It turns out that his hobby 9to5Mac blog was always his favorite and in 2011 he went full time adding his Fortune Google followers to 9to5Google and adding the style and commerce component 9to5Toys gear and deals site. In 2013, Weintraub bought one of the Tesla’s first Model S EVs off the assembly line and so began his love affair with the Electric Vehicle and green energy which in 2014 turned into electrek.
In 2018, DroneDJ was born to cover the burgeoning world of drones and UAV’s led by China’s DJI.
From 1997-2007, Weintraub was a Global IT director and Web Developer for a number of companies with stints at multimedia and branding agencies in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, Madrid and London before becoming a publisher/blogger.
Seth received a bachelors degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in Multimedia and Creative Technology in 1997. In 2004, he received a Masters from NYU’s Tisch School of the Art’s ITP program.
Hobbies: Weintraub is a licensed single engine private pilot, certified open water scuba diver and spent over a year traveling to 60 cities in 23 countries. Whatever free time exists is now guaranteed to his lovely wife and two amazing sons.
Mr. X. just got word that 4G iPads are showing up in Apple’s inventory system. Here are the first ones:
MD369LL/A – IPAD WI-FI 4G 16GB BLACK – USA.
MD368LL/A – IPAD WI-FI 4G 64GB BLACK – USA
That is the J2A “Good” model and “Best”. We’re fairly certain that Better 32GB is on its way. That means that the 4G LTE iPads won’t only be in the US, but overseas as well. It would seem to also confirm that Apple isn’t making an 8GB iPad (if that needed confirming).
Update: We’re also able to confirm that 64GB is high end. Sadly no 128GB model. Expand Expanding Close
2:25: iPad 2 is staying on sale $100 off the 16GB one: $399, $529 for 3Gs – great for schools.
2:20 iPad video.
2:15 Almost 20 minutes of demo time for iPhoto and still scratching surface. Oh, just $4.99. All of iLife now on iPad.
2:05 Editing pictures in iPhoto from a professional DSLR (Nikon). Weird – no support for Google’s Picasa.
2:00 iPhoto for iPad ” Amazing” great way to browse and edit photos. Multi touch editing, Professional Quality Effects, Brushes, photo beaming, Photo journals.
1:58 – iMovie – new interface, looks like professional tool. And with 1080 camera built right in? iPads are going to be the new Video end to end tool – low end prosumer grade-ish at least.
1:56: New stuff for Garage Band – Smart Strings, Note Editor, iCloud sharing – JAM IN REAL TIME OMG
1:55 iWork Apps with jaw dropping graphics – available today at the app store (great – that helps a lot!)
1:53 “more memory and higher screen resolution than an Xbox 360 or PS3.”
1:51: Epic Games is demoing Dungeons: craft the Infinity Blade. looks pretty nuts. Guess that’s why Infinity Blade went on sale this morning.
1:50: Autodesk (guess Apple’s over that whole two decade Autocad boycott). We’ve had 10 million customers in 29 years. More than that in a year on the iPad.
Sketchbook Ink is new lineart app (watch out Illustrator!) export images greater than 100 megapixels.
1:45 Namco is demoing a Retina Jet fighter app
1:42: Preoders start today and delivered on March 16th in US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia.
1:40 Still has 10 hour battery on Wifi and 9 hours of 4G. Starts at $499. Same prices across the board.
1:35 AT&T and Verizon in US, Rogers, Bell and Telus in Canada. 2 US bands= 2 different LTE iPads.
Personal Hotspot too.
1:33 L to the TE 4G 72MB theoretical
1:30 Voice dictation Siri-ous.
1:29: 5 megapixel camera, 1080P recording. Crazy Apple optics. This will ruin just about every public event in the future.
1:28 Supposedly 4X performance of the just release NVIDIA Quad Core Tegra 3. I suppose there will be some discussion on this front.
1:27: A5X Quad core graphics. Dual core processor. Everyone was right. Or everyone was wrong!
