9to5 Staff

Following a Twitter request from us yesterday, we’re hearing more on the Best Buy front. Best Buy has been an important partner since the original iPad launch and we hope they stay on Apple’s map in the foreseeable future. Bust two publications have reported that the electronics retailer has pulled all iPad 2 stock at some stores due to a misunderstanding between the two companies. This one from TUAW:

He claims that until further notice, the mammoth electronics retailer has had all stock except demo units pulled.

Another tipster, an alleged Best Buy employee, told CrunchGear a similar story:

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Patently Apple published a patent Apple filed for in Q4 of 2009 which would allow for an iPhone hybrid screen that would be able to switch between an ePaper display or a standard LCD display.  The users would be able manually switch between display modes, in addition to the iPhone being able to recognize what is being shown on the screen and choose between the ePaper or video modes.

The screen would also be divided into quadrants, which would allow for different parts of the screen to utilize different display modes.

eInk readers such as the Amazon Kindle have been popular among readers, as they are easier on the eyes and can be used outdoors without a significant glare.  While this was filed before Apple’s iPad was released (not an eReader per say, but competes with the Kindle), it’s safe to assume that  Apple was very far along in the development process as this was filed only a few months before the iPad was released and while only the iPhone is shown in the patent, it’s possible Apple was thinking this up for their tablet.
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Sports fans are going to like this little surprise from ESPN, which released its iOS app in time for the early rounds of the Masters. The free WatchESPN app brings premium sports programming to your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad (note: iPad-optimized version is due next month).

This includes channels like ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN3.com. You need to be subscribed to ESPN’s linear programming via Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks or Verizon FiOS TV to use the app. Once you type in your cable subscriber credentials, you can stream live feeds to your device. Who needs television, anyway? More features and a couple of screenies after the break.

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Do you ever wonder about the folks that spend big bucks on Apple’s shares? Yes, hedge funds and large institutional investors control about 70 percent of shares of Apple, but what about the remaining 30 percent? Just who are the A-league investors that pour their fortunes into AAPL?

Author James Altucher profiled four of them over at the Wall Street Journal blogs. Hungarian-born businessman and notable philanthropist George Soros owns about a hundred million dollars worth of Apple shares. The billionaire has obviously disregarded investment advice from Warren Buffet and isn’t concerned about Apple’s Nasdaq weighting getting cut by about 40 percent come May 2.

Soros also invested $10 million and $2.5 million in Citigroup and Ford shares, respectively, and owns 867,000 shares of Oracle. He’s not the only billionaire Apple investor, though. The remaining three right after the break…

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Our friends over at Redmond have surprised us pleasantly with the Bing app for iPhone last year. Today, they’ve launched an iPad version and it looks awesome. It’s the same like the iPhone version only, you know, bigger. It’s a free download from the App Store and comes with all the features of the iPhone version.

The search app, or a decision engine as they call it, really takes advantage of the iPad’s display that comes into play when performing media-rich searches like movies, Bing homepage images, local businesses and so forth. The full list of features plus three more screenshots after the break.

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Smart bezel patents from Apple are old news, but this morning saw a new variant surface in the United States Patent & Trademark Office’s database. Patently Apple has dived deep into the document and discovered some blow-away details. Put simply, Apple is proposing a bezel that doubles as a secondary display built around a printed segmented electroluminescence technology:

Apple intends to use the secondary display to introduce a set of new illuminated indicators that are able morph into various controls for work and play. Illuminated gaming and productivity controls could be built into the face-side of the bezel and/or selected back-side areas of iOS devices like the iPad.

This opens up a whole new world of creative possibilities…

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Steve Wozniak photo by dnelems21

Steve Wozniak, everbody’s number one geek, is scheduled to give a commencement address alongside TIAA-CREF president and CEO Roger Ferguson Jr., reports Detroit Free Press. The two will speak at the Michigan State University’s convocation on May 6 at 1pm and receive an honorary degree. Plus, both Ferguson and Wozniak will also speak at the University’s advanced degree ceremony at 7pm the same day.

