The iPad is already having an effect – real or perceived – on the netbook market. Although one retailer has backtracked on statements that the iPad is cutting into netbook demand, now comes word from manufacturers that they’d rather churn out more profitable tablets.
“The launch of Apple’s iPad has dampened the sales of netbooks, and with prices of netbooks dropping below costs amid decreasing shipments, panel makers would rather transfer their capacities to produce tablet PC panels as producing netbook panels means losing money,” industry publication Digitimes writes Friday.
I like this photo gallery that Apple has put together to plug the power of the iPad as used by archaeologists at Pompeii.
You’d think, looking at the shiny iPads on their smart wooden desks in the Apple Store, that using one inside a muddy pit would be a terrible idea.
But it seems that as long as they’re wrapped in a decent case, they serve as excellent outdoor computers. The lack of moving parts means fewer chances for dirt to get inside, and the lack of keyboard means you can use the muckiest of fingers and still get your data entered without a problem.
Also of interest is the selection of applications used by real archaeologists in the field. FM Touch for mobile Filemaker databases, iDraw and OmniGraffle for sketching out discoveries and charts.
The guy in charge of the dig believes he’s already saved a year’s worth of data entry time. And this quote says it all: “A generation ago computers made it possible for scholars to move away from just looking at pretty pictures on walls and work with massive amounts of information and data. It was a huge leap forward. Using iPad to conduct our excavations is the next one.”
Never letting a good opportunity go to waste, Scoopertino reveals that Steve Jobs’ recent incident at Japan’s Kansai International Airport was actually a field test of Apple’s newest product:
“iPod ninja fits into that sweet spot between the iPod touch and a small handgun,” says Apple spokesperson Ted Wetmore. “It gives you peace of mind. You can either enjoy your music on the device — or you can fling it at anyone who looks at you funny. With a little practice, you can take down a foe at 50 feet.”
However, there is a dark side to the new iPod. As iPod ninja sales boom, some blogs are already reporting a “death grip” problem even worse than the one that plagued iPhone 4. If you hold iPod ninja in a certain way, you may require immediate medical care.
“There is a learning curve,” admits Mr. Berry, “and Apple does recommend the use of a protective case.” [Scoopertino]
Credit card, photo ID and criminal background check required for purchase. This could have the potential to be a real killer product….
Look at this incredible picture from London’s Mail on Sunday showing the massive crowds that line up every morning to buy unlocked iPhone 4s.
The Mail claims the unlocked iPhones are being shipped to Asia and the Middle East, where the iPhone 4 has yet to go on sale. Unlocked handsets can be sold for double their purchase price. At first I thought the picture was from the grand opening of Apple’s new Covent Garden store, which opened recently, but the Mail says the lines are forming every morning:
At 6.50am in Covent Garden security guards stopped people from joining the queue. About 230 were cordoned off behind airport-style barriers waiting for the shop to open.
At 7.30am a manager came out and stood on a chair and said: ‘We have iPhones for you. We will open the store in half an hour. Just be nice. Be orderly.’A cheer broke out as the shop doors opened just before 8am.
The New York Times says the same thing is happening in NYC, but may slack off when the iPhone 4 goes on sale in China on Saturday: Buyers Send iPhones on a Long Relay to China.
CES won’t be around for another few months or so, but there’s already big iPhone news emerging from Las Vegas. Wahoo Fitness, start-up created with the purpose of transforming the iPhone into a serious fitness tool, is introducing their two big “Fisica” products at Interbike, the annual bicycle trade show taking place in the desert for the next few days.
We start off another day of dealing with something new in the spotlight: refurbished iPads. The Apple Store is offering refurbed 16GB, 32GB and 64GB Wi-Fi iPads for $449, $549 and $649, respectively. Apple is also offering a deal on the 160GB Apple TV for $129 – a $60 drop. Finally, there is another chance to get a 2-year iPhone warranty from the folks at SquareTrade. The $89 extended warranty covers spills and drops.
Along the way, we’ll also check out more software and hardware deals for your favorite Apple product. As always, details on these and many more bargains can be found on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Photo by Phil Sexton, used with thanks under CC License
Windows users are accustomed to a “Print Screen” or “PrntScrn” button on their keyboard. When hit, the computer takes a picture of the current screen and saves it to the clipboard, ready for pasting into a graphics program.
So where’s the PrntScrn button on a Mac? How do you take a screenshot?
