Ever wish someone could invent an app that would let you picture ketchup on your iPhone and douse the real thing from your smart phone on to your fries?
That’s the kind of whimsical hyper-reality Israeli pop band Izabo gets in their latest video for a catchy ditty called “On My Way.” Yeah, OK, so it may be awhile before iPhone augmented reality means you can shave with a razor pictured on your device, but the effect is clever.
CoM talked to video director Shushu Spanier about surprisingly uncoordinated musicians, borrowed iPhones and non-Mac equipment.
Apple’s no stranger to slurping up privately-held chipmakers. After all, their 2007 acquisition of PA Semi led to the iPad’s blindingly fast A4 CPU, and Cupertino’s going to need to stay on the cusp of mobile chip development if it wants to keep the iPad and iPhone competitive over the course of the next few years.
In light of all that, the latest rumor being reported by TUAW about Apple’s acquisition of chipmaker Intrinsity has the ring of likelihood (if not necessarily truth) about it. After all, Intrinsity is the company that helped design the Samsung Cortex A8 core, one of the fastest mobile processors there is and one of the few that competes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon.
If Apple wants to keep their mobile phones on the bleeding edge, an investment in Intrinsity makes a lot of sense. I guess we’ll just have to see what Thursday’s press conference has in store.
Apple is notorious about low-balling its revenue guidance, setting up Wall Street for numbers that blow the doors off resulting expectations; has it done something similar about its iPad sales figures for the opening day? While some analysts had egg on their face over exuberant sales predictions, one voice Monday raised some interesting questions about Apple’s announcement of 300,000 iPads sold April 3.
Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair told investors Apple’s figure does not include any orders for 3G iPads ordered. Although orders are being accepted, the 3G units won’t be landing on consumers’ doorsteps until later this month.
Another curious omission: A week of pre-sales which happened after Apple announced online orders would be delivered April 12, rather than April 3.
Finally, Apple’s 300,000 number counts only Saturday. Although the Easter weekend closed some retailers, not every store was shuttered. Plus, what about Monday, when the U.S. retail engine returned to full power, Blair asked. The real figure for iPad sales to date is more like 600,000, the analyst said.
So, in effect, Apple’s 300,000 iPad sales figure marks a day when people are more interested in chocolate bunnies and travelling than standing in lines; the figure doesn’t include a week of online sales nor sales of 3G iPads. Did Apple’s publicity machine work too well and drive the hype so high that Cupertino had to find a way to lower expectations?
It’s a small change, but a nice one: Apple has just modified the App Store to make it easier to browse for iPhone and iPad apps, and distinguish universal binaries from iPhone-only apps.
It’s a simple change. Previously, iPhone and iPad apps were combined on one page, with only the Top Charts section offering the option between switching between iPhone and iPad view.
Now if you go to the App Store in iTunes, you’ll now see a couple of small tabs at the top of the page that allow you to switch between iPhone and iPad app browsing. Universal binaries will be listed under both headings, but non-universal apps will be exclusively listed under the iPhone heading… pixel doubling just does not an iPad app make.
One of these days, some fraudulent soothsayer’s bound to be right, but until then, it’s just as much our obligation to report the rumors of an imminent MacBook refresh as it is yours to digest them with a nice, healthy lick of salt.
According to Taiwanese newspaper Apple Daily, a refresh of Apple’s MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models incorporating Intel’s new Core i3, i5 and i7 mobile processors is due later this month.
Other spec bumps include maximum hard drive configurations of 640GB and 8-hour battery life expectations across the board.
With every new Apple product comes a fresh wave of exploitative eBay entrepreneurism, but this auction offering to hand-deliver a 64GB iPad anywhere in the world is a bold attempt at a free first-class vacation by some earnest young huckster. Unfortunately, I think the only country in the world meriting a $9,301 round-trip airplane ticket is North Korea, and I’m not sure I’d personally want to be the guy telling that country’s strange, sociopathic space baby of a leader that the iPad doesn’t do video conferencing or Flash.
The iPad’s display may be gorgeous, but if you’re going to read outdoors, you’ll probably want an e-ink reader: if your retinas don’t pucker into singularities from rays of direct sunlight bouncing off of the glass fdisplay, your iPad might still melt into a toxic soup and pour through your fingers.
Well… okay. We cop to the hyperbolic here, but exaggeration aside, the iPad has some significant overheating issues if widespread overheating issues.
Perhaps the problem is best summarized by PC Magazine’s Zach Honig, who posted this image on Twitter… the end result of using his iPad for ten minutes in direct sunlight on a 70 degree day in New York City. He had to pop his iPad in the fridge to get it running again.
