burgeoning iBook collection, and we’re here to tell you how.
The new iPad makes a great photo studio. It has a 5MP autofocus camera, lets you adjust exposure separately (with a third party app like Camera+), has image stabilization and — like no other camera — has a huge range of editing apps to choose from and use right there in the field.
It is, however, very awkward to hold in one hand while you tap the screen with the other. You end up either almost dropping the thing, or taking a picture of your thumb, or just giving up.
I expect to see camera-friendly cases in the near future. Until then, though, I decided to hack together my own from a discarded iPad case from Speck. And amazingly, it turned out pretty well.
TwelveSouth’s BookBook case for the iPad is a hard, leatherback binder that’s designed to look like a vintage book. It’s handmade and it features a soft, velvety interior that promises to keep your tablet free from scratches and scrapes, while its hard exterior provides impact protection from all angles. It also boasts a fully-adjustable stand using “the oldest trick in the book” — a button and a piece of string.
Because it’s hand distressed, every BookBook case is unique, and TwelveSouth claims that no two look alike. We were more than impressed by the BookBook case for the MacBook Air, so we had high expectations for this one. But did it live up to them?
Earlier this year Apple announced iTunes U, making it clear that Apple intends to make the iPad ubiquitous in academia. The iPad is truly coming into its own as a legitimate alternative to the PC. For students, this means that the iPad is quickly becoming a powerful learning tool, which is good for a lot more than reading.
I sat down with a Boston-based PhD student who, for the past year, has been using her iPad nearly exclusively for her studies. Here are the core peripherals and apps that she recommends in order to supercharge your iPad for use in the academic setting.
One of the big fears CIOs and IT staffers have about the consumerization of IT and BYOD trends is that mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone combined with personal cloud services like iCloud, Google Docs, and Dropbox make it very easy for confidential business data to leave the office and the company network.While this is a definite fear for IT staff, how do most knowledge workers view the risk and the consequences of such so-called data sprawl?
According to a recent study, four out of five workers rank removing confidential data from the office as an offense that should get a person fired and yet 90% believe that it happens on a regular basis.
You know all about the new iPad’s retina display and how ridiculously gorgeous pictures and retina graphics look on the shiny new screen, but what about video? The 1080p resolution of HD videos is great and all that, but the new iPad has a 2048p resolution, which means even if you’re watching a high-def video there are still a lot of pixels that aren’t utilized to their full potential. We wanted to know what video will look like on our new tablet once ultra-hd videos become more popular, and even though 2048p clips are scare, we found five videos that showcase just how awesome online videos are going to look on the new iPad really soon.