iPad (2021)

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NBC last night teamed up with DC Comics to premiere one of its new shows on iPads in advance of its TV screening on Jan. 9.
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COMPUTERWORLD: This is not the year the iPad meets its match. Analyst Michael Gartenberg doesn’t see anything to threaten Apple, even as AAPL moves beyond dominance of the tablet market — as its mind-share grows, iPad is making like the iPod and defining the tablet market.

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You like movies? We like movies. We all like movies and now it seems Comcast has a super plan which means you’ll be watching huge amounts of video content on your iPad. Hooray!
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The iPad is taking a lesson from the iPod and beginning to seize a place in US schools, some of which are beginning trials to test the efficacy of providing the Apple tablets to kids, even while New York City orders thousands of iPads for its schools.
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That’s the conclusion from Forrester Research in their latest research which predicts US tablet sales will double this year.

They now anticipate tablet sales last year of (a deeply conservative) 10.3 million units, thanks to stronger than expected iPad sales. And they think iPad will take the ‘lion’s share’ of a market they expect will double in size (to 24.1 million units) this year, despite all those new CES-introduced ‘competitors’.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Smart investors are paying attention to Apple’s [AAPL] rapidly expanding iOS value chain, taking strategic holdings in Apple’s component supply partners, and this last few days has seen markets whisper one name, Skyworks Solutions [SWKS] — will that company drive LTE support to iPhone and iPad 2.0?

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Price conscious UK consumers are already grappling with declining public services and public sector jobs and a huge climb in VAT — perhaps that’s why Orange sold just 1,000 iPads in the first week the products went on sale via the carrier in the UK.

As has been widely-reported, Orange is one of the first UK networks to offer the 3G/Wi-Fi iPad at a subsidized price in the UK to customers signing-up for a 24-month service contract. The subsidy means you can get an iPad for just £199, so long as consumers agree to a £25/month contract.
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Apple isn’t at CES once again this year and as per usual Cupertino’s shadow looms above the giant US trade show, where it seems competitors, including Microsoft, intend introducing their own iPad competitors, even as we learn that existing Android tablets may never get a software upgrade. Some highlights:
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Apple remains the world’s most valuable company (after Exxon) with a market cap that this morning exceeded $300 billion, reports declare. On active trade on the Dow Apple (AAPL) rose $7 to hit a new record intraday high this morning — right now Apple stock sits near $330 per share for a market cap of over $302 billion.
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CES news is beginning to trickle through now, and we anticipate at least some AirPlay-enabled systems from the big audio dynamos will be waiting in the wings; meanwhile, WallWizard will be at the show to demonstrate its range of motorised iPhone/iPad-controlled HDTV mounts.
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Clear discontinued the iSpot personal 4G hotspot for iOS devices yesterday.  The iSpot was easily hacked to work like its more expensive counterpart with all computers and even had trouble with some iPads without hacking.

Clear recently dropped the price of the iSpot by 80% and will continue selling them until they sell out of retail inventory.

Sprint (who own 54% of Clear) is also about to announce a new Mifi device which may also account for the iSpot discontinuation (below).  One major drawback of the iSpot is that it only works in the few spots that have Clear 4G, it doesn’t drop down to 3G if you leave a 4G area.  The new device, which also uses Sprint’s 3G network, does.

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Skype just updated their Skype application for iOS to include video chat functionality. It works both over WiFi and 3G networks and two-way video calling is supported by the iPhone 4, iPod touch 4, and iPhone 3GS. The iPad and third generation iPod touch support one-way video calling. Just like on Apple’s FaceTime application Skype for iPhone will video conference in both portrait and landscape orientations.

Seth and I just tested out the application and it looks very smooth on both ends. It even works in the background but your face gets frozen for the person on the other end (audio still works). Just like with FaceTime there is an option for the iPhone user to display either the front camera’s view, back camera’s or no camera. We have more screenshots of Skype video chat after the break.

We also ran some tests over 3G and it looked very smooth. I was on 3G and Seth was on WiFi and he saw me as crisp as I looked over my WiFi network. My view of him was also smooth and when he pointing his camera at a moving fan that looked smooth as well. Also, we tested it on an iPad (which still is blown up, not a universal binary) and it looked as expected without the camera. When used with an iPhone 3GS you should get the option to see the user’s back camera. Release notes, official promo video, and more screenshots are after the break.

Update: Skype video calls over 3G will use around 3.4 MB of data per minute. We calculated this by looking at our usage info on our iPhone 4 before and after a one minute (timed of course) call. Below are our screenshots:

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Update, we’ve been told (not so nicely) to remove those mold drawings because they are the property of someone else.  We’ve complied.

Some purported iPad 2 cases hit the web over the last few weeks as well as some unconfirmed reports claiming the iPad 2 will gain an iPod-touch inspired design with tapered edges. These cases appear to show a new slot on the bottom for an enhanced speaker system as well as a hole for a back camera. These case designs are still of course unconfirmed to be legitimate but 9to5mac has managed to get a hold of some iPad 2 case mold drawings from an Asian case supplier.

