Walmart may offer Apple’s iPad later this year as part of newly-expanded electronics sales. While the move could boost sales of the tablet device, talk of the world’s largest retailer spotlighting the iPad comes amid concerns Apple already is having trouble staying ahead of demand.
“We anticipate being able to have the iPad later this year,” Gary Stevenson, Walmart U.S. vice-president of entertainment, told Bloomberg. Although retail giant Best Buy already offers the device, Apple officially has yet to announce any retail partners for the iPad.
Apple’s latest iPad ad, “What is iPad?” is a cheery nod to Apple’s classic “What is Newton?” ad, although I prefer the latter commercial’s droll, humorous tone. Still, when Apple says, “You already know how to use iPad” and then earnestly claims a new revolution has begun, it’s hard not to get a few chills down your spine.
I didn’t think anything could make me happier than Netflix coming to the iPad and soon iPhone, but I was wrong.
It’s just a mere mention, and there’s no promises or commitments, but Boxee has hinted at eventual expansion into Apple’s mobile universe. In Boxee’s post about payment system provider Vindicia, they mentioned their plans to move to the mobile platform:
Vindicia’s flexibility also makes it possible for us to enable payments on our website and across mobile platforms like the iPhone, Android and iPad. Boxee’s eventual expansion to these platforms will pave the way for universally accessible content no matter where a user is (we love this idea!).
This week a tip for Firefox power users. In addition to the Preferences accessible via the menubar, Firefox retains a comprehensive set of hidden settings that go back to it’s roots in the Netscape era.
Of course you are presented with an initial Caveat Emptor about the stability of your system and all that, but you’ve already jailbroken your iPhone and iPad (right?) so go ahead and dive right in…
Last year, we were pretty impressed by UpNext’s 3D mapping app for the iPhone, which rendered landmarks like the Empire State Building in 3D — which is, of course, cool; but it was only available for NYC, there was no iPad version (because there was no iPad — wow) and it cost a whopping $3.
Now, UpNext 3D Cities has a new name and is available for a bunch of new cities (San Francisco, Boston, DC and Austin, home of SXSW), it’s been tweaked to play well on the iPad and its price has been reduced by $3 — yes, it’s free.
But the pretty, 3D-rendered buildings are just icing on the cake — check out the cool way the app graphically illustrates where to find Asian restaurants through a sorta infrared-vision trick toward the end of the above clip, or the way it overlays public transportation routes. And if that’s not enough, they’ve added the ability to see what’s trending and where your friends be at in Foursquare.
We start off with another deal on Apple’s newly-refreshed line of MacBook Pros. This deal spotlights a 27-inch iMac sporting Intel’s i7 processor running at 2.8GHz. ExperCom also added 8GB of RAM and AppleCare, all for $2,379. Also on tap: a new batch of iPhones, including an 8GB iPhone 3G for $49. Finally, a day of dealing wouldn’t be complete with the latest round of freebies from the App Store, including “KapselRacer,” billed as a bottlecap racing game.
As usual, we also have a number of other items, including new iPod speakers, the latest deals on iTunes albums and more. Details on these and many more bargains are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.
When you have deep pockets, you’re likely to be the target of lawsuits. That maxim has never been more true than with Apple. A week after Nokia again sued the Cupertino, Calif. company, a graphics display outfit in Washington State has sued Apple, claiming the iPhone infringes its patents on scaling web graphics to mobile devices.
Patent No. 7461353, entitled “Scalable Display of Internet Content on Mobile Devices,” mentions many iPhone-centric features, including manipulating the size of on-screen graphics. “Mobile devices enabled to support resolution-independent scalable display of internet (Web) content to allow Web pages to be scaled (zoomed) and panned for better viewing on smaller screen sizes.”
A new iPhone app promises to help combat that up-all-night, zombie-by-day havoc jet lag brings.
Jet Lag Fighter, $1.99 on iTunes for the iPhone and iPod Touch, gives you a bunch of tools to shorten your next woozy flight hangover. (We have promo codes to give away, check our Twitter account for details).
The app offers two main strategies to attack jet lag: either sleep adjustment (getting you on schedule for the new time zone before you leave) or light therapy (telling you optimal times get out in the sunshine to lessen the lag time).
During the flight, the also app calculates ideal nap times and lengths; if there’s no light available when you need it or you skip a sleep session, the app adjusts your recovery schedule accordingly.