We’re looking forward to Woz’s speech. Besides being an engaging speaker and the uber-geek, Woz often drops previously unknown tidbits about Apple. We wonder if he’ll go down the retrospection route like the other Steve did during the 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. Remember that one, about life and death and following your heart because it “already knows what you want to become”? Refresh your memory with that inspiring video right below the fold…

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Apple could be releasing iOS 4.3.2, the next update to its mobile operating system, in the next two weeks, writes Boy Genius Report:

We’ve just been told by one of our Apple ninjas that the company is working on another iOS 4.3.x release: iOS 4.3.2.

The release will support iPhones, iPods and iPads and allegedly address security issues, squash a couple of bugs and introduce “several enhancements,” sources told the publication…
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The Wall Street Journal’s tech columnist Walt Mossberg has published an interesting review of the Samsung Series 9 over at the paper’s All Things Digital blog. It’s a stylish, aluminum-clad 13-inch notebook that sports a button-less touchpad, sealed battery and 128GB of flash storage. It’s “a gorgeous” MacBook Air alternative, Mossberg opined, and a showcase of Samsung’s top engineering rather than just a fashion statement.

While the Samsung notebook out-specs the Air in several areas, including a newer and faster Intel processor, backlit keyboard, twice the memory and 30 percent brighter screen, it won’t be for everyone due to its price. The base model costs $350 more than the entry-level 13-inch Air:

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YouTube has cable and broadcast television in its sight, planning “a major overhaul” designed around premium content. About twenty specialized “channels” of professionally produced web programming are being considered around a variety of topics, including arts and sports.

Google is allegedly in talks with Creative Artists Agency, William Morris Endeavor and International Creative Management over a possible co-operation. YouTube channels will simply collect existing premium content scattered elsewhere on the site. Google expects to spend a hundred million dollars to commission this content, author Jessica Vascellaro writes for The Wall Street Journal.

Google’s YouTube video website is working on a major site overhaul to organize its content around “channels” as it positions itself for the rise of Internet-connected televisions.

Of course, clues have been all over the place for quite some time that Google is planning on turning YouTube into a full-fledged entertainment content store akin to iTunes. Read on…

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After McDonalds, Coca Cola and other top American brands that operate in Russia, the once mighty superpower will get its first Apple retail store by the end of this year. IfoAppleStore.com, the site that follows Apple’s retail efforts, reports that the company’s top retail brass flew to Moscow to negotiate a lease inside the trade gallery of the reconstructed Hotel Moskva, pictured above.

It’s just steps away from Red Square, the Kremlin and other landmarks in the city. The retail facilities inside the hotel, depicted in the renderings at the bottom, are scheduled to open doors to shoppers “by late 2011 or early 2012”, the site explains:

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Phew, a plethora of OEM announcements today. The buzz surrounding Toshiba’s new flash memory that could lead to a 64GB iPhone carried us through the morning until Intel announced powerful new Xeon chips for servers. Topping it all off was the discovery that some OCZ solid state drives exhibit incorrect capacities because the manufacturer didn’t take into account that blocks of system data will be duplicated on the higher-density dies used on certain models. But first things first….

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Wow, Apple has placed an order for about twelve petabytes (12PB equals to 12,000TB) of storage from Isilon Systems, the Seattle, Washington-based maker of clustered storage solutions company with more than 1,500 clients, StorageNewsletter.com reported. According to an inside source, the company will use this storage to “manage the video download of its customers using iTunes.”

I’ve got another idea…

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The Office for Mac team confirmed via a blog post that the first major service pack for Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is scheduled for next week. Expect a speedier, more stable and more secure performance plus “some new features.” Support for Exchange based server-side rules, editing of existing messages and two new Outlook buttons – Redirect (redirects the message to a person with the replies delivered to the original sender) and Resend (does what the name says) – are in the cards as well.