As you can see in these drawings (above, below, and after the break) the edges are clearly tapered  and the iPad 2’s back is slightly contoured like the current iPad and past iPod touch models. These drawings also add confirmation to the back camera reports and our sources say the camera hole size is close to the size of the iPhone 4’s (which may or may not indicate a similar shooter).

Some new information we have discovered through these drawings is a brand new port opening on the left side of the device. We’re not sure what this opening is for but it is there on these latest iPad 2 design schematics. On the drawings there appears to be an SD card going into the port but that could just be a piece of the case mold machine. The latest rumors point to either a mini USB or a full USB port being present on the iPad 2 so it very well could be one or a combination of the three ports.

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Perhaps you’ve been wondering if Apple will feel much impact once those Android and Chrome-powered tablets ship in 2011 — now a pair of reports suggest the magical iPad is set to maintain dominance for some time yet.

Report one tells us LG Display shipped 1.5 million iPad panels in November, while Samsung delivered 1.2 million units, suggesting Apple might have sold nearly three million iPads this month.
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iPad 2.0 activity continues to heat up with the latest report claiming Apple will offer multiple configurations of the new product, with an accent on provision of pervasive Internet access.

Apple is expected to ship over half a million iPad 2.0 units in January with mass production set to begin then, the report claims. It seems Apple will offer Wi-Fi-equipped units alongside UMTS and CDMA-savvy iPads, maximizing the always connected Internet device proposition.
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Facebook welcomed an additional million iPhone owners on Christmas (Facebook for iPhone includes all iOS devices?).  In fact Apple had a pretty impressive December all together. via DF.

According to Setteb.it, Apple will have its Q1 2011 conference call on January 18th.  Tune in here to find out how many Macs and  iOS devices Apple sold during the holiday and perhaps we’ll get another cameo by CEO Steve Jobs.
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been named 2010’s ‘Person of the Year’ even while US President, Barack Obama, speaks up for the wealth of the Apple co-founder.

The Financial Times named Jobs its person of the year, saying the introduction of the iPad marked the moment when the ‘rebound’ in Apple’s fortunes “was complete”.

The iPad is the culmination of an approach that he has seemingly been perfecting for his entire career,” stated the newspaper’s opinion writers.
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From the “I can’t believe this ain’t viral advertising” dept comes the heart-warming tale of Taiwanese pop star, Jimmy Lin, who has posted a pic of himself holding a proper iPad along with a device he claims is the first prototype of an  iPad mini.  (It’s not).  Never mind Steve Jobs recently said that seven inch tablets are “dead on arrival” and that you’d need to sandpaper your fingers down to use them…
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Bloomberg today reports what would have seemed unthinkable a year ago.  Microsoft is building a version of its Windows OS (not Phone 7) for the ARM processor design, the very same that powers Apple’s lineup of iOS devices.

The operating system would give Microsoft another way to attack the market for tablets and phones, where it’s lost ground to Apple Inc. and Google Inc. ARM chips — made by Qualcomm Inc., Texas Instruments Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. — are used in most smartphones, as well as Apple’s best-selling iPad. A full-featured version of Windows for ARM chips is the best way for Microsoft to make a dent in the iPad’s lead, said Robert Breza, a Minneapolis-based analyst for RBC Capital Markets. While Windows is dominant in the personal-computer market, it hasn’t parlayed that into tablet success yet. “They’ve got to come back with a product that’s better than ‘me too’ and is equal if not better in features,” Breza said. He has an “outperform” rating on Microsoft’s stock, which he doesn’t own. “A lot of tablets today are inferior to PCs.”

Microsoft became a licensee of the ARM architecture earlier this year but at the time it seemed to be for embedded devices such as the Zune.  Apple is also an ARM licensee and builds its A4 lineup of chips using ARM designs.

Is this really a good move for Microsoft?  The problem with Windows 7 on tablets hasn’t really been an Intel problem necessarily.  Whatever the case, this has to be bad news for Intel/AMD who now may see competition from ARM processors like the Nvidia Tegra 2 in netbooks running Windows.

Another Question: Will Apple port Mac OS to ARM?
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Well, they have to be doing something over at HP with that $1B acquisition.  According to FoxNews, they are going to announce a (gasp) tablet…

HP will introduce three models of the PalmPad at CES, with minor hardware differences distinguishing them. All three will run a new iteration of the WebOS operating system, version 2.5.1; they’re collectively a spin-off of the never-released HP Slate. A fourth version won’t be shown off at CES, I’m told, but it will be custom made for university students to prove how versatile the machines can be.The consumer version of the PalmPad will run on Sprint’s fast 4G network, but otherwise it has hardware specs nearly identical to Apple’s iPad. There are minor differences, of course: It has a mini HDMI port, for example, while the iPad requires a special dongle for video output. And there are front- and rear-facing cameras (1.3 megapixel and 3 megapixel, respectively), both with LED flashes.The PalmPad is slightly thinner than the iPad with rounded edges closer to the Amazon Kindle. At 1.25 lbs, the PalmPad also sports a USB 3.0 port and a “multi-switch” just like the one on the Palm Pre.

I can’t wait to take advantage of the front facing flash camera.
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