We close out another week and just days before the start of spring with three hardware deals in the spotlight. First up is a number of iMac desktop machines from the Apple Store. These i3 and i5 Core-based machines start at $1,019 for a 3.06GHz model. Next is a MacBook Pro, running a Core i5 at 2.3GHz for just $1,129. We wrap up the featured deals with an 8GB iPod nano (5th-gen) for only $99.
Along the way, we take a look at various cases and assorted accessories for your favorite Apple devices. As usual, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
Apple is telling suppliers that they will no longer be selling MobileMe subscriptions in preparation for a launch of a new, free and radically overhauled version of the service launching next month.
Here’s something sort of unexpected… A few people have received text messages from AT&T saying that, to tether a smartphone to a computer, it requires a tethering plan. The ones who’ve received these messages are all jailbroken, and use MyWi, a jailbroken application to allow Internet tethering over WiFi, USB, and Bluetooth, for their Internet tethering needs.
Back in 2000, when Google was just getting started, its venture capital backers insisted the fledling company find an experieced CEO to provide ‘adult supervision.’
Venture capitalist John Doerr arranged for Google’s young co-founders to meet with half-a-dozen Silicon Valley CEOs in an attempt to get the process started. Larry Page and Sergey Brin met with Intel’s Andy Grove, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and several others.
At the end of the tour, they were ready to hire a CEO but there was a problem, according to Wired senior writer Steven Levy:
… they would only consider one person: Steve Jobs.
Jobs was busy running Apple, of course, which was just about to introduce the first iPod, the product that would transform the company. Doerr persuaded them to widen their net and introduced them to Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Novell. Schmidt became Google’s CEO in 2001.
The nugget about Steve Jobs is from the latest Wired magazine, in a story about Larry Page retaking the reins as Google’s CEO. It is not yet online. The story is an excerpt from Levy’s upcoming book, “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives,” which is available for pre-order on Amazon.
Since Apple introduced iOS 4.3 last week, I’ve found a number of complaints about battery issues with the firmware update. I’ve even experienced these problems personally and I know many of you have too.
The update has caused issues with the battery life on my iPhone 4 and my iPad 2 is getting considerably less time out of its battery than my old iPad running iOS 4.2.1, so if you haven’t upgraded to iOS 4.3 you may want to wait until this issue is resolved.
According to users on Apple Discussions under the topics iPhone 4 – ios 4.3 – Battery Drain and iOS 4.3 causing battery drain, the iPhone’s battery life is severely shortened by the latest iOS update. As a result some users are also complaining that battery life is lasting 2 to 4 hours less than before the update was applied.
What sort of impact did Verizon have on iPhone 4 sales? Very little, according to one analyst. Verizon iPhone sales have been “solid, but not spectacular” during the March second quarter, BMO Capital Market’s Keith Bachman told investors Friday morning.
Quarterly iPhone sales should reach 16 million units with Verizon adding 1.5 million to 2 million handsets, Bachman adds. The numbers assume the usual 10 percent slide from the year’s first financial quarter, ended December 31. As a result, there likely won’t be a “material upside” for this quarter, the analyst writes.
Game guru Peter Molyneux has launched a £1000 reward for the return of his stolen iPad.
Molyneux, the mind behind Dungeon Keeper, Populous and Black & White, got his iPad and passport nicked from his car in parked in Stamford Brook Road London.
While much of the world’s focus is on the fate of Japan’s nuclear reactors, for the tech industry concern is also on the potential fall-out from temporary shutdowns of vital chipmaking plants. With the country a major supplier of silicon chips, the uncertainty may prompt ‘panic buying’ of semiconductors, a situation from which Apple may be uniquely immune.
“Many electronic original equipment manufacturers worldwide could be engaging in panic buying of semiconductors and electronic components,” hardware researcher IHS iSuppli announced Thursday. Several distributors report “a surge in orders” from customers fearing Japan’s 9.0 earthquake could disrupt supplies for everything from personal computers to tablets.
Rather than have all of his iOS devices strewn around his desk higgledy-piggledy, Andrew Kim designed the Polyply, a simply piece of kit that keeps his Apple gadgets as tidily arrayed as the interlocked tetronimos in a game of Tetris.