Verizon and Google are reportedly working together on a tablet device designed to rival Apple’s iPad. Although few details were provided, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam told the Wall Street Journal the device would leverage Google’s large library of content.
“We’re looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience,” McAdam told the newspaper. While Google’s Android was not mentioned, Verizon has heavily used the cell phone operating system to compete with Apple’s iPhone. In a similar vein, the Verizon executive admitted the carrier is behind rival AT&T in providing U.S. 3G coverage for the iPad, but said his company will have the majority of its 4G network up by the end of 2010.
McAdams also embraced the concept of tiered-pricing, where heavier users pay more. “The old model of one price plan per device is going to fall away,” he told the paper. AT&T currently offers unlimited data plans for the iPad.
The CEO’s comments come amid speculation Verizon’s CDMA network could gain access to a new iPhone later this year. Verizon’s long-time advertising company reportedly is developing a campaign possibly in preparation of the release of Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone.
A stress test on the iPad. Photo courtesy James Stevenson, Virtual Aviation.
Virtual Aviation, which runs full-motion flight simulators in the UK, is using iPads as high-tech teacher’s assistants to train pilots.
Instead of instructors lugging around heavy cases filled with maps, charts, manuals, weather reports, flight plans and checklists every time they go into the simulator — they use iPads instead.
Using the iPad leaves busy instructors with an almost hands-free way to show would-be Airbus and Boeing pilots the ropes at Heathrow and Gatwick.
If you’re on the look out for a high quality and great performing compact digicam that plays nice with iPhoto, Canon’s new IXUS 300HS looks about as good as it gets.
Even though the iPad will go on sale in Canada at the end of the month (May 28), our friends north of the border are buying them by the boatload on the grey market.
It’s not hard to smuggle an iPad across the border, but Canadians have to jump through a couple of hoops to download apps from the U.S. App Store.
HyperMac already has a great range of MacBook battery juicers which can power your Apple laptop for up to 34 hours through an adapter attached to your default Apple power brick, but now they are getting into the iPad game with a range of batteries featuring 10 Watt USB ports that can power your tablet for more than four days.
Buy the most expensive HyperMac — a four-and-a-half pound, 222 watt hour monster battery costing $500 — and you’ll get up to 99 extra hours of battery life from your iPad. Of course, that battery costs about as much as the iPad itself, but for just $169 $200, you can get a smaller 60 watt hour battery that will still keep you going for another 34 hours.
Most people who purchased an iPhone 3Gs at launch were due for upgrade eligibility this November 21st, but now AT&T is pushing that date up to June 21st, 2010. Since Jobs is likely to formally announced the new iPhone at WWDC at the beginning of June, AT&T’s revised upgrade eligibility date seems like a pretty good bet for the next-gen iPhone’s official release date.
If Verizon is getting a CDMA iPhone in September, AT&T trying to get as many people to extend their contracts in the three month window after the new iPhone’s June release makes a lot of sense. They want to lock in as many existing customers as possible, before their subscribers actually have a choice. If you’re sick of AT&T’s lackluster service, you might well want to wait on taking them up on their “generous” offer to upgrade you early.
Swallow a mouthful of salt before you believe this one, but John Biggs over at Crunchgear is reporting a doozy of a rumor today: Verizon will be getting the fourth generation iPhone at the end of the summer.
According to Crunch’s tipster, advertising firm Landor Associates is working on a branding campaign for Verizon for the launch of the upcoming iPhone. Landor and Verizon have been working together since 2007, and since they primarily work in branding, whatever they’re working on is not another of Verizon’s anti-iPhone ad campaigns.
If true, this is huge news for American iPhone owners, who might finally be able to abandon AT&T for Verizon, a far more reliable (although not quite as fast) provider. Still, let’s not get our hopes up until Steve Jobs hits the stage and holds up a new, CDMA handset. We’ve all been burned too many times on this Verizon rumor before.
Apple just can’t seem to keep its hands on a prototype these days. Less than a month after Gizmodo released the first full teardown of the fourth generation iPhone, new teardown pictures of a different handset have been posted to Vietnamese forum Taoviet (link includes breakdown images, which are also mirrored at MacRumors)
The NPD claims that Android is outselling the iPhone and commands seven percent more of the US smartphone market than Apple, but now Cupertino, in a rare response, is saying “Not so fast.”
