Apple Introduces The iPad, Available in 60 Days
January 28, 2010 by Rob
Filed under Apple, News, Tips and How-To's
Apple’s Steve Jobs introduced the world to their latest creation during their “Latest Creation” event in California. “We call it the iPad,” said Steve Jobs. The iPad, is essentially a huge iPod Touch since it runs the iPhone OS and runs apps from the App Store. It is also the first device to use Apple’s own CPU for processing.
The iPad, which is meant to fit between the iPhone/iPod and the Macbook product lines, bridges the gap and provides consumers with one more mobile choice for Internet in the Apple mobile products lineup. Referred to as “magical” many times by Jobs during his keynote, the iPad is getting mixed reviews by many critiques - ourselves included.
The iPad, Apple’s latest creation, has several things going for it however, unfortunately it also has a few strikes against it. If you look at it for what it really is, it’s just an iPod Touch with a 9.7″ screen. However, that 9.7″ screen is said to be beautiful and will definitely enhance your online experience significantly. Since the iPad is based on the same OS as the iPhone/iPod it’s easy to land at that conclusion. Since the iPad is based on the iPhone OS, it will immediately have access to the 140,000 applications in the iTunes App Store.
Along with the iPad Jobs introduced iBooks - a direct competitor to Amazon’s Kindle. The introduction of iBooks means that Apple is officially entering into the ebook business. Much like iTunes or the App Store, iBooks will allow users to purchase and 
download ebooks directly to their iPad. Apple even announced partnerships with about five major book publishers and ebooks are said to cost $12.99 or $14.99 each. Whether the iPad will make a good ebook reader still remains to be seen, but if Apple does this part right it will revolutionize the publishing industry. iBooks is said to bring a near-real experience to the reader as they read and turn pages.
The iPad does have a few pretty big let-downs. For those that have not been following, the iPad is said to not support multi-tasking. So no, you will not be able to listen to Pandora while doing your email or browsing the web. Like the iPod Touch, only one application will run at any given time, with the exception of the iPod music function, email retrievals and notifications. The lack of multi-tasking confuses many in the blog world, ourselves included. For a device that competes head to head with netbooks and is a product bridge between the iPod and a Macbook, some are saying that the lack of multi-tasking in inexcusable. Who knows, maybe one day they will add it.
The iPad also lacks Flash capabilities, just like the iPod and iPhone. Once again, for a device that’s intending to give you the full internet experience on a larger screen, the lack of Flash seems to fly in the face of that vision. Another complain the we have is that there is no onboard SD card slot and no USB host (no USB ports for that matter). The omission of these is, in our eyes, rather laughable and will definitely turn many buyers away. However, to combat this, Apple will offer a “camera connection kit” that will convert the 30 pin dock connector to either and SD card reader or a USB host - for cameras only. So now you will need to unplug your charging cable, or the optional hardware keyboard in order to plug in you SD card reader or camera to pull pics in from. Ouch.
Despite what we believe to be major drawback the device does have it’s appeal and there’s not doubt in our mind that with a $499.99 starting price these things will be flying off the shelves. That’s right, starting price is $499.99 for the 16GB version, $599.99 for the 32GB version and $699.99 for the 64GB version. Add $130 to each of those to add in 3G capability (AT&T) then $14.99 per month for 250mb of data or $29.99 per month for unlimited. Not bad for 3G data pricing indeed.
Apple: App Downloads Top 3 Billion
January 7, 2010 by Rob
Filed under Apple, News, Tips and How-To's
It seems like only yesterday when we were reporting that 2 billion apps had been downloaded and now we’re already at 3. Apple announced that worldwide app downloads for their popular iPhone and iPod Touch has surpassed 3 billion. “Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months—this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. See the full release below, or here.
Apple’s App Store Downloads Top Three Billion
CUPERTINO, California—January 5, 2010—Apple® today announced that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store by iPhone® and iPod touch® users worldwide.
“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months—this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”
iPhone and iPod touch customers in 77 countries worldwide can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.