One of the most exciting things about Apple’s overall shift to touchscreen technology in the last few years is that it allows the iPhone and the iPad to replace much more expensive custom solutions for niche markets. Contrary to what you might have heard, these are actually democratizing forces.
Robert Rummel-Hudson is semi-famous on the Internet as the father of Schuyler, a girl born with BPP, a rare brain malformity that can cause all kinds of developmental problems. For Schuyler, most of the impact has been on her speech — she really can’t. She can, however, use a touchscreen device to select from lists of words to talk for her, what’s known as augmentive/alternative communication.
These devices are amazing — and very expensive. Under the hood, they’re basically like an iPad but with a lot less horsepower. And, crucially, only children with disabilities carry them. Imagine replacing a medical or therapeutic device with the coolest gadget on the planet — at a lower price. If these many custom hardware solutions are replaced by apps, children like Schuyler won’t be regarded as weird, they’ll be regarded as cool. Rob is calling on PRC, the developer of Unity, the program she uses to communicate, to make a high-priced but life-changing app for iPad. We second that request.
By having an iPad, you now have the internet in your hands (and probably on your couch), at least according to Steve Jobs. But are you wishing you had a bookmarks bar like in regular Safari? After reading this quick guide you soon will.
We knew it was coming — we just had no idea it’d be here so quickly. Yes, iPhone OS 4.0 will be revealed to the world at a press event this Thursday, at 10 a.m. Pacific, according to our friends over at Gizmodo — and every other tech blog under the sun.
Andrea Nepori, head honcho at Italian-based TheAppleLounge.com, has alerted us to the fact that maybe Steve Jobs doesn’t have anything to wear.
Check out the worn-out pants and forlorn sneakers in the photo of Jobs, left, at Apple’s Stockton Street Palo Alto store in San Francisco on the iPad’s launch day; now sadly note the same fashion choices in the photo on the right, of El Jobso and Google CEO Eric Schmidt kicking back in Palo Alto, taken a week earlier.
So buy an iPad, and maybe Jobs can afford to pop for some new togs. Seriously, before The Gap starts marketing a replica version of his jeans called the iHole. Because we all know where his critics would take that one.
[Thanks to Andrea Nepori for the photo-illustration.]
With the big news that Apple lifted restrictions on 3G VoIP calls in February and rumors that Skype might allow such calls in the near future, it’s no wonder that splashes from the opening salvos in the VoIP app wars can be seen around the App Store.
The latest combatant to enter the arena is Goober, who launched their iPhone app about two weeks ago (though the service has been around for computers since 2006). And while we’re still waiting for Skype to release a 3G-capable app, Goober’s is already here.
We kick off the first week of the iPad with a number of free iPad apps, including “Dictionary! for iPad.” We also check out a new batch of freebies from the App Store, including “Arcade Hoops Basketball.” We wrap up the top trio of deals with a number of iPod touch devices, starting at $169 for an 8GB model.
Along the way, we check out other Apple software and gear for the Mac fan. As always, details on these and many other bargains are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page which starts right after the jump.
OmniGraffle brings professional diagramming to iPad.
OK, class, weekend playtime is over. Time to get to work. More than 300,000 of you have had fun since Saturday playing games, watching movies and lazing around in bed with the Sunday New York Times on your new iPad. Now it’s Monday morning and the question is: can you justify bringing Apple’s new gadget into the office and putting it to work as a productivity tool?
Well, should your work involve producing graphs, flow charts, schematic designs or anything similar the answer is a resounding yes if you’re hip to the productivity apps from Omni Group.
Although analyst predictions of how many iPads would sell on the first day varied widely from Apple’s own 300,000 figure, we are getting some intriguing insights into why consumers are buying the new tablet device. For Apple, maybe the most comforting bit of data is that the iPad is not a cannibal.
“We believe that Apple has successfully carved out a new category of mobile devices between the smartphone and the laptop,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told investors Monday. That feat was accomplished “apparently without cannibalizing its own iPhone and Mac sales,” he added.
I think you can safely chalk this latest Apple patent won’t come to fruition, but it’s an interesting one the nonce: a MacBook Pro with a built in pico projector in the hinge, perfect for giving presentations on-the-go, or just throwing a movie up on the wall for your friends to watch.
It’s neat, but it’s also way to marginalized a feature to expect any time soon, especially given the relative lameness of pico projectors: Apple might well pull this trick out of their hat one day, but not until they can do it right. What do you think?
As they are wont to do, the fine folks of PC World have dropped, thrown, scratched, smashed, hurled, trounced, boiled, frozen and defenestrated their iPad so you don’t have to. If you want to know just how much punishment your iPad can take, go read their iPad Stress Test.