It’s not a real product, and we’re not sure it needs to be, since it’s the sort of thing that could easily be put together with some plywood and strategically carved acrylic fronting. You could make this easily yourself in a configuration personalized to your own iOS device set-up.
We love it, from the way it doubles as an iPad keyboard dock to the careful notches allowing the charging cables to slither through. Well done, Mr. Kim!
Which country’s natives and autochton’s love Apple best? You’d think the country’s home, America, but according to a neat little exercise in statistical research by the Pingdom Blog, it’s actually the Swiss, where almost one out of five people owns a Mac.
I love that the Swiss are so into Apple. It seems so appropriate that a country obsessed with the excellence of gadgets — from the latest million-gear horological marvel right on down to the common knife or belt — would heartily embrace the Mac.
And they have. 17.61% of all computers in Switzerland are Macs. America may love Macs — 15.36% of our computers were made by Apple — by the Swiss still have us beat for general enthusiasm.
Which regions reject the Mac most totally? Depressingly, it’s Asia — where all Macs are built — followed by South America, which only has a 1.08% market share of Macs.
Although not much more than a questionable confirmation of existing rumors, 9to5Mac is claiming that a source close to Foxconn has told them that the iPhone 5 will have a larger edge-to-edge screen and an aluminum back while otherwise sharing the form factor of the iPhone 4.We’re not sure what to make of these rumors.
The Mac App Store is off to a slower start than the iOS App Store, according to a new market research report by Distimo, which tracked data across a number of app stores including Apple’s, the Android Market, the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and more.
The Mac App Store is also made up of a much higher percentage of paid apps than the iOS App Store. A scale-topping 88% of all Mac App Store apps are paid, with only 12% being free.
I’m not much surprised by these numbers. The Mac software ecosystem was incredibly fertile long before the Mac App Store came on the scene, and much of the App Store’s earliest titles weren’t newly made for the platform, but instead existing paid apps ported over. Of course most of the Mac App Store apps are paid: existing paid Mac apps had the most to gain and the smallest barrier-to-entry to hit the Mac App Store running at launch. I imagine that these numbers will shift dramatically as OS X Lion makes the OS X experience more iOS-like.
With all the rumors about NFC being in the next iPhone — or not in the next iPhone — we have a few more details about Apple’s remote computing plans that revolve around the technology.
According to a source close to the company, Apple is busy testing several prototype iPhones with near field communications (NFC). Unfortunately, the source has no knowledge of when Apple will actually introduce the technology in the iPhone. It could be the next model, due this summer, or next year’s, they said.
However, Apple is working out the kinks in an ambitious remote computing system — and a key component utilizes the recently launched Mac App Store.
As we previously reported, Apple is working on a system that allows users to log into another computer using an NFC-equipped iPhone. The iPhone pairs with the host machine, and loads the user’s files and settings over the net. It’s as though the user is sitting at their own machine at home.
These toddlers can barely speak, but they sure can rock an iPad.
Check out the video above. In it, two-year-old Bridger shows his mastery of the iPad. Just watch him swipe his way through the Home screen to find the app he wants.
The videos in this post are just a sample of many toddler videos on YouTube, demonstrating the unbelievable ease two- and three-year olds have mastering the iPad.
Despite widespread controversy over their revised policies, Apple has just gotten one of the biggest names in publishing to agree to play by the new in-app subscription rukes: the New York Times has just announced that they are signing on with Apple’s new subscription plan and give 30% of all revenue to Apple if those subscriptions are signed up for within the New York Times app itself.
They’re also launching a paywall to exclude most non-subscriber access.The three different packages all include access to the New York Times website, and are seemingly priced according to which apps you can use in addition to your web browser.
• New York Times + smartphone app: $15 per month
• New York Times + tablet app: $20 per month
• New York Times full access: $35 per month
That’s over $450 a year for full access. The good news, however, is that the New York Times will continue to offer metered free access to their website, allowing non-subscribers the option to read 20 articles online for free each month, and possibly more if you are referred through Twitter, Facebook, etc.
The New York Times beefing up their iOS apps and offering subscriptions is good news, but we’ll have to see about this paywall. That could, in the long run, be a decision that the New York Times regrets.
