iPad (2021)

Apple helped Walmart build a store-within-a-store oasis for Apple products in the home state of the chain’s founder Sam Walton.

We broke the news earlier this year that Sams’s Club is exploring Apple Store-within-a-store concepts. This weekend, Apple retail news website ifoAppleStore posted numerous pictures from a Walmart in Lowell, Ark., which owns and operates Sam’s Club, that depict Apple displays within its walls akin to Best Buy’s lavish store-within-a-store creations.

An image gallery is below.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple just published a press release that confirms the new iPad will launch in 12 additional countries Friday, April 20. Along with the 12 countries listed below, Apple confirmed an April 27 international launch date for nine more countries:

In addition to South Korea, the new iPad also will be available beginning on Friday, April 20 in Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela. Beginning on Friday, April 27, the new iPad will be available in Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand.

Go past the break for the full press release.

Expand
Expanding
Close

32-inch iMac or TV? We’ll take both!

Sharp revealed today that it began assembling high-performance LCDs last month with increased production in April to meet market demand.

Jefferies & Co.’s Peter Misek is a very outspoken analyst regarding Apple’s rumored HDTV. He first claimed in November that Sharp is preparing production lines for the “iTV,” but he later said the company plans to build roughly 5 million units beginning this spring with a product launch slated for Q4 2012.

According to Sharp, the LCDs will help the company contribute to “creating markets for attractive new products”:

Sharp will encourage the application of its new high-resolution LCD panels to high-definition notebook PCs and LCD monitors—which are both expected to grow in demand—as well as to mobile devices. Sharp will also contribute to creating markets for attractive new products.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Le Figaro reports that renowned designer Philippe Starck (pictured, right) is working with Apple on a “revolutionary” product due in eight months.

French designer Philippe Starck announced today on France Info that it is working with the U.S. computer group Apple in a project “revolutionary” that would emerge in eight months. “Indeed, there is a big project together which will be out in eight months,” said the designer in the show “Everything and its opposite.” Invoking the “religious cult of secrecy” of the California firm, he declined further detail, except to talk about a project “quite revolutionary (…) if not very”.

Interestingly, Stark reveals that he had a close collaborative relationship with Apple’s former Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs with whom he met on a monthly basis for seven years.

Philippe Starck, who has revamped hotels, restaurants, toothbrushes or even the last Parisian Navigo travel card, has revealed that he regularly met in California Steve Jobs, Apple’s legendary founder who died last October. “For seven years I came to see him once a month in Palo Alto and elsewhere I go Monday, because even though he is dead, now I will see his wife. We liked to talk all things interesting, “he said.

While this is beyond tantalizing, much can be lost in translation here. Starck already sells products in the Apple Store, and we could be talking about an iPod dock or iPad case or something less exciting than an Apple HDTV or new camera.

Update: More lost in translation/buzzkill: Remember Philippe Starck was working with Steve Jobs on his boat and that would explain the monthly meetings that are ongoing with his wife.  The 75 meter yacht is due in the same 2012-2013 timeframe. It isn’t clear if this is the revolutionary product he was speaking of.

Update 2: Apple says WTF: Reached for comment, an Apple spokeswoman said the company is not working on a new product with Starck and declined to speculate about what the designer might have been referring to when he told France Info Radio that he and Apple “have a big project together that will be out in eight months.”

Expand
Expanding
Close

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5cL60TYY8oQ

Marketplace reporter Rob Schmitz is the second reporter ever to get an inside look at Foxconn, the manufacturing plant where Apple’s products are made. Today, Schmitz posted a video showing our first-ever look at the assembly process of an iPad as it goes down the assembly line at the Foxconn plant in Shanghai, China. It is interesting to look at how machines streamline some of the process. Schmitz also noted a few other interesting points, such as workers switching positions every few days while making $14 a day when first starting.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[slideshow]

Update: The app is live on most stores now including the U.S. store for $2.99 here.

Rockstar announced a couple of weeks ago that the iOS port of classic PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox title “Max Payne” would make its way to the App Store April 12. One day early, it looks like the game is already available in App Stores around the world with the New Zealand store, the Australian store, and others already listing the game.

The game in terms of plot and gameplay does not stray far from the original, but Rockstar updated the port with new high-res textures and graphics with full support for the iPhone 4S and the third-generation iPad’s Retina displays. Controls were reconfigured for the touchscreen, and Rockstar is bundling support for its Social Club Xbox Live-like network for iPhone 4, 4S, iPad 2, and the new iPad users. The game will also support cheats, such as the “Skip to Level.”

We will keep you updated when “Max Payne” lands in the United States store, most likely for around the $4.99 $2.99 mark. When it does, the universal app will be compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 4, iPad 1, iPad 2, and the new iPad.

Expand
Expanding
Close

With 1080P hitting the new iPad and Apple TV last month, some of you are perhaps now looking to send your Blu-ray collection over to iOS devices.