Vance L from Australia contacted us at [email protected] saying that when he switched from PC to Mac, he spent 10 minutes looking for that button before realising it wasn’t there. But as he found out, there’s another way.
You know me, you know I love my iPhone photography toys. One of my favorites is QuadCamera, which I last mentioned here back in 2009.
The app has undergone a steady series of updates since then, but the latest adds support for both of the iPhone 4’s cameras. Now you can take multi-shot photos of yourself, or of anything you might wish to hold above the iPhone 4 while it’s lying face-up on a table. I decided to spare you the horror of my own unshaven, sleep-deprived, stress-ridden visage in favour of some shots of my MBP, but I’m sure you get the idea. There’s always Flickr.
(If you’ve upgraded to iOS 4.1, make sure you check for and install the very latest QuadCamera update, otherwise you’ll encounter a bug that prevents the app launching.)
Many other photo apps have come and gone, but QuadCamera is one of the small handful that’s remained on my iPhone ever since I bought it. It’s quick and it’s fun, and well worth dropping a couple of bucks on.
If anyone expected Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg to use an investor conference Thursday to spill his guts on whether the carrier will soon be selling the iPhone, they were sorely disappointed. Instead, Seidenberg played his cards close to the vest, not once mentioning the topic on so many tongues: how soon will AT&T’s exclusive arrangement with Apple end.
However, the CEO “said he hopes Apple Inc. will come around and allow Verizon to sell the phone for a new network it’s building,” according to the Associated Press. That 4G network won’t be complete until next year, Seidenberg said. His appearance comes prior to a planned keynote address in January at CES 2011.
Welcome to the Volkspad. What the Volkswagen did for autos, the iPad could do for mass adoption of Apple computers – or so says a keen observer of Cupertino, analyst Gene Munster. “We see the iPad as the Mac for the masses,” the Piper Jaffray analyst told investors Thursday.
The Apple tablet will be “a secondary computing device for those who already have a primary computer, a primary device for those who could not previously afford a Mac, and the first Apple product that will be a success in the enterprise,” Munster writes. The iPad will outsell the Mac in 2011 with 21 million units expecting to ship next year – nearly doubling the analyst’s previous forecast for 14.5 million tablets. With such a rosy picture, little wonder the analyst believes 94 percent of tablets sold this year will carry an Apple label.
Think Geek — those purveyors of gadget accessories you never even knew you needed — are now collecting preorders for this awesomely clever iPhone case with flip-out keyboard.
Although we arch an eyebrow at those who simply can’t get over the lack of physical QWERTY keys on the iPhone, the TK-421case is perhaps one of the more cleverly designed accessories to bring some thumbable texting buttons to Apple’s touchscreen handset that we’ve seen so far. The keyboard flips out from where it is hidden at the bottom of the case, solidly clicking into place and pairing with your iPhone through Bluetooth so that it can be used like a thumbpad to answer texts, respond to emails or type in blog posts.
The Tk-421 comes in two separate models which will both ship in November for $49.99, one for the iPhone 3GS and one for the iPhone 4. If you have a 3G or lower, though, you’re out of luck. As Think Geek notes: “. Yes. We know that the iPhone 3G is the same form factor as the 3GS but unfortunately Apple decided that the 3G was just too slow to add Bluetooth™ keyboard support into the OS… go figure.”
When Steve Jobs first unveiled the new AppleTV on September 1st, he promised the new streaming-only AppleTV would ship in the next four weeks.
It looks like Apple’s going to make its deadline: we’re now hearing reports from our readers and from other sites that people who have preordered the new AppleTV are starting to have their credit cards charged.
Apple usually only starts pushing through credit charges on preorders when they are actually ready to ship out hardware, so it seems pretty obvious that the AppleTV is about to start dropping onto people’s porches fairly imminently.
Any other readers getting payment notification for their preorders… or, even better, shipping confirmation? Let us know in the comments.
If you’re using iTunes and you have a lot of music, it’s not that easy to browse through many hundreds of albums and select one to listen to.
For those of us who still like to listen to entire albums, there are ways to pluck one album at random from your library and get iTunes to play it.
The first is to grab this script from Doug’s AppleScripts. It will do the job perfectly well.
The second, and my new favorite way, is to use the optional Powerpack add-on to Alfred and the “Random Album” command you’ll find there (see screenshot above).
I’m enjoying using this because it’s very quick and simple. Alfred has to create its own iTunes playlist, which gets instantly re-populated with a new album’s worth of tracks every time you activate the command – which, since you’re using Alfred, only takes a couple of keystrokes.
