iOS Devices

JP Morgan sees Apple’s tablet rivals cutting down on their build plans after “an early dose of reality”, as analyst Mark Moskowitz has put it. Flagship tablets aren’t selling as their makers have been hoping, JP Morgan concluded tracking “widespread reductions in build activity” in recent months. This includes flagship devices such as Motorola’s Xoom, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook and Asustek’s Eee Pad Transformer (which was suspected of falling prey of Apple’s buying power). The weak showing so far has prompted those tablet makers to decrease their build plans by an estimated ten percent, Moskowitz writes in a report to clients:

In our view, the technical and form factor improvements of the iPad 2 stand to make it tougher for the first generation of competitive offerings to play catch-up, meaning actual shipments could fall well short of plan. The nascent tablet market stands to become big enough to create a ripple effect in the broader tech food chain in 2011.

At the same time, Apple’s shipments too will fall short of projections, but for diametrically opposite reasons…

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Too early to start talking about iPad 3 components?  Yeah, but whatever.  Digitimes says that Apple is certifying display manufacturers which include the normal players: LG and Samsung.

Apple has begun certifying components for iPad 3 and many Taiwan-based makers are actively participating. Some makers have already landed certification such as Radiant Opto-Electronics with LED backlight units, according to industry sources.

According to component makers, the timing for the launch of iPad 3 should be in 2012.

Taiwan-based firms think iPad 2 will become the mainstream and Apple will lower its price to compete with other tablet PCs.

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WWDC 2011 fever is officially happening. The Wall St. Journal reports:

Apple Inc. has reached terms with major recorded-music companies to allow it to launch a digital locker service that would be more robust than those currently offered by Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

According to these people, deals with three labels have been completed, and the fourth, with Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, is likely to be signed this week. Apple has signed deals with Warner Music Group Corp., Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Group Ltd.

Earlier, CNet reported that Apple was also rushing to sign up movie studios:

In the past several weeks, Apple executives have stepped up their attempts to convince some of the major Hollywood film studios to issue licenses that would enable Apple to store its customers’ movies on the company’s servers, two sources close to the negotiations told CNET. Apple began discussing a cloud service with the studios over a year ago.

A tell tale sign that Apple has accomplished something in terms securing something for the WWDC keynote is that they released iWork for iOS today meaning it got bumped.  Whatever Apple just readied, beats iWork and major content for a music/movie locker certainly would seem to fit this category. 
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We’ve been talking about the rumors of iWork hitting the iPhone for quite some time.  Today, Apple confirmed those rumors to be true.  Keynote, Pages and Numbers will now be universal apps that run on iPad and iPad 2, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, and iPod touch (3rd & 4th generation).

“Now you can use Keynote, Pages and Numbers on iPhone and iPod touch to create amazing presentations, documents and spreadsheets right in the palm of your hand,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The incredible Retina display, revolutionary Multi-Touch interface and our powerful software make it easy to create, edit, organize and share all of your documents from iPhone 4 or iPod touch.”

Know what is awesome about this?  Apple didn’t have enough time for this at WWDC and that’s why we are getting this a week early.  Holy.

Download the now Universal Apps: Pages, Numbers, Keynote

Full release and more images below:
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The United States Marine Corps aviators are in love with their iPads:

Since November last year, marine pilots have been using iPads and more recently iPad 2s with digital maps, which allow the crews to search out locations in the region at the tap of the screen rather than flicking through map packs that are heavy and take up room in the cramped cockpits of aircraft such as the AH-1W Cobra and the F/A-18 Hornet.

Sensor operators aboard the KC-130J Harvest Hawk are also field-testing iPad and so far have deemed the device “a game-changer” for its ability to obsolete paper charts and the grid reference drawings with pretty graphics and interactive multitouch interface. The Marines are also rolling out iPads on US-based aircrafts used for training. Their take?

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You needn’t look with envy at the Padfone, a phone-meets-tablet device Asus showed off yesterday at the Computex 2011 show. Just a few hours later, computer maker ECS rushed to demo a Padfone-like prototype offering. Unlike the Asus device, the ECS solution can actually house your iPhone 4. The ECS thing  is a docking station rather than a tablet per se, though. It takes your iPhone’s video and outputs it via HDMI to the built-in display which is of the same 9.7-inch variety and 4:3 format as your iPad’s. You also get an SD card slot, two USB ports and a front-facing camera, as seen in a video introduction below the fold. So far so good. But what’s the selling point?

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Apple has announced this morning that CEO Steve Jobs and other executives will take the stage on June 6th to talk next-generation software. Specifically, Apple will introduce their cloud-services – with an official header name of iCloud – in addition to iOS 5 and Mac OS 10.7 Lion.

