iPad (2021)

Everyone’s favorite iPad insurance provider Square Trade decided to waste a few perfectly good tablets (well one is) to drive home the message: Dropping glass screens on cement will break them.

Conveniently, Square Trade just happens to be in the business of insuring iPads and other tablets (Shocking, we know).
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Looking at the graph above it really feels like Apple is taking huge leaps in growth while the rest of the industry is happy to be taking baby steps.  iSuppli today says that with the help of the iPad, Apple passed Samsung and HP in 2010 to become the largest consumer of semiconductors in the world.  While 2010 is relatively close still, 2011 will have Apple pulling away from the pack.

Apple in 2010 bought $17.5 billion worth of semiconductors, a 79.6 percent increase from $9.7 billion in 2009. This represented the highest rate of increase among the world’s Top 10 OEM semiconductor buyers, allowing Apple to rise up two positions to take the No. 1 rank in 2010. Apple in 2009 was the third-largest semiconductor purchaser, behind Hewlett-Packard Co. of the United States and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. of South Korea; it was sixth in 2008.

NAND Flash for iOS devices was a big contributor to Apple’s rise.

“Apple’s surge to leadership in semiconductor spending in 2010 was driven by the overwhelming success of its wireless products, namely the iPhone and the iPad,” said Wenlie Ye, Analyst for IHS. “These products consume enormous quantities of NAND flash memory, which is also found in the Apple iPod. Because of this, Apple in 2010 was the world’s No. 1 purchaser of NAND flash.”Apple is likely to continue increasing its semiconductor spending during the coming years at an above-average pace, allowing the company to extend its lead over Hewlett-Packard, Samsung and other OEMs in 2011 and beyond. In 2011 Apple’s semiconductor spending is expected to exceed that of Hewlett-Packard by $7.5 billion, up from $2.4 billion in 2010.

Via iClarified
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TUAW notes that inside the USB device profiles of iOS 5 are profiles for two never before seen devices called “iPad3,1” and “iPad3,2.”  Obviosuly Apple is going to be making more iPads in the future and devices often show up in these profiles many months before they are delivered.  However, there was some speculation earlier this year that an enhanced iPad 2 or iPad 3 with a Retina display would be released in time for the holidays.

Most analysts currently estimate that the next version of the iPad will hit at the beginning of next year so.

Interestingly, TUAW notes that there are no new iPod touches listed.  Touches usually are released in the Fall, but with no new iPhone hardware announced or released at WWDC, Apple’s traditional hardware release schedule has been put in question.  
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Apple updated iBooks to 1.3 today for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.  Most notable is the read-aloud feature included in select children’s books from the iBookstore.

The read-aloud feature uses a real narrator to read the book to you, and in some books, it will even highlight the words as you read along.

Initially, it isn’t certain whether or not the narrator will be a (Nuance?) Text to speech voice or if the audio is included by the developers.

The new functionality isn’t just for children’s books. Enhanced books can now automatically play audio or video included with the book.

Apple is now going beyond the other eBookstores offering innovation and functionality that differentiates books into the realm of apps.  Apple now offers Books directly in iTunes as part of the 10.3 update yesterday as well.

The 1.3 update also offers some bugfixes and enhancements from previous versions. More below:
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Image credit: Engadget

Apple has kicked off its highly anticipated San Francisco developer conference with a Stevenote. As we’re  learning more about iOS 5, Lion and iCloud and fastening our seatbelt for a possible “one more thing”, other details emerge as Jobs & Co. provide us with some updates related to Apple’s business metrics. Here are your key takeaways…

• three quarters of all Macs shipped today are notebooks
• the Mac App Store has become the #1 place where users get their Mac apps over the past six motnhs
• Apple sold 200 million iOS devices to date, which includes iPhones, iPod touches, iPads and Apple TVs
• 14 billion app downloads so far2

As Steve Jobs and other Apple executives reveal more product news, we’ll report them in our complete WWDC 2011 coverage. You may also want to follow us @9to5mac for the latest from the keynote.

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Amazon today lists the Walter Issacson authorized Biography of Steve Jobs, the one commissioned by the Apple CEO last year.  Issacson will have had three years of access to the normally reclusive Steve Jobs.  Listed at 448 pages, the book will be published by Simon & Schuster.

Product Description

From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In iSteve: The Book of Jobs, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs’ professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs’ family members, key colleagues from Apple and its competitors, iSteve is the definitive portrait of the greatest innovator of his generation.

