At Wednesday’s iPad 2 launch event, Steve Jobs described competitors as “flummoxed” to counter the iPad’s success, and he’s right. Almost a year after the iPad’s debut and we’re only starting to see the first of the original iPad’s real Android competition: not the 7-inch tweeners, but actual competition to the iPad’s software and hardware feature set. So what does Apple do? They come along with the iPad 2 and effortlessly cut the legs out from underneath the competition.

Samsung is one of Apple’s biggest suppliers and one of its biggest competitors, especially in the smartphone and tablet space: Samsung’s still unreleased Galaxy Tab 10.1 is one of the few Android tablets that seemed to be competitive in features and hardware with the original iPad. Stress original, though, because in the wake of the iPad 2, Samsung VP Lee Don-Joo has gone on the record as saying that parts of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 are “inadequate” compared to the iPad 2.

Flummoxed is right. Apple’s modus operandi for product revisions is hardly some sort of arcane mystery: they improve the software, make the device thinner and try to eke out some more battery life. How did Samsung — one of Apple’s biggest component suppliers — get caught off guard by the iPad 2?

The answer? They didn’t, of course. They knew what was coming. As a company, though, they just weren’t agile or resourceful enough to head it off.

Apple’s adamant that you should use their FaceTime video chat software over WiFi, and even have some software checks to make sure you’re not trying to pump your pixellated mug out over 3G. It appears, though, that the iPhone 4 isn’t particularly mindful if you’re connect to 3G somewhere down the pipe: if you want to use FaceTime on an iPhone 4 over 3G, it’s just a Personal Hotspot away.

Have you ever wanted to watch a movie from iTunes on your iPhone without actually syncing anything?

With iOS 4.3 and iTunes 10.2, your dreams will come true. iTunes Home Sharing is a new feature of iOS 4.3, which will be released to the public on March 11. It was demonstrated earlier this week at the iPad 2 launch event.

Home Sharing will allow you to easily share your music, videos, and photos to any iOS 4.3 device over your local WiFi network. This eliminates the need for third-party applications or transcoding software.

Here’s how it works:

When reader Liam Dennis updated his Twitter for iPhone app yesterday, it told him that Steve Jobs had registered a Twitter account. He explains:

“It scanned my address book for users I wasn’t following. It only found one. A twitter account linked to [email protected], a contact I had made to send the occasional email to him as we all do.

The [email protected] email address is known, of course, as Steve Jobs’ email address at Apple — the one he uses for his famous one-word responses to customers’ queries.

So has Jobs finally registered a Twitter account?

Hackers are getting faster and faster. Apple released the iOS 4.3 GM to developers earlier today. A few hours later, hackers had figured out a jailbreak for that same release. The same actually went for the iOS 4.3 betas (1 through 3, to be exact).

After the break: how to jailbreak your iOS 4.3 device (Be warned: it’s a bit of work to gather up the required keys and patches to make the jailbreak).

Apple allowed one new iPad 2 accessory to go unmentioned during yesterday’s launch event: the official iPad 2 Dock.

This is what losing looks like: according to sources speaking to Boy Genius Report, Research In Motion is preparing to bring Blackberry Messenger to iOS through the App Store.

BGR says that RIM wants to own the messaging space, and that means being ubiquitous across all platforms. It’s a curious move: BlackBerry Messaging is one of the few reasons people still buy BlackBerry smartphones over an iOS or Android device.

Ceding the messaging advantage to the competition? A curious move to say the least, especially since RIM is supposedly hopeful that their new BlackBerry tablet, the PlayBook, can help them get back some of their sales mojo. Does RIM see its future as being primarily in software over hardware? Are they already ceding victory to Apple and Google?

[via TUAW]

Although not covered in yesterday’s event, Apple has, as rumored, rolled out their new small business support program, Joint Venture. Here’s how Apple describes Joint Venture:

Joint Venture is a program designed to help you use Mac, iPhone, and iPad to improve the way your business runs. We’ll set up your new Apple products, train your employees to get the most out of them, and make sure everything stays working with dedicated support.

Not only will Apple help you setup new systems for your business with software installation and data transfer, they’ll also train your employees on an on-going basis, allowing companies to schedule up to three two-hour training sessions per year for their employees.

Joint Venture will also support your business in times of crisis, offering “unprecedented” access to the Genius Bar as well as telephone consultations, priority access for in-store appointments and even loaner notebooks in the form of MacBook Pros and MacBook Air for while your office machines are in for repair.

A pretty compelling offer, especially for the price: coverage begins at $499 per year for up to five system, with each additional system coverable for $99.

Despite the iPad 2 introduction lacking a lower price, analysts Thursday view the updated tablet as a ‘critical catalyst’ helping Apple maintain its lead in the tablet marketplace.

“We believe the iPad 2 introduction and the June iPhone refresh will serve as critical catalysts in the coming months,” Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope told investors. Although Goldman Sachs had assumed a lower selling price would also be unveiled, the analyst firm still believes Apple will maintain – or even grow – its current lead.

Using nothing but a historic release of Mac mini release dates and Apple’s recent introduction of Thunderbolt, the Three Guys And A Podcast have made a fairly compelling argument that new Mac minis are due soon.

Noting that Mac minis have tended to be released every eight months on average and that the last major update was in summer, the eponymous Three Guys think that Apple will roll out a Mac mini revision replacing the Mini DisplayPort with a Thunderbolt port.

They also theorize that the Mac mini will make the jump to Sandy Bridge along with last month’s MacBook Pros, with the $699 Mac mini getting a 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 processor, and the Mac Mini server getting the Intel Core i7 CPU.

This all seems fairly likely to me, but the interesting part isn’t the specs, it’s the when. The Three Guys speculate that the new Mac mini will be rolling out this month, but honestly, who knows? The average update in the Mac mini line happens eight months apart, but that average is skewed by extremes: a 19 month window between August 2007 and March 2009 where there were no updates, coupled with a microscopic two month gap between updates from July to September 2005.

Sandy Bridge Mac minis are coming, no doubt about that. But I wouldn’t lay any money down on when.