1:26 “we’re allowed to call 264 pixels per inch Retina (a term we made up btw) because you hold it further from your face. Also AppleTV is Retina too.”
1:23 Schiller time! “Retina display” “Stunning” 2048 x 1536 pixels! (iPhone 4 stuff on repeat. Text, graphics – when can I have one?!) 1 million more pixels than 1080P TVs.
1:21: The new “iPad” That’s it. No suffix!
1:20 200K iPAd apps. Talking smack about the competition. Yelp, Twitter look bad on Android.
1:18 Speaking of Gloating, Apple sold more iPads than anyone else sold PCs and GDGT has the graph to prove it
Taking a bit of a break here to gloat that we called the whole AppleTV 1080P thing. For those who waited to buy an AppleTV, you are welcome :D Those that didn’t the 720P ones make great hockey pucks-fyi
1:17 Movie UI also has genius. (hopefully you can turn it off!)
1:15 New user interface looks a lot like Netflix a bit..
1:12 AppleTV 1080P. You don’t say. 9to5mac readers, take your jaw off the ground. iTunes Match support.
1:10: iCloud: zooming past 100 million customers already. Now supports movies
1:09: App store. Virtual cycle: Better apps= mo money= better developers= mo money. 25 billion app downloads, not all of them free.
1:08: Siri is now in Japananese (whoops Siri already told us that!) and in Australia Germany, etc.
1:07: 315 million iOS devices and 62 million just last quarter
1:05: Retail Stores (362 total right now – one for every day of the year -road trip?!), Grand Central. Newest Largest Store in Amsterdam.
Looks like Tim is actually there!
1:00 Tim Cook enters the stage…”Apple is leading the Post-PC revolution…Cloud+iPad, iPhone+ iPod” – 172 million “post-PC” devices were sold last year – 76% of Apple’s revenues.
We’ll be posting news as it happens today. We’re expecting a faster Retina Display iPad with improved cameras as well as an updated AppleTV and maybe a few surprises, particularly in the area of software. Bookmark this page and come back often for updated info.
Some news: We’ve just got the name of the B82 part: Updated Apple Digital AV Adapter (this). Boo. Was hoping for Bluetooth audio remote.
More news: We’ve got 4G LTE “confirmed” for iPad. Also no 128GB or 8 GBiPads, shockingly.
Interestingly, Barack Obama will be speaking about American Energy today in North Carolina – probably not too far from Apple’s solar farm in Maiden.
It will likely look the same as the current Apple TV with similar ports otherwise, though that hasn’t been confirmed.
Also, the new mystery B82 accessory part just got a price as well: $39. We’re still not sure what exactly it is (Dock, A/V cable – currently $39, remote – currently $19, etc.). We’re not expecting anything too spectacular however under $40.
Finally, MacRumors confirms tips that we’ve been hearing today.
Apple appears to be making a similar transition for the iPad with tomorrow’s introduction of the iPad 3, rolling out a $99 AppleCare+ for iPad warranty that would replace the current $79 standard AppleCare package.
AppleCare +, which also covers accidental damage with a $49 deductible, for iPad has shown up on a number of occasions in EasyPay as a $99 option leading our tipsters to believe that it will debut tomorrow.
We’ll be covering all the action tomorrow live, so make sure you stop back.
In the past few hours we’ve seen some significant changes happening at the App Store on iPad which seem to coincide nicely with the launch event tomorrow.
A few hours ago, a few 9to5Mac readers noticed a new top charts that scroll sideways instead of vertically without having to reload every 25. The movement is much more fluid as well. (btw, notice how many kids apps are at the top of the list?)
Additionally, Joaquin Ruiz the CEO of Catalog Spree, a catalog app for the iPad, noticed that today Apple added the Catalogs category to the App Store for the iPad – and added his app to the category (right). ‘Catalogs’ is listed under Lifestyle and is currently empty but with a Retina display on show for tomorrow, it would be surprising not to see a few more catalogs show up.
