iPad (2021)

Analyst Andy Zaky overestimated Apple earnings by 20 percent last quarter.

Here’s his take right after: Why Apple’s big miss doesn’t matter. This miss is just a minor blip due to analysts getting overzealous with their estimates.

Today, he wrote: Apple Fiscal Q1 2012: The Biggest Earnings Blowout in History

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Last time we checked with research firm IDC, they listed Apple at 68.3-percent of the worldwide tablet market with approximately 9.3 million units of the iPad 2 shipped in quarter two of 2011. While the firm’s estimates for Q3 saw a drop to 61.5-percent of the market, Apple still leads the market and increased shipments from the 9.3 million in Q2 to approximately 11.1 million units in Q3.

To put that in perspective, Apple’s closest competitor, Samsung, is over 10 times behind with just 5.6-percent of the market. The overall tablet market increased 23.9-percent to approximately 18.1 million units, representing a 264.5-percent increase from the year-ago quarter.

As for where Apple stands in comparison to the overall Android tablet market, IDC expects Android tablet market share to increase rapidly in Q4 from just 33.2-percent in Q3 to 40.3-percent. It’s important to note that IDC recently included “media tablets,” such as Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet, in their worldwide tablet market estimates. These additions will more than likely account for much of the increase.

This morning, Morgan Stanley significantly raised its forecasts for 2012, predicting Apple could possibly sell 90 million iPads during the year (in addition to 190 million iPhones). The analysts apparently have high hopes for Android 4.0’s ability to offer a competitive alternative to iPad going forward:

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A new hack by a Chinese manufacturer will allow a user to make an iPhone 4/4S’s Apple logo glow. Much like the MacBook’s, the logo will glow once you turn the device on.

K.O. Gadget, the maker of this mod, said it can be done at home in less than five minutes. For $42, K.O. Gadget will send you the kit to perform this hack, but it would void an iPhone’s warranty.

The mod is easy because all you’re doing is replacing the back panel on the iPhone. The backpanel has a transparent Apple logo that allows light to pass through, but the key is the “light strip” that is added in. You can see the addition in the video below.

The light strip and custom backing doesn’t add any thickness to the device, because it uses the same glass material that Apple uses. K.O. Gadget also said there isn’t any over heating issues or battery life issues.

If you’re the adventurous type, this is something definitely worth checking out. Check out the install process below:

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As originally reported on our sister blog, the search Goliath has published its annual list of top search queries, a tradition that started eleven years ago. It comes as little surprise that ‘iPad 3’ and ‘iPhone 5’ were among the fastest-growing search terms of the past year. More specifically, ‘iPhone 5’ was the sixth fastest-growing search term on Google.com in 2011, while ‘iPad 3’ ranked tenth.

Feverish iPhone 5 speculation hit its highest point in search the week of September 25, just a week ahead of the October 4 iPhone 4S presser. Searches for ‘iPhone 5’ rose 1,658 percent between 2010 and 2011, easily outnumbering those for the iPhone 4S, as seen in the above chart from the Zeitgeist site. Searches for ‘Steve Jobs’ grew 982 percent in 2011, enough to score the ninth spot.

Called Zeitgeist, the project “sorts billions of Google searches to capture the year’s ten fastest-rising global queries and the rest of the spirit of 2011″, per the official Google blog post. In a testament to the popularity of the Kindle Fire, positioned as an inexpensive iPad alternative, Amazon’s tablet placed ahead of Apple’s new phone, the iPhone 4S, which ranked second in the fastest-rising consumer electronics category, followed by the HTC Sensation, the Samsung Nexus Prime, Sony NPG and the yet-to-be-released iPad 3 (#9).

Two unreleased products piquing such a commanding interest – the cell phone that never materialized and the forthcoming tablet – wow, talk about the power of the Apple hype machine. More below the fold.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAIEamakLoY]

Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs made the list (mark 1:50) was the ninth fastest-growing search term on Google.com in 2011.

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Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty wrote in a note to clients issued yesterday (via Fortune) that U.S. consumers are expect to buy more iPhones in the first calendar quarter of 2012 than even the holiday quarter this year. This is noteworthy as the holiday quarter has traditionally been Apple’s strongest three-month sales period.