The takeaway here is never to drop your iPad: according to PC World Senior Editor Tim Moynihan, three or four drops onto a carpeted office floor was enough spiderglass the screen. But at least it’s really scratch resistant… and, apparently, donut-controllable. Hit the full article for all the don’ts.
Okay, maybe Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster should have stuck with his original estimate of 200,000 to 300,000 iPads sold over the weekend. Still, his interviews of iPad buyers revealed some interesting points – such as the number of Kindle owners in line to buy Apple’s new gadget.
Indeed, 58 percent of iPad owners who also have a Kindle, said they’d drop the Amazon e-reader in favor of the new tablet device. Another interesting tidbit from Munster’s survey: 10 percent of those in line Saturday to buy an iPad had considered purchasing a Kindle.
This is what happens when you have one of the most widely anticipated device launches of the year coupled with not enough to go around: someone walks out of the store and. before they can even reach their car, gets their iPad stolen.
In this case, the unlucky victim was Mohamed Aboutaleb of Dover, New Hampshire, who walked out of his local Best Buy with a new iPad only to be accosted by a teenage thief who pushed him to the ground, grabbed his bag and jumped into a getaway car driven by another punk kid… all before he could set up “Find my iPaD” in MobileMe.
Poor guy. We’re tempted to suggest the only safe way to walk around in public with an iPad is by handcuffing it to your wrist, but the consumer frenzy’s high enough with the iPad that that suggestion can only lead to a bloody hacksaw and a spurting stump or two. Better to just hand it over.
Ever since the iPhone’s release, one of the most pervasive criticisms of Apple’s handhelds as dedicated gaming devices have been the device’s lack of analog controls. It’s a criticism that has seemed considerably limper as time goes on and developers have figured out to utilize the iPhone’s touchscreen and accelerometer effectively, but for certain genres like fighting games and twitch shooters, there’s still something be said for the good old d-pad.
Apple announced official iPad sales numbers for Saturday, the first day the much-ballyhooed tablet device was available in stores. More than 300,000 iPads were sold by midnight, April 3, the Cupertino, Calif. company said Monday morning.
“It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world — it’s going to be a game changer,” CEO Steve Jobs declared via a press statement. The number reflect pre-orders, shipments to partners and retail sales. More than 1 million apps were downloaded and 250,000 e-books from the iBookstore were downloaded Saturday, according to the company.
Always plucky, ingenious and defiant, it already looked pretty good that the iPhone OS hacking community would manage a zero day jailbreak… and it looks they they’ve done just that in under 24 hours, courtesy of hacker Musclenerd.
It appears that this jailbreak is using the same “Spirit” technique that Geohot demonstrated working on 3.1.3 last week, strongly implying that iPhone OS 3.2 doesn’t close any of the previous firmware’s exploitable holes.
When can the command-line-disinclined expect an idiot-proof iPad jailbreak? No word yet, although Geohot has said that he’s waiting to release his software until Apple rolls the 3.2 firmware across all devices.
Bummed you missed the iPad launch day festivities? Didn’t want to get up at such an indecent hour to witness the pandemonium? Well take heart Apple brothers and sisters! I woke up much too bright and way too early so I could bring you all fun the launch day had to offer. Why, you’ll feel like you didn’t miss a thing as you weave with me through the HUGE iPad line, talking iPad and giving out some sweet shwag!
I do believe Seattle had one of the largest and most ruckus iPad lines in the world. But hey, you be the judge.
We’re doing a little spring cleaning, and we have a bunch of iPhone Apps to unload. I don’t have enough of each one to make a big giveaway, so I am just going to randomly unload iPhone Apps on our Facebook page throughout the day. Some of them will be iPhone apps that we’ve given away in the past couple of weeks, and others will be apps that didn’t make the cut the first couple of giveaways, but we don’t want them to go to waste! We can’t guarantee that every app code will work, and if it doesn’t just let me know on the Facebook comments, and I’ll help you out.
Here’s what you gotta do to score some of these apps today:
Suggest all of your other Mac friends to our page!
Monitor our Facebook page throughout the day. There will be no rhyme or reason to when I post them, and they will be up for grabs to anyone who can redeem them first. It’s a free-for-all!
We’re currently working on getting some fresh iPhone apps to giveaway and hopefully some iPad apps as well! We may even have a BIG giveaway up our sleeve in the near future, and we’ll give you details on it soon. Hope everyone had a great Easter weekend, now get back to work!
With the release of the iPad, we have yet one more way to access our email. While the look and feel of the Mail app for iPad is good, let’s dig a little deeper into what’s good, what’s bad and what’s ugly (Hint: Gmail and saving messages).