About the Author

Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and ofKissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.

Before you get too excited however, the book doesn’t ship for nine months (March 2012). But even so, it will likely be a big hit and as you know with iPads, it is good to get in early.

The iBookstore has a placeholder as well:

Full Res book cover below:

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From the WTF dept:

The Shanghai Daily is reporting that a 17-year old sold a kidney so he could buy an iPad 2.

“I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it,” said the boy surnamed Zheng in Huaishan City. “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.

His mom later found out (probably because he was rocking a new white iPad 2 and a huge scar) and called the police.

The hospital claimed they had no idea about Zheng’s surgery because the department that did the surgery had been contracted to a Fujian businessman.

Suddenly, waiting in line overnight doesn’t seem so insane anymore.
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http://www.viddler.com/simple/30fe0cca/

According to Business Insider, Apple COO Tim Cook told Goldman analyst Bill Shope, “he sees no reason why the tablet market shouldn’t eclipse the PC market over the next several years.”

That is right exactly in line with Steve Jobs comments of a year ago.  Shocking, we know.
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Apple looks like it is tightening its grip on the “App” and “Mac” naming rights area.  Last month, it forced App4mac to change its name.  Sure Apple is now in the Mac Apps game but the company in question is six years old and named itself App4Mac two years before iOS turned Applications into apps.  Patrice Calligaris, CEO writes to tell us:

On May 6, we received this letter from Apple lawyers. On June 1st, our company become adnX.com.  Before we were app4mac.com during six years and it has never been a problem.

We complied only for the first case as other two cases are silly. We fixed the graphics that they did not like.

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The laptop mods keep coming but this one might be our favorite so far.

The new Crux Case Loaded comes with an extra battery and working bluetooth trackpad and will be available in July for $250. Older models without are a somewhat more reasonable $150.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/16274294 w=670&h=377]

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Net Applications is out today with a new survey that paints iPad’s web usage share 53 times greater compared to Android slates. As always, their findings stem from tracking browser and operating system usage across their global network of more than 40,000 websites so you should take them with a pinch of salt. Of course, iPad’s web usage lead might progressively decrease as the Android camp carries out their tablet carpet bombing. For now, though, iPad is king. Now, onto the numbers, more amazing facts plus nice embedded chart from Net Applications…

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Twitter’s CEO Dick Costello just went off stage at D9 with the announcement that Twitter would be doing native photo-sharing. Obviously he didn’t release Apple’s plans but many think Twitter is set to be a lower level service in Lion and iOS 5.

From the Twitter blog:

Today we’re starting to roll out a completely new version of Twitter search. Not only will it deliver more relevant Tweets when you search for something or click on a trending topic, but it will also show you related photos and videos, right there on the results page. It’s never been easier to get a sense of what’s happening right now, wherever your curiosity takes you.

We’re hearing rumblings that Apple will let you Tweet from any app with hooks from Lion and iOS.  If so, you’ll have a Twitter login in the general settings, almost like we  had for Facebook in iOS 4.

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So HP(alm)’s TouchPad is about as close to an iPad as you can get without giving Apple any money (exact same sized display/form factor, etc).  HP, beyond the original demo, hasn’t shown much about the product.  However, at Sandisk’s booth (who are supplying the Touchpad’s storage), they were giving out full demos:

I can’t imagine this demo will stay live long but enjoy it while you can and just wonder how it’s “Card-based” OS will compare to an iPad 2 running iOS 5.
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More fun from the D9 event: Kara Swisher told Eric Schmidt that Steve Jobs told her “to do more privacy stories on Google” and that “Android is a probe in your pocket.”  The conversation would have been off the record until now. More at 9to5Google.com
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More trouble in Microsoft land as Bloomberg reports that Microsoft device manufacturers are complaining about the software giant’s meddling in their affairs:

Microsoft Corp.  is putting “troublesome” restrictions on makers of processors used to run the coming Windows tablet-computer operating system, Acer Inc.  Chairman and Chief Executive Officer J.T. Wang said.

“They’re really controlling the whole thing, the whole process,” Wang said at the Computex trade show in Taipei without identifying the restrictions. Chip suppliers and PC makers “all feel it’s very troublesome,” he said.