If you need to take the G Train in New York City or pay for a cab you’re jumping uptown, you now have a new way to pay for your ride: with your iPhone.
Visa has just announced that they have inked deals with the New York City subway to let you simply display your iPhone in front of a kiosk or turnstile in select locations as part of a trial of their payWave system.
What’s payWave?It’s essentially just Visa smart chip circuitry that allows you to wave a credit card or payWave-equipped device in front of a cash register, no signature or pin codes required.
Since the iPhone doesn’t have payWave circuity installed by default, if you want to use it with your iPhone, you need to use a specially designed payWave case to graft the functionality onto your handset.
If you’re willing to pick up one of those, though, you can start helping VIsa test out the service Think of the possibilities! While all those other suckers wait in line to recharge their Metro Cards, you’ll be able to breeze past the turnstiles with an Obi-Wan-style wave of your iPhone.
Pretty neat, but eventually, you can probably expect your iPhone to handle this sort of thing natively. Apple’s been doing some hiring and some research into Near Field Communications, and that, more likely than not, means that a few years down the line, you won’t need a special case: your iPhone will be your credit card.
Apple’s new, iOS-driven Apple TV is largely selling itself to consumers as a box that will allow them to stream all of their favorite television shows for 99-cents a pop whenever they want, but that price point is facing some notable resistance from network executives, and may quickly inflate once the device begins shipping at the end of the month.
Although Apple has inked deals with News Corp’s Fox and Walt Disney’s ABC to make shows available for $0.99 when the Apple TV launches, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker does not intend on following suit, claiming that the price point was setting the bar too low.
“We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content. … We thought it would devalue our content,” Zucker said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference.
Though Apple CEO Steve Jobs is still paid only a buck a year for his Cupertino duties, the latest Forbes list of the top 400 wealthiest Americans pegs his worth at $6.1 billion… up a billion dollars from last year.
As usual, most of that wealth does not come from Apple, but rather Jobs’ position as the primary shareholder of the Walt Disney Corporation: his stocks there are valued at roughly $4.4 billion. That fact alone never ceases to amaze me. From a pure income and valuation perspective, Apple is basically Jobs’ hobby. None the less, Apple’s stock has continued to soar over the last year, closing at a record high of $287.55 per share just this Wednesday.
All in all, Jobs managed to claw his way up a spot in the rankings from last year, now coming in as the 42nd richest American and 136th richest man in the world. Rather embarrassingly, however, Jobs was overtaken by several ranks in this year’s list by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Here’s hoping Steve smacks that sweaty, frog-eyed little upstart down the rankings a few dozen spots in the years to come.
More and more, the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines is starting to seem like it might be a promise of the end of arbitrary app rejection. Following the surprise about course by Apple when it comes to allowing Google Voice apps on the App Store, it now appears that they’ve also rescinded their long-standing ban on App Store ringtone makers.
Pretty much since the App Store’s inception, applications that allowed users to make ringtones from the songs on their iPhone have been verboten. Exactly “why” has always been up for debate: although Apple did sell ringtones through iTunes, they clearly didn’t mind users rolling their own, as evidenced by GarageBand’s Export Ringtone feature. Whatever the reason, though, it was plenty hard to sneak a ringtone maker by Apple up until recently. Since the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines, though, no less than five ringtone makers have gone live on iTunes… seemingly ending the arbitrary blacklisting.
The iPad has made the consumption of digital media revolutionary and it is getting increasingly more useful for creating content. So today content creation took a small step forward with the release of updates to Apple’s iWork suite of apps: Keynote, Numbers and Pages.
The apps have been updated to provide better support for Microsoft Office when exporting to Excel (.xls) or Powerpoint (.ppt) and Apple has included a number of improvements in these app updates.
With the latest Keynote, Pages and Numbers for iPad, you can now transfer your documents directly to and from your MobileMe iDisk so you can work on them anywhere you have an Internet connection. For example, create a new Pages document on your iPad and copy it directly to your iDisk. Then, when you are back at your Mac, open the document from iDisk and continue editing right where you left off.
Welcome changes to apps that I’ve found useful while on the go. If you haven’t tried them yet they are worth a look, but don’t expect them to replace their desktop counterparts. If you need to take them for a test drive stop by any Apple store for a peek, since according to the local store that I called, the iWork iPad apps are installed on all iPads on display.