Not even the two recent Samsung television commercials (here and here) that poke fun of line waiters seem to be slowing the iPhone momentum (unless you believe a YouGov survey, chart included below the fold). Huberty is now projecting CQ4 iPhone sales anywhere from 31 to 36 million iPhones versus the previous model calling for 30 million units (Wall Street: 28 million). For the first quarter of the next year, Huberty is projecting an astounding 41 million units based on last week’s comments from AT&T and an Alphawise survey conducted for Morgan Stanley the week after Thanksgiving.

That’s a 46 percent increase over her previous 28 million estimate (Wall Street: 26 million). In all, Huberty wrote, Apple should sell 190 million iPhones during the calendar year 2012. As for iPad…

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Last week Samsung got to breathe a sigh of relief as an Australian court ruled they didn’t “slavishly copy” the iPad with the Galaxy Tab 10.1, as Apple has been insisted from the onset in court documents. Yesterday, the South Korean company told the Sydney Morning Herald that the court cases have helped make their device a “household name” and today we are seeing the Galaxy Tab maker taking advantage of the media spotlight and the fact that it’s been in the headlines thanks to lawsuits and those cheesy commercials.

As tweeted by Martin Aungle, an Australian corporate and marketing communications professional, Samsung is now pitching its device as “the tablet Apple tried to stop”. The above advert ran in the Sun-Herald newspaper this week. Samsung has obviously decided to up the stakes in this game considering they resisted up until now mentioning Apple by name in their marketing communication. We’ll see, of course, whether publicly celebrating its courtroom victory at Apple’s expense will have any effect on sales.

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[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtbUORusNvo”]

Rockstar games has just released Grand Theft Auto 3 for both the iPhone and iPad late this evening. This release  marks the 10th anniversary of the game, which was originally released for the PS2. Grand Theft Auto 3 is available for $4.99 on the iTunes App Store.

Rockstar Games celebrates the 10th anniversary of one of the most influential games of all time. The critically acclaimed blockbuster Grand Theft Auto III comes to mobile devices, bringing to life the dark and seedy underworld of Liberty City. With a massive and diverse open world, a wild cast of characters from every walk of life and the freedom to explore at will, Grand Theft Auto III puts the dark, intriguing and ruthless world of crime at your fingertips.

Check out some gameplay after the break:

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Google has just started rolling out an update to the Gmail app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with a few new welcomed features. First off, users now have the ability to set a custom signature for messages as well as a vacation responder. Both of those new features will be available via the gear icon at the top of the app’s new menu. The update also includes support for nested labels and the usual “bug fixes and UI improvements”.

A new Scribbles feature allows you to open a canvas, draw a picture or sketch with multiple colors, brush sizes and line elements, and attach it to a message within Gmail. Scribbles is available now in both the Gmail iOS app and Gmail mobile web app. Another notable and highly requested change is a new notification sound on iOS 5, making it easier to tell when you’ve received an email

Google also mentioned in their blog post that they are continuing to work on some of the most requested features from users including multiple login support, banner notifications, and a “send as” feature to send mail from multiple accounts within the app.

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Netflix has just updated its iOS app with a nicer user interface following an overhauled Android app from a month ago. Netflix version 2.0 with a prettified appearance is now available in all regions, Netflix said, including the United States, Canada and Latin America. The new interface provides access to twice as many television shows and movies available for streaming.

Interestingly, the app is now available in Latin America for both the iPhone and iPad just as Apple announced the arrival of both the iTunes Store with iTunes Match in Latin America and Apple TV in Brazil. Netflix for iOS is a free download (a Netflix subscription is required). Video out is supported on the iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and fourth-generation iPod Touch 4G. Full release notes after the break.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUa4IAQetTk]

Here’s a fun iPad game for the whole (Partridge) family.

Rockmate turns your iPad into a complete music studio easy and super fun to use. You can compose, record and play songs with up to 4 Rock players on one single iPad. Rockmate is easy to play with smart chords progressions, sounds great with separated guitar effects and in-house produced audio samples and is also fully customizable with multiple drums and keyboard styles.