Preparing for a new iPhone or iPod Touch
December 21, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Apple, News, Tips and How-To's
Christmas is just a few days away and without a doubt, i-gadgets will be popular gifts under the tree this year. So, what can you do in advance if you are expecting a certain Apple product? Well, we’ve come up with a few pointers below:
- If you are not yet using it, install Apple iTunes. While there are other ways to get music, movies and apps on your new i-gadget, iTunes is the only Apple approved way. We’ve found that using other third party tools to manage your i-device can be difficult simply because it is not supported by Apple.
- Once iTunes is installed, import your music and movie collections. Easy enough: File -> Add to Library. Or just drag and drop your media onto iTunes.
- Now that you have iTunes installed you must convert all of your unsupported media files to a format supported by your new i-device. What? Unsupported media files? Yes. If you are new to Apple products, then prepare yourself for many hours of media conversion, especially if you are coming from a Microsoft device. iPods and iPhones do not support Microsoft’s Windows Media formats (WMA/WMV), nor does it support many other open source formats (like ogg). So if you have a lot of music in these unsupported formats, it’s time to start converting. Here’s the audio formats supported by the current iPhone: AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV. For video supported formats, see here. I’ll followup with another post on how to convert your media since it is beyond the scope of this post.
- Planning to install apps onto that new i-device? Or purchase music or movies from iTunes? You’ll need an iTunes account for that. Now that you have iTunes installed, click on the iTunes Store on the left, then click on the Sign In button on the top right. Click create new account. Follow the directions. If you don’t have a credit card you can setup your account without one. This is a bit more tricky. To setup an iTunes account without a credit card you must first have a redeemable iTunes code (gift card, app code or other redeemable code). Click Redeem within iTunes, then enter the code, click done, then setup new account. You cannot setup an iTunes Store account without a credit card unless you have a redeemable code first.
- Plan your app purchases. One of the biggest successes of the iPhone and iPod Touch is the App Store, so undoubtedly you will spend a lot of time shopping for the perfect app. Since the App Store now has more than 100,000 apps in it, finding those perfect apps is a chore, so start now. We recommend using the top app lists on iTunes.
- Contacts. If you’re migrating from another phone to an iPhone you’ll want to bring your contacts with you. iTunes will sync your Address Book from your Mac or Windows computer with your i-device. However, most people do no use the Address Book to store this information. Well, now’s a good time to start! Your new iPhone also has the ability to “import contacts from SIM.” However, since all iPhones come with a new SIM and you MUST use this new SIM, using this feature is rather difficult and not always reliable. So for this, we recommend you start entering your contacts into Outlook or Address Book.
- Parental Controls. Giving an i-device to a kid? Worried about what they can do with it? No problem, we covered this in an earlier post discussing Parental Controls.
If there’s any pointers we’ve missed, please let us know in the comments and we’ll get them added!
App Store Reaches 100,000 apps - Apple
November 5, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Apple, News, Tips and How-To's
There’s been various reports floating around out there for the past week that the app store has reached the 100,000 app count and today, Apple made it official:
Apple Announces Over 100,000 Apps Now Available on the App Store
CUPERTINO, California—November 4, 2009—Apple® today announced that developers have created over 100,000 apps for the revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. iPhone® and iPod touch® customers in 77 countries can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel. App Store users have downloaded well over two billion apps, continuing to make it the world’s most popular applications store.
“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”
“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile. “With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”
“With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule. “The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.”
Apple continues to improve search and discovery with new features including Genius for Apps, App Store Essentials selections, sub category listings and more valuable customer reviews. With the recently introduced iTunes® 9, it’s also now easier than ever to organize and sync your apps right in iTunes and they will automatically appear on your iPhone or iPod touch with the same layout.
The release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer made over 100 new features available to iPhone and iPod touch users including Cut, Copy and Paste; MMS; landscape view for Mail, Text and Notes; stereo Bluetooth; shake to shuffle; parental controls; automatic login at Wi-Fi hot spots and Push Notifications. These new features have been incredibly popular with customers and there have already been more than two billion Push Notifications sent to apps available from the App Store. Additionally, the recently introduced In App Purchase feature for free apps means leading developers will now be able to offer customers the choice of buying content, subscriptions and digital services from directly inside their apps.