Speaking of Outlook, expect a better syncing support and (finally!) calendar syncing between Outlook for Mac and any service or device that supports Apple’s Sync Services, including the iPhone and iPad. There something you should know about Outlook calendar syncing though…

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Right now Apple’s killing it on many levels and one of the reasons is because they own kids and teens. Some call it the Apple brainwash, others think it’s world-class marketing put to work. Whichever the case, it’s working out to Apple’s advantage, much to the horror of their rivals.

A Piper Jaffray survey of 4,500 kids in the US revealed that over 50 percent of teens could own an iPhone in the next six months – 17 percent already have one and 37 percent plan on buying the device in the next six months. Of course, what kids plan and what they get are likely not the same, especially if they don’t get good report cards. A couple of more water-cooler talking points…

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According to Digitimes, Apple shipped between 2.4 and 2.6 million iPads during the month of March. Shipments are set to nearly double during the second quarter, according to a conservative estimate by a source:

Sales of iPad 2 are running at a rate faster than its predecessor, and Apple took delivery of 2.4-2.6 million units in March. Apple is likely to take delivery of 4-4.3 million units a month, or a total of over 12 million units, of iPad 2 tablets in the second quarter, said the sources.

In other words, at a monthly rate of more than four million units iPad 2 could sell far better than its predecessor which took nine months to sell 15 million units. The latest figure compares to the Motorola Xoom sales Deutsche Bank pegged at just a hundred thousand units. A steady stream of components will be needed to meet the iPad 2 targets. Asian suppliers are already boosting their production output to meet orders from Apple, Digitimes wrote…

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Fresh on the heels of its purchase of communications company DBSD North America for about $1.4 billion, Dish Network snapped up video rental service operator Blockbuster in a bankruptcy auction for a cool $320 million. About $228 million will be paid in cash and the transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2011. The company outbid at least three contenders and now stands to bolster its offering by taking advantage of Blockbuster’s online movie rentals, Reuters explains:

Dish might find Blockbuster’s online content appealing as the company could use it as a base for an online product to deliver movies.

Dish has already made some strides into this space prior to the acquisition…

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Please, let’s not start The Faily (or should I say, #faily) jokes. An iPad only-newspaper, The Daily, launched two months ago. So, how’s this News Corp.-owned digital publication been doing so far?

We don’t have exact data because the publisher wouldn’t divulge official sales numbers, but that didn’t stop bloggers from guesstimating. One possible indication of how iPad owners are using The Daily are story links tweeted from within the app. Read on…

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An unusual glitch with FaceTime calling has popped up in the Apple Discussions forum. It appears that for some people FaceTime would bring up a random image, a user wrote:

My boyfriend and I have both recently experienced this problem several times – when one of us is calling the other via FaceTime, an old picture freezes on our screen, while the person receiving the call only sees a black screen. It’s kind of creepy, because it brought up photos of both of us at work, where I have used FaceTime a few times but he never has.

Another poster suggested that the camera seems to be keeping random images that have not been taken before and don’t seem to originate from past FaceTime calls:

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How about an app that lets you taste and smell things right on your iPhone? Yeah, I know April Fools’ Day is over, but apparently some people fell for this joke, including this news anchor who tricked her colleague into smelling and licking an iPad during live broadcast.

“The creators have found the way to emit the odors and the flavors right out of a smartphone,” he told her. Piezzo-electrics is the name of a technology behind this magic, he convinced her. It was an April Fools’ Joke but it’s making rounds this morning in the Mac blogosphere so I thought I’d share it with you.

via Cult of Mac

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QuarkXPress 9, the next major version of this once popular desktop publishing software, is coming April 26 and there is a 30-day free evaluation version available for download from Quark’s website. The evaluation version comes with all the bells and whistles of the commercial product, including saving and printing.

Additionally, you will be able to convert the evaluation version into a full retail copy by entering a validation code to continue working on your projects created in trial version. New features include the following treats…

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