“The impact of the iPad in the shopping and publication industries has been massive. Many thousands of apps have been added over the last 2 years to address the consumers need to interact with their favorite books, magazines and brands within an iPad optimized experience. Just last week at eTail in Palm Springs, hundreds of retailers gathered to here from thought leaders in the mobile space about how important the iPad is for prospecting, engagement and customer acquisition. Catalog Spree has been the leader in the catalog shopping app space since first launched in late April 2011. Until today (the day before the “iPad 3” launch), Catalog Spree and dozens of other shopping entertainment apps have been categorized in the “Lifestyle” category in the Apple App Store. Today, Apple has added a new top level category called “Catalogs” to the App Store. As of yet, there are no listed apps in that category but we expect that to change tomorrow after Apple’s “iPad 3″ announcement. Adding an app category is not something that Apple does lightly and we believe Apple’s decision reflects the importance of this usecase in the Apple App Store ecosystem.”
Expect there to be some interactive content on display in this area for the event tomorrow. You can find Catalogs category image below:
we’re also told that along with the A5X, the device will have more RAM than its predecessor, and come in a variety of LTE flavors. There have been rumors flying that the iPad 3 would be LTE capable, and we’re told that it will definitely be announced for both the Verizon and AT&T networks tomorrow. To be clear, that would mean two distinct, separate versions of the LTE tablet (one for each network). In addition, there’s a third international model which does double duty on 3G; a CDMA / GSM model using a similar radio chipset to the iPhone 4S (a Qualcomm Gobi chip).
We’ve also gotten unverified tips on more RAM in the new iPad so that makes sense, especially in regard to the increased sizes of Retina files in Apps. However, their information on multiple LTE flavors could be from packaging rather than actual product differentiation. For instance, a Verizon iPhone 4S is the same product as the AT&T iPhone 4S but they are locked to their own network and can’t be interchanged. Same part but two separate packages.
That being said, AT&T and Verizon have two different flavors of LTE so that may require two separate devices.
The Verge mentioned cost and perhaps it makes sense for Apple to continue to offer a non-LTE 3G GSM iPad, saving money, space and battery life in those parts of the world where LTE isn’t going to be deployed this year (like my house in the NYC Suburbs).
In an interview from what appears to be the Fortress of Solitude (OK, Brazil), Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson revealed that he kept what he knew about Apple’s upcoming TV product out of the book because “that was unfair to Apple before they produce the TV…reporting what Steve thought it should be.”
Isaacson plans to release an expanded version of the biography in the future, perhaps after all of the products Jobs talked about come to fruition.
We’re liking the odds of Apple not only upgrading the Apple TV at tomorrow’s event, but also perhaps increased integration with other iOS devices including the use of Siri.
Chronicwire reports that the Gold Master build of iOS 5.1 has been in a “vigorous quality assurance phase” for the past three weeks” with testing being done both internally by Apple as well as by various carriers/partners.
As we first reported, it contains Japanese Siri as well as some features not previously revealed publicly (Camera Slider?).
The build number of iOS 5.1 Gold Master is 9B176 according to a very solid source, although three different partners who are testing the Gold Master claim to have slightly (by single digits) higher builds numbers on their copies, I’m assuming that’s because right now it’d make sense for those people to be testing what will soon be released as 5.1.1, so I’ve disregarded the claims.
Chonicwire’s Will Strafach (@chronic) has been a good source of Apple’s iOS software info in the past.
We’ve been hearing whispers of expanded Siri integration (more devices and perhaps integration into the Remote App for AppleTV) but are a long way (well probably 24 hours) away from being able to verify. Expand Expanding Close
Today, U.S.-based iTV entertainment issued a press release warning Apple to stop infringing its trademark “iTV,” which it has held since formation in 2001. The company uses the 2011 U.S. Patent No. 2011/0154394 A1 (illustration, right) as an example that Apple is already using the iTV trademark, if only internally. Apple describes its device as “an audio and video entertainment center.”