Apple® CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS® X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®; and iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

Apple is also, of course, promising over 100 technical sessions, but have to yet to actually announce those details. The full press release is after the break.

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From our tips:

“This is a pic from a greek orthodox wedding ceremony where the priest bites the forbidden fruit”

thanks George!
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Backing up claims of a next-generation iPhone with an iPhone 4-like form factor, Macotakara claims that Apple is set to debut an iPhone 4S with an ARM Cortex-A9 and an 8 megapixel camera. The ARM Cortex-A9 is the CPU foundation for Apple’s customized A5 processor in the iPad 2. The iPad 2’s A5 is a dual-core chip, but the report is unsure if the iPhone 4S version is dual core. Sources told 9to5Mac last month that Apple is already testing an iPhone 4 with an A5 chip with high-profile game developers and it is likely that the iPhone 4S’s A5 will be dual-core.

The report also says backs up claims of an iPhone with dual-mode support for CDMA and GSM networks. This has long been expected since our discovery that the Verizon iPhone 4 carries a Qualcomm Gobi chip; a chip that supports both CDMA and GSM networks. The unique part about the report’s claim is that it says the iPhone 4S will feature an integrated SIM card system. That means the card is not user replacable. Apple was rumored to be working on an integrated SIM feature for future devices, but this claim has since been shot down.

The report also adds that a full iPhone revamp – iPhone 5 – is expected in spring 2012. This may mean that Apple has not just changed their iPhone release cycles to September; the September new iPhone thing could just be a 2011 thing. That’s great news for anyone holding out for an all-new design. (Image: TiPb)

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From the 9to5toys.com:

Today only, Amazon.com offers the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 for Windows and Mac, model no. 65064073, for $119.99 with free shipping. That’s $30 under our November mention and the lowest total price we’ve seen. (It’s also a current price low by $60.) This software offers a variety of photo-editing tools.
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From 9to5Toys.com:

Today only, Woot offers the refurbished, 1st-generation Apple iPad 64GB Wi-Fi + 3G Tablet for $489.99. With $5 for shipping, it’s $164 under our April mention and the lowest total price we’ve ever seen. (It’s also $74 under the lowest total price we could find for a new unit today.) This 0.5″-thick tablet weighs 1.5 lbs. and features an Apple A4 1GHz processor, 9.7″ 1024×768 LCD touchscreen display, 802.11a/n wireless, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, accelerometer, compass, up to 10 hours of battery life, and more. A 90-day limited Woot warranty is supplied.

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Some people are beginning to see a revamped Google search site on their iOS devices. Both iSpazio and phoneArena have noticed the changes, pointing out that big new icons have replaced the smaller top links. The new icons are visible upon running a search query on an iOS device. They essentially function the same as the smaller textual links, taking you to the search silos such as Images, Places and News. Clicking the More link pulls even more big icons for quick access to YouTube, Gmail, Maps and other popular Google services.

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Back in January I covered Nvidia’s mobile roadmap detailing a next-generation Tegra processor code-named Kal-El. Right now, iPad 2’s A5 chip rules the mobile landscape with an Apple-advertised nine-fold jump in graphics performance from the previous generation. But Tegra 3 looks like a game-changer, too. The chip combines four processing cores with twelve GeForce graphics units with stereoscopic 3D support.

If the above video dubbed “Glowball” is anything to go by, Tegra 3-powered tablets and smartphones due later this year could obsolete iPad 2’s shiny graphics. The demo features a brilliant lit, bouncing ball which is also the light source that casts its effect on different objects. It includes true dynamic lighting rendered in real-time with physics, the first time this type of lighting is feasible on a mobile device. Nvidia explains:

Glowball also leverages the accelerometer inside the device, affecting real-time movements of drapes throughout the game. As the user tilts the device, the gravity in the scene changes and drapes respond accordingly. The movements are calculated using physics and are simulated across Project Kal-El’s four CPU cores. Again, no canned animations. As the ball rolls through the drapes, they respond how you’d expect them to in real life. In addition, as the ball collides into the jack-in-the-boxes and barrels, the scene responds. Notice how the visual quality degrades when only two CPU cores are used. It’s clear that the quad-core processor in Project Kal-El is required for this level of realism.

If this pans out as Nvidia planned, the quad-core Tegra 3 chip will give Apple’s iPhone/iPad processors a real run for their money. Even though Nvidia’s Tegra and Apple’s A4/A5 are both based on CPU blueprints from UK-based ARM Holdings (which has Intel in its cross-hair), Nvidia’s silicon has two capital advantages: Power efficiency and graphics expertise. Read on….

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From 9to5Google:

With Apple’s purchase of two mapping companies over the last couple of years – Poly9 and Placebase – many have speculated that iOS 5 will finally be the iOS release where Apple moves from a Google Maps backend to an Apple backend. Multiple job postings on Apple’s official site backed up this speculation and even Apple promised some under-the-hood maps tweeks for their next-generation iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch operating system.

