Staples has the 16GB SanDisk SDHC Card for $14.99 with free shipping. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen for a 16GB SDHC card. Class 4 represents a minimum speed of around 4MB/sec.
The Apple Store dropped its price on the factory-refurbished, 1st-generation Apple iPad 16GB Wi-Fi (pictured), model no. MB292LL/A, to $299 with free shipping. That’s $30 under our June mention and is $184 under the lowest total price we could find for a new one. (It’s also the lowest we’ve ever seen for any iPad.) 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.
Also available is the factory-refurbished, 1st-generation Apple iPad 32GB Wi-Fi, model no. MB293LL/A, for $399. That’s another price-low, this time by $121. Both units carry a 1-year Apple warranty, the same as new units.
There is also speculation that Apple has held discussions with LG Display the Company that makes display screens for MAC products, about the possibility of getting access to a new 55 LG OLED panel that will be used in a new Apple TV that will be capable of delivering music, Video & TV shows over an IP network.
On Friday LG said that they will launch a limited production OLED TV late in 2012.
There are no shortage of people advocating for an integrated Apple television, but certainly the leader is Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster who expects one next year.
As far as the big display makers are concerned, Apple’s relationship with LG is probably the strongest. LG makes iPod Touch and iPhone Retina Displays and Apple secured a $500 million dollar investment in LG displays in 2009. The net of that was a temporary exclusive on the panels for the 27-inch display that Apple’s iMacs and now Thunderbolt Displays now use. Sony makes OLEDs as well but doesn’t have a strong relationship with Apple, at least as far as displays are concerned. The other big OLED maker is Samsung, who is now tangled with Apple in patent disputes.
If Apple does do a TV, it will likely have some sort of game-changer tech innovation that Apple could exclusively own for a period of time. A 55-inch OLED would probably qualify even though yields will be low and prices will be astronomical during the ramp up.
As with just about any new Apple product release, iFixit has torn apart the Thunderbolt cable. Why a boring cable? iFixit has revealed that the new Thunderbolt cable actually has active chips inside, making transfers faster.
We found two Gennum GN2033 chips in the connector, one on each side. They were flanked by other, much smaller chips that surely added to the cable’s cost: two chips labeled S6A 1JG on one side, and chips labeled 1102F SS8370 and 131 3S on the other. Of course, there were tons of little resistors (providing impedance as needed) all around the larger chips.
Thunderbolt’s release on MacBook Pros and iMacs should be followed by new Macs coming soon. Inside the cable chip housing below Expand Expanding Close
As if yellow tinting wasn’t enough, some early adopters are reporting dead pixels on their brand new iPad 2 and other spooky stories. Matt is our north Texas reader and he sent this in:
The iPhone repair experts at iFixyouri have determined that most of the weight savings in the iPad 2 – a fifth of a pound, is in the LCD and Glass assembly.
If we break that down even further, the iPad 1 LCD/Glass is almost half the weight of the original iPad.
iPad 1 front half(LCD & Glass assembly) – 347.90g iPad 1 back half – 364.70g
However, breaking down the iPad 2, we find a much lighter glass assembly accounts for most of the weight loss. The glass we found out last night is 27% thinner than the original iPad. Eliminating the frame that the glass sits on, using thinner LCD and thinner glass, Apple saved 84.7g. That makes up for 75% of the weight reduction.
iPad 2 front half(LCD & Glass) – 263.20g iPad 2 back half – 337.40g
Apple was able to shave almost 30 grams off of the rest of the device, and with a slightly bigger battery, that is significant. But the lightness you feel is mostly the glass weight savings.
Our report on the iPad 2 glass from over a month ago first detailed Apple’s effort to save weight in the LCD/Glass assembly.
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… Expand Expanding Close
In case you’ve any doubt left, you can forget the notion of AMOLED screens in the next-generation iPad, there simply aren’t enough components to go round — indeed, Apple competitors who made the leap to the tech are already facing steep component shortages.
There’s an inevitability about all this. Even as Apple competitors attempt to leapfrog iOS devices by fielding more advanced technologies in their gadgets, they forget the need to serve mass market products up in reliable quantity. Expand Expanding Close
Reutersreports that Apple and Toshiba are working together on a plant to make displays for iOS devices.
Toshiba Corp will spend about 100 billion yen ($1.19 billion) to build a factory for making small LCD panels, mainly to supply to Apple Inc’s iPhones, the Nikkei business daily said.The company’s wholly owned unit, Toshiba Mobile Display Co, will construct the facility in Ishikawa prefecture and the plant will churn out low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels, which allow for high-resolution images, the paper said.Work on the plant will start by early next year, with the production due to begin in the second half of 2011, Nikkei said.Toshiba Mobile Display already makes low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels at a facility in the prefecture and its monthly production capacity of 8.55 million units is projected to more than double with the new factory, the daily said. Apple will invest in a portion of the investment for the factory, the Nikkei said.
What’s interesting is that current LCD display leaders from Korea,Samsung and LG (maker of the Retina Display), are not only competing with Apple but also selling products that go into Apple products to others. For instance, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the WWDC audience that he thought that Apple would have the lead in displays for years with the Retina, yet Sharp and other manufacturers released Android devices with the same LG display within months of the iPhone. LG also had a display deal with Apple and gave Apple a few month head start on those awesome 27″ panels before giving them to Dell as well.
Samsung, who make the A4 CPU and RAM for Apple’s iOS products, has been severely constrained with its high end Super-AMOLED display that powers its Galaxy S phones. Those phones have been the primary high-end Android competition for the iPhone.
Perhaps Apple is trying to move away from doing business with its hardware competitors.
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