So you’re busy chugging away on your computer, downloading loads of video as you do, and suddenly there’s a problem. Your computer says it’s running out of disk space. WTF?
The sad truth is that as fast as hard disk capacity increases, we come up with new ways to fill up our hard disks with digital stuff. Video, in particular, swallows up huge amounts of disk in the blink of an eye. How do you keep track of the state of your hard disk? GrandPerspective is one way to do it.
You know, even if you’re a naysayer, you have to admit: Apple data makes for some of the most compelling infographics around, and this infographic from Mashable explaining the rise of Apple as the hegemon of the digital music industry is one of the best we’ve ever seen. Well, at least, one of the best we’ve ever seen that doesn’t involve Mega Sharks.
One thing a lot of Windows users miss is the Start Menu. How do you find your way around a Mac without a Start Menu to help?
If you stop to think about it, the Start button is a visual aide-memoire; you click on it to start the process of figuring out where to go next. If you’re looking for a particular file, you can navigate to it using the default locations listed in it. And if you want to open a particular piece of software, the likelihood is that you’ll find it there too. The Start button is there for you to click on when you don’t know where else to begin. No matter what you want, you can find it (eventually) from the Start button.
Unfortunately for switchers, Mac OS X doesn’t really have a single button that completely replaces Start. But I can suggest a couple of alternatives.
Veteran pop artist David Hockney, who has been fingerpainting daily on his iPhone, has now started sketching on an iPad.
It seems he may be ready to ditch the phone for the digital sketch pad:
“The iPad is far more subtle, in fact it really is like a drawing pad. They will sell by the million,” Hockney told The Standard. “It can be anything you want it to be. This is the nearest we have got to seeing what I would call a universal machine.
Hockney, 72, has been using Apple devices to create art since 2009, favoring the Brushes app, which is what he uses on the iPad, too.
“What makes the iPad better than the iPhone is its larger size. The iPhone was more about the relationship between the hand and the ear whereas this is all about the hand and the eye and makes for far better co-ordination.”
We’ve done a fewstories on iPhone art, if you’re ready to trade the iPhone for the iPad — or not — we’d like to hear from you.
We start out with another deal on iPod touch – an 8GB iPod touch kit from Walmart. Also on tap are a 24-inch Cinema HD Widescreen LED display and the latest App Store price drops, including “Spike’s Deadliest Warrior: Defend and Conquer” game.
As always, details on these and many other Mac-related bargains are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page, which starts right after this jump.
Steve Jobs at the 2010 Academy Awards. CC-licensed photo: Zadi Diaz via Flickr.
One year after his liver transplant, Steve Jobs is back to his old self. While he still struggles with low weight as a result of health issues, insiders and analysts say he’s “invigorated,” and “fully operational” partially as a result of the iPad launch.
“Except for the fact that he’s lost a lot of weight, he’s the Steve Jobs of old,” said Tim Bajarin, who has followed Apple for more than two decades as founder of technology consulting firm Creative Strategies in Campbell, California told Bloomberg.
“At the visionary level, technology and design level, he seems to be working at the same level as he was before he was sick. If I was an investor, I’d be thrilled.”
Analysts say the MacBook Pro refresh boosted sales 20 percent.
The recent update of Apple’s line of MacBook Pro computers will help the Cupertino, Calif. computer maker have its third consecutive 20 percent gain in quarterly Mac sales, an analyst told investors Tuesday.
“Mac momentum is strong, helped by a recent significant refresh of the MacBook Pro to new Intel Arrandale processors,” Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros. wrote. Along with a better price, Wu cited “an industry best 8-10 hours of battery life.”
AT&T may not be too concerned about chatter Verizon could be added to the list of U.S. carriers offering Apple’s iPhone. The Dallas-based carrier may have an insurance policy of sorts in the form of a deal with Apple hammered out in 2007, making AT&T the sole U.S. iPhone carrier through 2012, according to a report by Engadget.
Although much of an antimonopoly lawsuit against AT&T and Apple remains sealed, the gadget blog uncovered testimony from the Cupertino, Calif. company agreeing with a 2007 USA Today report saying the consumer device giant and carrier had signed a five-year exclusivity arrangement amid the unveiling of the first iPhone. Verizon, now in the news as a potential addition to AT&T, rejected the original deal, according to the newspaper.