Click the read link below to see Apple’s complete list of changes made to the apps.
The iPod Click Wheel’s days seem numbered at Apple. With the iPod nano having abandoned tactile functionality for a touchscreen (and iWatch emulation), and the iPod shuffle never having earned the honor, only the iPod Classic (itself a senior citizen) now sports the versatile, groundbreaking interface.
Many a jogger, commuter or pocket-iPod user has spent countless hours twirling the Click Wheel dial and listening to music – not to mention playing Brickles!
Or sometimes, you make music with the Click Wheel. As nostalgically shown by Matt and Keith over at Matt’s Macintosh (who clearly seems to be enjoying his Final Cut Pro workstation)!
What’s that you say? Not enough work stress in your life? We’ve got something that’ll ramp it right up, courtesy of Dutch graphic designer/cartoonist Metin Seven: a half-foot, 3D-printed bust of a glowering Steve Jobs. Try positioning it on your desk facing you, somewhere off in your peripheral vision, for maximum effect.
Steve can be ordered from cutting-edge craft-site Shapeways for $116.81 in a color option described as “white strong & flexible.” Obviously.
The popular question-answering search engine Ask is due to submit their official iPhone application to Apple, which is designed to answer your questions on the go.
The app will let you ask questions either by typing them in, or by speaking them, and then offers up the most likely answer based on its index of more than 500 million question and answer ‘pairs,’ from hundreds of thousands of web sources.
On downloading the application, users will automatically be enrolled in Ask’s social Q&A private beta, which allows you to approach the Ask.com community for answers to more complex questions.
One of its most interesting features, however, won’t be introduced until version 2. It’s called ‘Nearby Answers,’ and uses your location to allow you to ask questions about places nearby. For example, you can ask a question about your local theater or restaurant, and your question will be routed to people nearby, or people have answered similar questions about those places in the past.
Also planned to feature before the end of the year is the ability to ask questions of your friends on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
It certainly sounds like a fantastic application, and I can’t wait to see how it works. We’ll be sure to let you know when it’s available for download.
We start off the last day of Summer with three deals in the spotlight: a Core i7 iMac with 27-inch screen running at 2.93GHz with 8GB of memory for $2,278. A Core i7 MacBook Pro running at 2.66GHz with a 15-inch screen and 8GB memory for $2,587. Finally, this is the last day for the MacUpdate Pro 2010 software bundle.
Along the way, we’ll also check out other bargains, including a number of refurbished iPods, starting at $37 for a 2GB shuffle. As always, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Fuse Box, the company behind some of the best collaboration tools on the Internet, announced this week the arrival of Fuze Meeting, the first web conferencing service that allows users to run a meeting from an iPad. Dubbed ‘meetings in a pinch,’ the Fuze Meeting app (iTunes link) supports Keynote presentations on and off the iPad, content uploads from third party apps such as Dropbox and SuharySync, and full duplex in-app VoIP so users don’t even need headphones to join a meeting.
Some of the cooler features supported by the app include support for HD video content and Fuze Box’s iPoint™ Laser Technology that transforms a user’s finger into a digital laser pointer, viewable by all meeting participants. Cloud storage enables users to pull any document or file directly from the server and also add content from the iPad straight into a meeting, then store it on the cloud for later. Both hosts and attendees can share, control, and present content from their iPad.
Chat integration with AIM, Yahoo, Google, OCS and others allows users to see who is online and bring them into a meeting from wherever they are and in-app account creation lets users meet exclusively from the iPad without ever booting up a desktop PC –- making the app a truly mobile solution.
Users who download the app before October 15 can use an upgraded version of the app free for 30 days, after which, accounts will convert to the always free lite account.
iBooks and games may be currently popular apps for the iPad, but if Apple’s latest game-changing device is going to have real legs it will one day have to be seen as a productivity tool. And productivity means business. The success of Fuze Meeting should be a good indicator of iPad’s potential value in the academic and enterprise spaces.
Adobe will only begrudgingly admit Apple’s recent decision to allow the graphics format back into the iPhone development toolbox was helpful. Talking to analysts, Adobe’s CEO said only the impact of Apple’s relaxed standards “was muted.” The comment, while mild, could be the first steps toward detente between the media tools maker and the creator of some of the most-used media platforms.
Following a decision earlier this month to resume working on its Flash CS5 Compiler for the iOS platform, “a number of people who had created products using our tool submitted that to the Apple Store and were approved,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said.