Rockmate is ready to rock ! Your guitars are always well tuned, no need to carry your drum kit or to patch your keyboard. A smart metronome and a real-time looper will assist you in composing and recording your songs. That you can share by email or in your iTunes sharing folder.

We want as many people as possible to experience Rockmate. So we have decided to make Rockmate available for one week (From 14 to 21 december 2011) at the introductory price of $0.99. Regular price $3.99.

(iTunes $.99)

For those who are after something in the professional realm, a new App called Shredder was released today…
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The novelty of smartphone apps may have worn off since the original iPhone but every now and then an app comes along that captures our imagination. Woodcraft for iPad  ($9.99 iTunes) by software artisans at Fasterre is interesting for its novel idea and professional execution. Say you’re an amateur or pro woodworker and you want to design your next deck, bench, furniture or backyard shed on your iPad.

Niche apps like that are few and far between and Woodcraft arrives to fill the gap. It’s no toy: The program features the fully automated bill of materials, seamless switches between 2D or 3D and lets you measure distances with up to 1/64th of an inch precision.

Watching their promo clip (nice editing work, BTW) makes me wanna explore my carpenter genes (my grandpa was an adept woodworker). Woodcraft is a universal binary that supports both iPad and iPhone/iPod touch and is available in exchange for ten bucks during the launch period. Release notes right after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xStZZsx6A4]

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DigiTimes reports, based on “sources in the upstream supply chain”, that a next-generation MacBook Pro with a Retina-capable display sporting a 2880-by-1800 resolution could arrive in the second quarter of 2012:

While the prevailing MacBook models have displays with resolutions ranging from 1680 by 1050 to 1280 by 800, the ultra-high resolution for the new MacBook Pro will further differentiate Apple’s products from other brands, commented the sources.

The report continues asserting that Acer and Asustek Computer also plan to launch high-end Ultrabook models sporting  the 1920-by-1080 pixel resolution displays versus the 1366-by-768 displays typically found on today’s Ultrabooks. The rumor might make sense as Intel’s upcoming Ivy Bridge platform natively supports displays with up to a 4096-by-4096 pixel resolution and is capable of decoding multiple 4K video streams at once. Lion also added support for 3200-by-2000 wallpapers, doubling icon resolution to 1024-by-1024 pixels and enabling HiDPI display modes.

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Whoa, Microsoft is definitely on a roll today. In addition to the Xbox Live client for iPhone and the Halo Waypoint companion app for their popular gaming franchise, both of which were recently released on Apple’s iOS platform – and on top of today’s release of Kinectimals, their first-ever game for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, the Redmond, Washington-headquartered software giant just outed another iPhone app.

If you’re a fan of 25 gigabytes of free storage from Microsoft (a 100MB individual file limit) , Christmas definitely came early with today’s release of the official SkyDrive for iPhone . A free download from the App Store, it lets you access all of your content (including files shared with you) stored on SkyDrive cloud storage. You can also upload photos or videos from your iPhone to SkyDrive, view your recently used documents, share a link to any file using email and create/delete folders.

So Microsoft, how about that Office for iOS?

[slideshow]

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Apple this afternoon revised holiday ordering and shipping deadlines for this year, as spotted by The Loop. For those looking to order customized Macs, you have until tomorrow, December 14, to place an order for your customized all-in-one system if you want to receive it by December 24, with free 2-3 day shipping. With custom engraved iPods you have until December 19 to receive it by the December 24 deadline.

And lastly, for off the shelf Macs and other Apple products you have until December 21 to receive them by Christmas Eve. Sadly, it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to get an iPhone 4S online before the holidays. Find all of the dates after the break:

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People have been wondering what should Apple do with its cash hoard since the dawn of time and the company’s silence on the matter has only fueled speculation and increased pressure on the new CEO to pay a cash dividend, which they had stopped doing in 1995. If TechCrunch is to be believed, which relayed a Calcalist report in Hebrew, Apple is going to spend between $400 and $500 million to acquire Anobit, a fabless flash memory chip maker based in Israel.

