Founder, Publisher and Editorial Director of the 9to5/Electrek/DroneDJ sites.
Seth Weintraub is an award-winning journalist and blogger who won back to back Neal Awards during his three plus years covering Apple and Google at IDG’s Computerworld from 2007–2010. Weintraub next covered all things Google for Fortune Magazine from 2010-2011 amassing a thick rolodex of Google contacts and love for Silicon Valley tech culture.
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.
More at About.me. BI 2014 profile.
Tips: seth@9to5mac.com, or llsethj on Wickr/Skype or link at top of page.
You can’t always be there at bedtime to read your kids their evening stories. However, Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime let’s you read them their favorite stories remotely using an iPhone. While it doesn’t replace being there, it is a nice stopgap and a great idea. The artwork on these stories is top notch.
I see this as being fantastic for parents that are split up or even parents that travel often. Perhaps v2 could have a little FaceTime window.
I doubt Applecare covers this but SmartCover magnets are strong enough to hold the new lighter iPad 2s on a refrigerator. Us? We’re more the velcro types.
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‘It’s not a good party unless you run out of beer,’ says TWC in regards to the loss of channels in the iPad app today. They deny outages are being caused by programmers who could have pulled their content even though some are reportedly upset.
It appears that it actually isn’t the streaming load that is buckling the servers, but the authentication servers according to a blog post by Time Warner Cable’s Jeff Simmermon:
Our engineering team is working as hard as they can to put a fix in place and get everything up and running as soon as they can. For the time being, the app is running with only 15 channels. We have found that by temporarily reducing the number of available channels, we can ease strain on the authentication process. This will enable us to offer at least some sort of an experience to our customers while we get a fix in place. We’ll add the other 17 channels back in as soon as we can fix the underlying issue, and we’ll be adding more channels in future iterations of the app as well.
If you are offering cable content on the iPad, you better buy more than a few kegs.
Jonathan Geller, best known as the Boy Genius (and editor of the blog by the same name), is a big iPhone fan who lives and works near New York City. You’d be right if you assumed he’d have had AT&T iPhone connectivity problems in New York, like the rest of us. You’d also be right if you assumed that he’d jump to a Verizon iPhone on day 1.
But where it gets weird is that he’s now going back to AT&T.
In the end, my personal experience with Verizon’s iPhone in and around New York City ended up being about the same as it was when I was on AT&T. This, combined with other advantages AT&T’s network has, has made me finally decide to switch back. Literally moments before I wrote this article, I synced up my Verizon iPhone and restored it to my AT&T iPhone (I can do this because the OS on the Verizon iPhone is lower than the AT&T iPhone — if I ever wanted to switch back, I couldn’t restore my data until the Verizon iPhone OS is updated to version 4.3). I missed the ability to talk on the phone while data is still flowing (even though I hate talking on the phone). I missed AT&T’s extremely fast data speeds. I missed knowing that if I ever travel outside of the country, I don’t have to get a new phone (even though I hate flying — no, seriously, try me). I missed feeling like I’m in the digital age instead of the stone age.
That’s interesting. I haven’t used a Verizon iPhone for any length of time but I’d assumed the reliability was better than that in New York. Now I’m I’m kinda glad I stuck with AT&T.
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Says he’s addicted to “the damn thing.”
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The $20 Kenny’s Group app seems to be getting a lot of negative attention in the app store. In fact, every one of the reviews says that purchases are being made with their hacked accounts.
We’re assuming that customers’ accounts have been hacked by the developer to purchase this app for $20. Apple might want to pull it.
Also, it might make sense to keep an eye on your iTunes bills.
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Google today updated its Mobile Search app for iPhone and iPod touch. Doesn’t sound familiar? It used to be called the Google Mobile app, but with all of the improvements comes a new name…
There is much more to the app than simple searching, however.
Al Franken, Senator from Minnesota, explains his thoughts and concerns about Net Neutrality ahead of a SXSW talk on the matter.
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AnandTech tests the iPad 2 CPU (below) and GPU (above). You really couldn’t ask for a faster device as it crushes the iPad and XOOM in almost every test. A better test might be up against some netbooks.
Other interesting tidbits: perhaps 2 different display vendors and Wifi range might be less than iPad 1.
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The iPhone repair experts at iFixyouri have determined that most of the weight savings in the iPad 2 – a fifth of a pound, is in the LCD and Glass assembly.
Here’s a breakdown weights of the Wifi iPads:
iPad 1 – 712.60g
iPad 2 – 600.60g (iPad 2 – 112g lighter)
If we break that down even further, the iPad 1 LCD/Glass is almost half the weight of the original iPad.
iPad 1 front half(LCD & Glass assembly) – 347.90g
iPad 1 back half – 364.70g
However, breaking down the iPad 2, we find a much lighter glass assembly accounts for most of the weight loss. The glass we found out last night is 27% thinner than the original iPad. Eliminating the frame that the glass sits on, using thinner LCD and thinner glass, Apple saved 84.7g. That makes up for 75% of the weight reduction.
iPad 2 front half(LCD & Glass) – 263.20g
iPad 2 back half – 337.40g
Apple was able to shave almost 30 grams off of the rest of the device, and with a slightly bigger battery, that is significant. But the lightness you feel is mostly the glass weight savings.