Now, sources have told 9to5Google that although Apple is working to improve the iOS Maps application, iOS 5 will not bring an Apple developed maps service and Google Maps is still in. Besides Apple’s purchase of both Placebase and Poly9, some speculated that Apple is building their own maps service to either compete with Google or step away from their input into iOS.

Apple began the process of distancing themselves from Google when former Google CEO Eric Schmidt resigned over “conflict of interest.” Apple has also added Microsoft’s Bing as a Safari search option and will be competing with Google head-to-head with their upcoming cloud-based music service. Those who enjoy Google Maps should not fear iOS 5, though, and hopefully Apple is working to implement turn-by-turn directions or something else to improve their maps application without changing the backend.

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Backlight bleeding? Dead pixels? Yellow tinting? Constrained availability? Apple is determined to put an end to the iPad 2 teething issues, if indicative reports trickling in from Asia are anything to go by. We heard earlier Apple had been considering Everlight as a backlight module provider before Coretronic won that contract. Today we learn through DigiTimes that Chimei Innolux,  an affiliate of Apple’s long-time manufacturing partner Foxconn, has begun the development of touch sensors to be shipped to Apple in June (meaning Bloomberg Businesweek was right)

Chimei has recently signed an in-plane switching (IPS) technology licensing agreement with Hitachi, the publication pointed out. IPS is a premium display technology that allows for wide viewing angles on Apple’s tablet. Author Max Wang explains that Apple could even entrust Chimei with the complete service, from panel production to touch components to final assembly, benefiting from Chimei’s component procurement under the Foxconn Group.

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iGuides.ru is on location in Moscow where the iPad 2 is launched today. Even after a few months and undoubtedly lots of black market iPads making their way over there, iPad buyers are still excited.  Speaking of Black Market, the prices for iPad 2s in Russia are PRETTY NUTS, at least according to the retailler in the story with prices ranging from $1200-$1500 dollars depending on the configuration (below).  Other reports say they were a bit lower.

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Sean Kovack’s “original” Google Voice app, GV Mobile+ has now been ported to the iPad which will allow you to make calls using VoIP applications like Skype on the device or originate calls that will end up on landlines or cell phones.

The app  ($2.99 app store) also fixes some bugs on the iPhone version but isn’t quite polished yet on the iPad as you can see in the screenshot below:
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Maps+ is a universal app for your iPhone and iPad that combines common mapping features, courtesy of the Google Maps back-end, with advanced location and tracking capabilities usually found in standalone GPS tracking apps. The app can record and edit your GPS tracks and tweet your location, for starters.

But that’s so last century. How about pinning location-based alarms on the map? This is when things get interesting. For example, a location alarm lets you remind yourself to get off at a train station. Maps+ will also do route directions with alternatives, transit points and bike routes, but only if you are located in the United States. Here are two nice iPad screenies and more info…

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BGR says that Apple will wait until WWDC to announce Back to School specials and they will be largely the same as year’s past (free iPod touch/w purchase of Mac) with the notable addition of getting $200 off the purchase of an iPad with the purchase of a Mac.

Apple has traditionally had a back to school announcements during this time of year (‘06, ‘07, ‘08, ‘09, ‘10), though never at WWDC which seems at first blush to be a strange venue for such an announcement.
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Just a quick hit here: For those on Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks or Verizon FiOS TV, you can now WatchESPN on your iPad in full glory.   WatchESPN was launched for iPod and iPhone last 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 from anywhere. Who needs television, anyway?

Get it free here, iPad screenshots below.  Van Gundy!  (via SAI)
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File this one under the highly improbable drawer because there’s little chance Samsung will let Apple get their hands on its active-matrix organic LED technology, better known as AMOLED, which is an important differentiating hardware feature of their Galaxy S smartphone series…especially now that Apple has sued them.  However, The Korea Herald heard from sources that Apple is actively courting Samsung to build AMOLED displays for a third-generation iPad. It’s allegedly a high enough priority for Apple’s operations chief Timothy Cook, who has been running the company in Jobs’ absence, to discuss the possibility with Samsung’s top brass during a recent trip to South Korea:

Apple wants to tap into Samsung’s AMOLED technology for an upgraded version of the iPad2, considered as many as the iPad3 that is likely to be launched toward the end of this year. During Cook’s trip last week, Apple seems to have offered Samsung an advance for the AMOLED displays.

Another reason this doesn’t make sense is the publication’s claim of iPad 3 launching in 2011. Android tablets currently don’t pose grave threat to iPad’s dominance so there’s little incentive in rushing out a new iPad mere eight moths following the second-generation iPad’s launch. There are plenty of other reasons, too…

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