Laughably, Apple has not made any intentions to market “iTV” publicly, yet the contending company, headed by Chief Executive Patrick Hughes, is threatening Apple and plans to crash the iPad launch event tomorrow to hand out pamphlets.
The U.K.-based iTV made similar saber rattles, as well.
When the Apple TV was announced (below), Steve Jobs said internally it was called “iTV,” but obviously there are enough trademark issues to keep Apple from going mainstream with the name—at least yet. From the patent report filed last year, it is clear that Apple is still calling it “iTV” internally.
The Globe and Mailsaid Apple was experimenting with voice and gestures; and The New York Post revealed last week that Apple was driving hard bargains with content providers over supplying Apple users with cable-type content by Christmas. Moreover, Apple TV cheerleader Gene Munster said Apple’s entry into the TV business would be the biggest thing to occur since the smartphone. Meanwhile, Samsung said it is not afraid of Apple’s overtures into TV, because consumers mostly care about picture quality.
We first revealed that Apple TVs were disappearing from store shelves last month and that a refresh was imminent.
Speaking of Texas, Apple will NOT be putting up a temporary store at SXSW in Austin this year according to the The Austin American-Statesman. Last year, Apple built a temporary Store at the event that coincided with the launch of the iPad 2.
Last year, Apple’s then-CEO, Steve Jobs, announced the release of the iPad 2 on March 2. The pop-up store opened at the start of the SXSW Interactive Festival on March 11, 2011. The store, at the Scarbroughs building on Congress Avenue and Sixth Street, sold the tablet, as well as accessories, during the festival.
The show runs from March 9-13 this year.
Yesterday, two simultaneous reports came out stating the name of Apple’s new product would be the ‘iPad HD’ and recently more and (iM)ore evidence points to an LTE version being announced. Today, Verizon began teasing a “Something is Coming” campaign.
Interestingly, we were told that there would be a subsequent launch event a week later but he had no further information on the the subject matter. This could be a separate Apple product (AppleTV?) or perhaps additional International launches of the iPad.
We’ll have live coverage of tomorrow’s event as it unfolds. Expand Expanding Close
It is interesting how little Verizon has to provide, yet the splash page they put up today still screams “iPad!”.
Notably, the graphic image file name is:766x385_HP_pre_NO_optin.jpg but somehow we don’t think Verizon’s big surprise is the recently discontinued HP Pre.
Today, Parallels announced an update to their Parallels 7 virtualization software platform which will add Mountain Lion as both a host and a guest OS, allowing developers (and anyone else) to demo Mountain Lion on their main machine without making it susceptible to beta bugs. ML early adopters will also be able to test Parallels 7 on their Mountain Lion Macs.
Additionally, Parallels users can now demo Microsoft’s new Windows 8 Consumer Preview (English, German, French, Japanese or Chinese simplified) via easy one click download from the installer
Parallels mobile users can also control their Mountain Lion or Windows 8 instances on iPad or other iOS device.
Square just announced a new Point of Sale (POS) product called Square Register. The maker of those little dongles that allow you to make or take payments anywhere on iOS or Android devices now offers a full register solution integrated with iPad. The UI is beautiful and Square takes only a 2.75% charge on credit card transactions.
The announcement, so close to the iPad 3 launch event this week, makes me wonder if Square got cut from the docket at the last second. Or, perhaps Square is hoping to get its product into the market with enough time to get a mention.
Either way, the product looks impressive, screenshots below:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxOIebkmrqs] Is this how we’ll have to open apps in the future?
When we broke the news that iOS (and later Android) apps could upload your photo library (along with videos, calendars and even record A/V), we knew some people would be upset:
Congress became involved and probably motivated the move [by Apple to shut down the vulnerability], but the legislative body is not going to like what it hears.
The problem is that iOS apps not only have access to a user’s contacts database (including addresses and notes), but apps also have full and unencumbered access to everything in the iOS app sandbox, such as pictures, music, movies, calendars, and a host of other data. Any of this content is literally open for developers to freely transmit to their own servers while apps are open.