Our report on the iPad 2 glass from over a month ago first detailed Apple’s effort to save weight in the LCD/Glass assembly.
According to Businessweek today, many of the people waiting on line for iPad 2s were people heading off to the gray market to make a sale.
For those in the US and abroad, the biggest gray market is eBay where iPad 2s are going as high as $4000.
There seems to be something wrong with Apple’s distribution strategy, though it doesn’t immediately seem like anything can be done.
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Probably good to note here that FaceTime, unless jailbroken, is still a Wifi-only affair…which is probably a good thing.
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iFixit does a roundup of the iPad 2 teardown with their Teardown Highlights. Most notable in their summary, the iPad 2’s glass is significantly thinner than the previous iPad. Obviously that helps for weight loss but it also could theoretically make it more fragile. We noted the weigh loss in our LCD screen preview a few months ago. More from iFixit:
Just like the previous iOS device launch days, today’s iPad 2 launch is spawning reports of some minor issues. We’re getting some images of the yellow tint we saw last year.
Reader N. Peach sent this in. In all likelyiehood they yellow will dissipate just like last year’s issues as the glue from the factory dries. Another reader’s is below:
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We’re seeing the following marks on the A5:
K3PE4E400B-XGCI
APL0498 33950130
ECl035E1 1104
N3556N02 1107 A
Update: Geez, we have some smart commenters. They’ve figured out that “ECl035E1” is a Samsung Part and which indicates 512MB of RAM.
2Gbit=256MB (per stack) so 512MB ddr2 @ 800Mbps
complete info:
K3: Samsung Mobile DRAM Stac
P: MDDR2-P(※S4)+MDDR2-P(※S4)
E4: A-Port I/F & Density & Vcc& Org (4 Gbit 2Ch 1.2V 46nm)
E4: B-Port I/F & Density & Vcc& Org
0: Reserved
0: Interposer I/F (0: none)
B: Generation B-Die
X: Package FBGA
G: Temp. (G : -25 ~ 85℃)
C1: Speed (C1 : 2.5ns@RL6, TRCD18ns, TRP18ns ) 800 Mbps
for reference see also http://www.samsung.com/global/business/
Looking at the samsung’s DRAM part number K3PE4E400B, the 4th and 5th column (E4) refers to ram density. The next 2 columns after that is also E4 which is the second dram stack. According to the specsheet, which is outdated, it does not list the E4 code only up to E3. E3 lists the ram as MDDR2-P 1Gbit. That gives us 2Gbits which is 512MB.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconduc…
Thanks Dave Park, Matteo Dabergami and wisetech
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The iPhone repair experts at iFixyouri are now tearing apart the iPad 2…Be the first to see what is inside (and who makes that A5 chip).
Update: Here is the archive:
[ustream vid=13258329 hid=0 w=480 h=296]
We’ve got two separate tear-downs for the iPad 2. Here’s iFixit’s
Broadcom appears to be well represented with:
We are taking submissions of line waitings from around the US either in the comments below or (update – just below). We’ll update throughout the day. Our own Mark Gurman is in Century City Los Angeles – say hi if you are there.
Also, feel free to update line statuses below so readers can decide where to go.
My wife took a shot of the Soho New York Line “It goes to Houston”…many more below…
TechmanTV edited this with his phone using the new iMovie:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x00jmRZLQeg&fs=1&hl=en_US&hd=1]
CNN has a handy little chart on iPad data plans on AT&T vs. Verizon. Also, it is helpful to remember that AT&T is usually a little faster and can roam in more countries while Verizon’s service is typically more reliable.
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A number of readers have already notified us that their Smart Covers are shipping and are expected for delivery ahead of the iPad 2s that they cover.
What are you guys going to do with your Smart Covers until your iPad 2 arrives? We hear they make great refrigerator magnets.
Thanks James!
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After an early start, Apple has begun iPad sales and in the last hour has moved shipping lead times from 3-5 days to 5-7 business days – which translates to a little over a week. Remember, Apple likes to manage expectations and you could still receive your iPad in less time…or you could go get on line at one of the other distribution points.
Update: They are going fast – now 2-3 weeks.
Interesting note from a Wired UK story on Rovio: The company was almost in bankruptcy prior to releasing their Angry Birds app in the App Store. They had been making meager earnings selling apps through the mobile carriers and for other companies. One App for app store and now they are $50 million in the black with a lucrative franchise on their hands.
We’ve just heard that a Verizon 4G LTE Mifi just went through the FCC. It isn’t going to give you GPS (And won’t be cheap) but it might be another option for your extra-Wifi Connectivity needs. Usually devices take around a month to get from FCC to store shelves.
Just thought you’d like to know.
Apple pushed a press release this morning reminding us that iPad 2 will go on sale tomorrow (almost forgot!). For those of us ordering online on the East Coast, we now have to change our alarms from 3am to 4am to make the purchase. That’s awesome Apple (Grrr).
Some other clarifications contained within:
Full press release below:
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