Can you even imagine a PC manufacturer standing up to Microsoft publicly in a pre-iPad world?  While Acer is moving to Google for many of their tablet products, and even ChromeOS for one of their notebooks, Acer is still one of the three biggest Windows PC manufacturers on the planet and of course is expected to make Windows 8 slates…
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Apple dropped prices on current MacBook Air refurbs last night so that the base model now starts at just $829.  That’s $30 lower than yesterday and could mean Apple’s clearing some inventory out for a refresh, perhaps as soon as WWDC.  Or, perhaps not.

Thanks Jay!
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From 9to5Toys.com:

Today only, MacUpdate has FX Studio Pro for $19.99.  That’s half off of retail and the lowest price we’ve ever seen for this powerful post-processing photo editor for both professional photographers and amateurs.

We reviewed FX Studio Pro for Mac here last week.  It is on the Mac App Store for $40.
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Besides the extremely unfortunate loss of life, Bloomberg posts a dire scenario on iPad production laid out by IHS iSuppli this evening:

The drop in manufacturing will depend on how long the plant is closed following a May 20 explosion that killed three people and injured at least 15, according to ISuppli. The total could be even greater if the suspension of operations at the facility lasts longer than a month, the firm said.

Another Foxconn factory in Shenzhen that produces iPads may not be able to make up for the lost output, ISuppli said. The manufacturing breakdown may lead Apple to miss ISuppli’s forecast of 7.4 million iPad 2 shipments in the quarter ending in June, the El Segundo, California-based research firm said.

Not all analysts are as down with Apple Bull Shaw Wu saying there may not be cause to worry.  He said in a report today that the concerns are “overdone” and that production at other facilities is being ramped up to make up for the shortfalls. He expects Apple to sell 6.8 million iPads in the June quarter.

Related articles

• Foxconn closes all of its electronic parts polishing workshops for 2 days (9to5mac.com)
• The Foxconn explosion might affect up to one third of total iPad 2 output (9to5mac.com)
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scene from Foxconn explosion

According to the WSJ, Foxconn has suspended production across many of its plants in China for two days while the government investigates the explosion that killed three people and injured many more.

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., a Taiwan-based company better known by the trade name Foxconn that operates dozens of factories across China, said it closed all of its workshops that handle polishing for electronic parts and products pending further inspections.

At issue appears to be the flammable aluminum dust that comes from polishing parts like the iPad 2’s aluminum back.  A student group out of Hong Kong called Sacom published a report on the dangers of flammable airborne aluminum dust in a report on May 6, saying workers complained about inhaling the dust and about poor ventilation. It isn’t clear whether the workshops referred to in Sacom’s report include the site of the accident.

The news is another setback for Foxconn, which is barely past a recent outbreak of public suicides.

Should the Chengdu production capacity not be restored anytime soon, Hon Hai may have to hire more expensive labor in Shenzhen, said Arthur Hsieh, an analyst at UBS.

While Foxconn has dominated the contract manufacturing industry until now, analysts say Hon Hai competitors like Singapore’s Flextronics Inc. and Taiwan’s Quanta Computer Inc. could try to woo some of its customers, including Apple.

The prospective plant closures and their affect on Apple’s iPad were assessed by Digitimes earlier today. 
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Although the previous generation iPod nano had curved glass (it wasn’t universally loved), the Samsung Nexus S was the first mainstream smartphone with curved glass.  If Digitimes is right, the iPhone 5 may be the second (and likely more popular).

…the latest being circulated around the supply chain in Taiwan is that Apple is going to adopt a curved cover glass for its next generation model, according to industry sources.

That would seem to fly in the face of recent reports that the iPhone 5 would be very similar to the iPhone 4 in appearance.  Digitimes has found what they think is anecdotal evidence.

However, in order to push forward the production of curved glass, Apple reportedly has purchased 200-300 glass cutting machines to be used by glass makers, said the sources.

The glass slicing machines are currently being stored at associated assembly plants and will be brought online once yield rates for the production of curved glass reaches a satisfactory level, the sources revealed.

Although Samsung is a competitor wrapped in lawsuits with Apple, it is also a major supplier and obviously has experience with curved glass screens.
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An Apple Store Manager relayed to us that the new iPad 2 displays are able to turn into “normal iPads” with a few swipes in secret combination.  To find out if true, I went to the Soho store and tried it out.  Yep, it works.  The button still doesn’t work so it is easy to get yourself stuck – like in Email Setup below:

I’m not going to post the gesture combination unless it hits the web but it does exist and Store managers know it.

Anyway, the moral of the story: Those are normal iPad 2s under the glass, even though they have different part numbers.
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