To put this in perspective, the Anobit acquisition would be bigger than any since the 1997 purchase of NeXT for $404 million that brought back Steve Jobs. Anobit specializes in flash storage solutions for enterprise and mobile markets and making them cheap and reliable using its proprietary MSP technology (which stands for ‘Memory Signal Processing’). MSP lets Anobit engineer more reliable flash memory chips with significantly longer usable life.

Anobit’s list of clients isn’t public, but the Calcalist report claims Apple is a client:

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Microsoft today introduced an iPad version of their OneNote mobile app previously only available to iPhone users. The new app has of course been given a facelift for the iPad with a two-pane view and also includes a tabbed user interface, quick note creation, tables in notebooks, and the ability to sync notebooks over WiFi.

Additionally, the iPhone app has also been updated to version 1.3 and both apps support several new languages including English, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. 

*With the free version of OneNote for iPad you can access, create and edit up to 500 notes. Once you reach this limit you can still view, delete, and sync your notes. To continue taking and editing notes, you can upgrade OneNote for iPad to unlimited use through an in-app purchase.
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Apple today updated iTunes to version 10.5.2 weighing in at a hefty 257MB. Right up front, Apple notes that Match is getting a fix with “several improvements”. Also, an audio distortion issue which we hadn’t heard of, also gets a fix.

Update: In other news, Apple updated its Thunderbolt displays yet again.

Here are the notes:

What’s new in iTunes 10.5.2

iTunes 10.5.2 includes several improvements for iTunes Match and fixes an audio distortion problem when playing or importing certain CDs.

iTunes 10.5.1 also included:
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Earlier today, Mark Tweeted the amusing new file Apple put in iOS 5.1 beta 2 which includes a lot of silly references to devices that don’t exist.  This isn’t entirely new – Apple had done this to another file in iOS 5.1B1.

As you’d probably expect, it isn’t going to stop developers from finding the special sause inside iOS 5.1B2.  That doctored file is a high level file which is easily found.  Developers which we are in contact with are already digging through the lower level stuff which remains the the feeding grounds for useful information.
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We heard at the beginning of the month that BBC’s iPlayer iPad app would be getting an iPhone and iPod touch version in the coming weeks and today the app has officially landed for UK users. To accompany the release, the app will also be able to stream content over all 3G networks and now officially supports AirPlay on iOS 5.

The company’s blog post notes a ‘Live Channels’ feature will allow you to quickly switch between BBC channels just like on radio and TV, and all BBC national radio stations support background audio for multitasking. They have also made improvements to streaming by introducing HTTP Live Streaming using adaptive bitrate technologies, allowing the app to adjust your streaming quality based on your connection speed. The web version of the app accessible at bbc.co.uk/iplayer will also soon get 3G streaming capabilities.  
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Digitimes tonight reports that next generation iPads are expected to be available in the next 3-4 months as manufacturers in the supply chain have started delivering parts and components for the new tablets to OEM contractors while reducing those prepared for iPad 2.  The report follows a Citi Analyst last week who said that “several sources” have confirmed the next-gen iPad will launch in February saying, “there do not appear to be any significant technical hurdles remaining”.

Current production of iPad 2 will reportedly remain high at 14-15 million units in Q4 2011 but tail to 4-5 million units in the first quarter of 2012 as anticipation for the next iPad grows and inventory is cleared out.

Meanwhile, Foxconn Electronics will begin to produce the next-generation iPads in January and to ramp up the production volume starting February, according to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report, which quoted Kevin Chang, an analyst of Citigroup Global Markets, as indicating.

Production of the new iPads is expected to reach 9.5-9.8 million units in the first quarter of 2012, estimated sources in the supply chain. Sales of iPad products totaled 25.06 million in the first three quarters of 2011 and are likely to reach 40 million units for all of 2011, the sources estimated.

The next generation iPad is expected to have a Retina display, a faster A6 processor – possible Quad Core, and be slightly thicker than the current model…
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kT94Ovn7tIE#!]

Over the past month, I’ve been carrying around a Powerbag backpack from ful.  The idea is pretty straight-forward.  They put a 3000 mA battery inside a backpack complete with adapters for just about any device you’d ever want to charge.  On heavy usage days, I have a mobile charge with me at all times. Instead of taking out all of my devices when I get home, I just plug in the bag.

Read on for the full review…

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