(note that pictures with geotags will pop up a Location dialog which can be averted in code with some well known tricks)
Today, Senator Charles Schumer D-NY urged the FTC to investigate the matter…
Apple’s iTunes app Store has been open for almost four years an in that time has gone from 0 apps downloaded to 25 Billion (almost 4 apps for every human on the planet!). At the rate it is accelerating however, it should pass 40 billion by this time next year.
As for the 25 Billion Apps downloaded contest, no winner has been announced but they will receive $10,000 gift certificate in iTunes or Mac App Store.
Also, Apple has an updated its all time most popular apps list for both iPhone and iPad formats, below:
Apple’s relationship with Corning has always remained shrouded in mystery. The relationship started famously when Steve Jobs visited Corning Headquarters in 2006 and told CEO Wendell Weeks not to be afraid to make the stuff. Corning however never made it into Apple marketing material after that and even isn’t included in Apple’s supplier lists (PDF).
That and Apple’s reliance on Asian parts materials makers had led some to believe that Apple had gone to Asian glass manufacturers for their iPhone production.
In the New York Times’ iEconomy series, Corning is said to have shifted its glass manufacturing to China.
“Our customers are in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China,” said James B. Flaws, Corning’s vice chairman and chief financial officer. “We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that’s 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas.”
However, today, Apple released its US Jobs report which included the following info:
Corning employees in Kentucky and New York who create the majority of the glass for iPhone,..
In a move that we hope will be copied by others, US Southeast regional carrier C-Spire has lowered the cost of the iPhone 4S by $50 to $149 with a plan.
32GB and 64GB iPhones also will see $50 drops and will come in at $249 and $349, also with the two year plans.
C-Spire uses the same EV-DO 3G network that Sprint and Verizon use and C-Spire customers hop on those networks when roaming outside of C-Spire’s Wireless footprints. The company released the iPhone in November to its almost 1 million customers as the first US regional carrier to do so.
C-Spire has managed to keep its same plan rates with start $25/month and go up to $100 a month for unlimited data, streaming, texts and voice.
We’re also hearing of a mystery accessory that will launch alongside the new iPads and Apple TV. We’re not sure what it is, but it’s called “B82″ internally. The product is likely some accessory, probably ranging from either a cable, cover, or new audio remote. The new Apple TV will include Bluetooth 4.0 capability, so perhaps Apple will ship an improved remote to that takes advantage of that next-generation Bluetooth protocol.
AT&T is now getting ahold of their throttling plans by laying out the numbers which will get users put into the “reduced data scenario”. Instead of the sliding scale “top 5% of users” which often was people under 2GB, they now have a hard maximum of 3GB for HSPA users like those with iPhones and 5GB for their new LTE offerings. Users will receive a warning the first time but won’t get a notice thereafter.
After the iPad 3 event invite didn’t show a button, some were quick to come to the conclusion that there wouldn’t be a button on iPad 3. We think this is highly unlikely. Among many other reasons, there is one in every leaked iPad 3 part, as shown by these digitizers on Fix-iPhones.com today.
Also we see both black and white colors represented. We had originally heard that there might only be one color of the base model iPad 3 but a few hours later, we found the new part numbers which indicate both colors would be introduced. Another image below: Expand Expanding Close
As we mentioned last month, MLB.com At Bat 2012 launched today for iOS as a free download with in-app subscription purchases for $14.99 (or $2.99/month) which gives you audio. If you want video, there is a separate $120 price that includes the cost of the app. Confusing? A little…
The #1 sports app of all-time and Hall of Fame inductee for iPhone, iPad and Macworld, MLB.com At Bat, returns with live Spring Training baseball from the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues. MLB.com At Bat is the official app of Major League Baseball.
At Bat 12 Subscription Options:
● One-time annual fee of $14.99 for the entire 2012 season, Spring Training through the World Series (same price as 2011).
● Monthly recurring fee of $2.99.
● MLB.TV Premium subscribers receive At Bat 12 for free. Expand Expanding Close
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