Here is the easy part: Buy a Toshiba Lightscribe Blu-ray Player for just $42 with free shipping (via 9to5Toys). It also burns DVDs, and Lightscribe media will even do some art on the cover. Oh, and it is USB bus-powered, so it is nice and portable.

Update: There is a white version!

Toshiba advertises it as “Mac compatible,” but we all knew that the late and great Steve Jobs viewed Blu-ray as a “bag of hurt” from the “mafia.”

So, the hard part is getting Blu-rays to your Mac….

Expand
Expanding
Close

Last year, a Chinese teenager sold his kidney in southern China to buy an iPad and iPhone. Now his renal deficiency is deteriorating, and five people have been charged with intentional injury related to the operation.

The teenager is known in reports by only his surname Wang. According to Reuters (via Xinhua News Agency), prosecutors in Changzhou city, Hunan province claim Wang is suffering from renal deficiency, which also means he is facing a potentially life-threatening decrease in kidney function.

“I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it,” said the boy […]. “A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan.”

On April 28th, the boy went to Chenzhou City in neighboring Hunan Province for the kidney removal surgery arranged by the broker. He was paid 22,000 yuan (an extra 2,000–) or $3,400 after his right kidney was taken out at Chenzhou’s famous No. 198 Hospital.

One of the five defendants earned 220,000 yuan (or $35,000 USD) to arrange the transplant, and then he paid Wang 22,000 yuan for the kidney and split the remainder with the surgeon, three other defendants, and various medical staff. The Xinhua report did not detail who received and paid for the kidney.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple subsidiary FileMaker has announced a new version of their flagship software product, FileMaker 12, with new database creation tools and themes. The Mac version of FileMaker 12 gain improved 64 bit support as well as wide area network support, enhance support for large databases, and add fast file and multimedia-content streaming. Database and project creation are now easier and faster with new and more intuitive themes on the Mac. The most important addition to the product is its more streamlined interface for creating interfaces that run on iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches. Additionally, a new iOS device application is available for free. The app takes many features from the desktop product but is mostly used to run Mac-created databases. The Mac and iOS apps work in tandem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LQl1FdbEyME

The full press release is after the break.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster has surveyed kids for a many years on their electronics usage. This spring, he polled 5,600 students, and half the group was male, while the other half was female. A surprising 34 percent of high school respondents said they owned an iPhone and 40 percent said they planned to get one in the next six months:

.

This is surprising, because comScore released its own Mobile phone breakdown today that claimed only 13.5-percent of ages 13 and up owned Apple phones:

Included in that 13.5-percent are supposedly those 34 percent of high school kids, meaning the adult population would have to be even lower than 13.5-percent, which also means high school kids are three times as likely to own an iPhone as their parents if the numbers are right.
Expand
Expanding
Close

.

How many new iPads sold this quarter? Find out April 24 when Apple streams its earnings call after the market closes. Like always, we will be on hand to cover the news as it happens.

Expand
Expanding
Close

AirDisplay, a $10 application that lets your iPad function as a second (or third, fourth, etc.) display for your Mac/PC, was just updated to allow it to push HiDPI pixels to the new iPad. We explained it all here.

Developer Avatron announced its “Air Display” app, which allows iPhones, iPads and Macs to act as a second or third monitor, would be implementing support for the 2048-by-1536 resolution of the new iPad’s 264-DPI Retina display. That means you will soon be able to use your third-generation iPad as a 2048-by-1536 computer monitor.

To turn on HiDPI, you just go to the Displays Preferences and select 1024×768 (HiDPI)…HiDPI has been shipping with Mac OS X for some time. But it isn’t enabled in the System Preferences, because until now there hasn’t been a mass-produced computer display with high enough resolution to do it justice. That’s where Air Display and the new iPad come in.

As noted by MacStories (image above), the update is live. The release notes follow:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Like everyone else, Facebook is going Retina.

What’s New in Version 4.1.1

In this release, we added some features and fixed some bugs so now:
– You can go offline in chat
– The right profile picture appears for everyone
– Your list of friends always includes all your friends
– In sets of photos, your name is displayed correctly
– Photos of people who like Facebook Pages load correctly
– Your friend-request notification only lights up if you have a request
– You can change your language to Czech, Danish, Greek, Indonesian, Malaysian, Norwegian (Bokmal), Portuguese (Portugal) or Thai
– If you’ve got a new Retina iPad, you’ll see a crisp, high resolution interface
Expand
Expanding
Close

.

The first customer satisfaction survey since the release of the new iPad shows that owners are almost completely smitten with their new devices.

.

Changewave surveyed 200 new iPad owners from March 22 to March 28 and found that those “Very Satisfied” were up 8 percent from the iPad 2 to an impressive 82 percent.

And those heat “issues”?  Not a big problem.

What is an aspect that new iPad owners like the most?
Expand
Expanding
Close