A recent analyst downgrade of Apple stock due to concern over potential supply slowdowns prompted one well-known Apple watcher to warn against focusing on the wrong factors. “Calls based on supply-side concerns have led investors astray, but demand for Apple’s products continue to rise,” Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster told investors Thursday morning.
Despite the temporary shutdown of some key component manufacturers due to Japan’s recovery efforts, both steady demand for Apple products and the Cupertino, Calif. firm’s earlier contracts to ensure parts, will lessen any impact. “Which should move share higher,” Munster said.
He noted there will be “component delays for some of Apple’s key products including iPhone 4 and iPad 2 through the June quarter.” Among the potential sticking points: Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co., maker of Bismaleimide Triazine Resin (also known as “BT Resin”) is shutting down production until damage is assessed. Toshiba, which makes 40 percent of NAND flash chips – heavily used by Apple – is also stopping production.
Munster is the latest to refute a Wednesday report by JMP Securities analyst Alex Guana connecting a slowdown at Apple supplier Foxconn with potential supply problems for Apple. The accompanied downgrade – the first since October 2010 – sent Apple stock lower before recovering Thursday morning.
For those of us who woke up at 1AM on March 11th to order our iPad 2s, the last week has mostly been a disappointing one. Although Apple began shipping out some 16GB iPads earlier in the week, it seems like they’re only now getting around to readying beefier iPad 2s like my 32GB 3G model for shipment.
Apple’s holding off on deliveries of initial pre-orders of these units as long as possible. As you can see, my order for an iPad 2 was placed within three minutes of the order page going live, but Apple is only now preparing it for shipment, which will presumably go out later today. That implies that people who ordered a 32GB+ iPad 2 3G shouldn’t expect to see their device until at least Monday.
Meanwhile, my Smart Cover was delivered today, which is like your mail-order bride shipping over her steamer trunk full of frilly underwear and fuzzy handcuffs two months before she boards a plane herself.
My guess is we’re not going to see many other product launches like this from Apple. It appears that even they were surprised by iPad 2 demand, and released the tablet at least a month before they actually had the number of devices produced that they needed for a successful, hassle-free launch. I expect the next iPad launch to go a lot smoother than this one did.
Apple’s supply of iPad 2s is clearly constrained, and it doesn’t look like that’s likely to change anytime soon. In fact, Apple’s ability to build more iPad 2s is expected to become even more constrained as at least two of the company’s core component suppliers in the region have temporarily shut down operations to assess damages caused by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.
The two component suppliers in question appear to be the Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company, who provide resin to Apple for iOS device circuit boards, as well as Toshiba, which provides Apple with its flash supplies.
The end result is it looks like Apple’s going to have an even harder time making new iPads, iPhones and iPod Touch’s for the rest of this quarter, and possibly well into next quarter. If true, that might make the iPhone 5 launch even more problematic and line-crazy than the iPad 2’s was.
There’s bigger difference between the 3G and WiFi versions of the iPad 2 than just their modems. According to iLounge, the iPad 2 WiFi and iPad 2 3G have differences when it comes to microphone quality… with the more expensive iPad 2 3G losing out to the WiFi-only model.
Although the microphone hardware between versions is the same, the mic level quality on the iPad 2 seems to be affected by its slightly different placement. On the WiFi iPad 2, sound quality is better due to the fact that the microphone opening is centered and bored through an aluminum surface; the mic opening on the 3G models, on the other hand, houses the microphone opening in plastic.
The result? The iPad 2 WiFi has cleaner audio through the microphone than the 3G version, which iLounge found to be slightly muffled and echo-prone as a result. It’s not a big deal if you’re willing to pop-in some in-line mic earbuds, but it’s still a difference worth being aware of.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has put pen to paper during his medical leave to write Apple employees in Japan, and if any CEO has ever written a classier and more modest promise of total and complete support to those in the turmoil of a great national tragedy, I’ve yet to read it.
Although we’ve known for some time Amazon will open an Android App Store (a developer site is already available), it wasn’t clear when the service would launch. However, an unintended sneak peak has given rise to speculation the App Store is almost ready to go live.
A German website Wednesday found 50 Android applications listed at an Amazon URL, which quickly disappeared. Among the titles listed were Zenonia, Raging Thunder II, SetCPU, The Moron Test and SwiftKey. Many of the app prices bested Google’s Android Market and some even were exclusive to the Internet bookseller.
