You know it will happen when Apple ships iPad 2.0 next year, but clever coders are already seeking slick tricks to bring a little something like FaceTime support to existing iPad models.
LG just announced their upcoming Apple TV competitor called the ‘Smart TV Upgrader’. The device will be officially unveiled at CES next week and will go on sale during the second quarter of 2011. It will bring a TV web browser (ugh) as well as “premium content” (shows and movies) to your TV including ‘LG apps’. If this works out for LG we are probably not to far away from an App Store for the Apple TV.
“The market for Smart TVs is set to take off this year, and the ST600 offers a perfect entry point,” said Havis Kwon, President and CEO of LG Home Entertainment Company. “With the LG Smart TV Upgrader, we’re taking the excitement and convenience of Smart TV and adding in LG’s trademark ease-of-use because we see a significant audience who are interested but not interested enough to buy a whole new TV.”
The real question is: Is this the mythical Plex Box? Plex and LG signed a huge deal to work together earlier this year.
Above is a picture of the device and here are its technical specifications (and more info):
If the leaked Skype mobile video help pages weren’t enough, Skype now has a full blown teaser page demonstrating a bunch of mobile video examples. Enough! Give us the goods already.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMltvlqEM54&w=670&h=400]
Apple’s iOS has won a big thumbs-up from the Angry Birds themselves, who say that when it comes to mobile devices, Apple’s going to excel against the rest.
“Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right,” said Peter Vesterbacka, Angry Birds development lead.
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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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Tran says that [Android] phones made from the BCM2157 chipset will retail for under $100 and may dip as low as $75. Those devices should debut in just 3-6 months (and we might hear about them next month at CES).
That means that popular pre-paid Android devices that currently can be found as low as $180 will drop by half in the next half year.
Apple’s low-end strategy so far has been to offer the last year’s model for $99 with a two year contract. That contract is at least worth $350 (AT&T’s ETF) which puts old retail iPhones at $450. Buying an iPhone 4 off contract costs $650.
What’s more important is that with Apple’s AT&T agreement, you have exactly one data plan option in the US (soon to grow). Even with Verizon and maybe even Sprint and T-Mobile, there isn’t going to be a $25/month data plan for the iPhone anytime soon. For the budget conscious, Android is the only smartphone game in town.
So how does Apple respond?
Ever get the feeling that these companies like to mess with us? After the reported Skype iPhone video conferencing ‘leaked help document’ Skype took the document offline. Today however, it is back up with some new company joining in the fun:
Verizon.
So there you have it: Skype, Verizon, iPhone. CES. Join us for coverage on Jan 6th.
Also, Skype is hyping an iPad only version of their software as well.
Even though the iPhone application is fully compatible with the iPad, we’re still always striving to bring the best to our Skype users, which is why we’re developing a Skype application designed specifically for the iPad. Watch the website for further updates.
It appears that an upcoming update to Skype will allow iPhone and iPod touch users to video chat with desktop Skype users or other iPhones (an iPod touch 3rd Gen) users with Skype installed. Skype hasn’t released the software just yet but maybe they have a Christmas surprise?
Help page saved below.
From the Toys Section:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT_CUPaiRbQ&w=640&h=385]
Today only, Civilization V is on MUPromo at 30% off ($34.99). Civ V is probably the biggest game release of 2010 for the Mac, and it just came out about a month ago… and this is the lowest price since its release.
Since this is a Steam game, buyers get both the Mac and Windows versions.
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From the Toys section:
Amazon has a small special Christmas gift for shoppers today: $2 in free music. Simply head here, click the Button and enter the Code “GIVEMP3S”. $2 will be automatically applied to your account. Use it to buy holiday music or send a small last minute gift to someone? MP3 Gift ideas here.
Earlier this month former Apple VP and current Palm lead at HP Jon Rubinestein talks about the mobile landscape including Apple’s iOS and Android.
http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-0i2GoXd3w&w=670&h=527]
Good news from billionaire Richard Branson’s iPad publishing venture — Project: you can download Project 1 for free for the holidays. And, as this video shows, the winner of the title’s competition to design the front cover of issue two has been announced.
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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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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGjKrEHRsFM&w=670&h=401]
Concerned about net neutrality and hold a little inner fear that one day access to the Web will involve tiered access with the ‘real’ Web almost impossible to get to?
Then be glad Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has taken time to tell an FCC net neutrality hearing to do the right thing and enact net neutrality rules that favor the people.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToACDIXTzo0&w=640&h=385]
Human domination is only a few notes away. Just kidding Parrots! We love you! via Engadget.
We just love surprises here at 9to5Mac, from the news that the MacBook Pro is the biggest-selling laptop on Amazon at time of writing (second-best in the UK) to the peachy-keen deals on Apple Protection there, but that’s not what this story is about — this surprise comes from the developers at Occipital who have uncovered secret augmented reality capabilities within Mobile Safari for iOS 4.2, woot!!
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Henry Ford may famously be thought to have said, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black,” as he invented mass production, but now it looks like the veteran auto company has an iPhone fixation, revealing support for the Apple device in future generations of its vehicles running the Ford Sync AppLink platform.
Some may note my determination that Apple has a story to tell in the automobile industry — perhaps partnerships will make this story thrive. So, what will this mean?
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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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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple’s gearing up for a busy, busy year in 2011. We’re already expecting the iPhone 5 and iPad 2.0, we’re looking forward to the Mac App Store and more. So what events and product releases might feature in Apple’s 2011 schedule?
Even while it emerges Google’s Google TV plans seem to be foundering (FIRE SALE!), Apple has announced that its new Apple TV will ship its millionth unit later this week.
While many hope the A4 chip inside Apple TV might be enabled to run some apps one day, many also consider the Netflix support within Apple TV to be the big win for sales.
Press Release follows:
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So much for Thinking Different™: Looks like Apple may have joined Amazon, Banc of America, Paypal and other corporations which have evicted Wikileaks from their servers — the briefly-available Wikileaks app for iPhone and iPad has been kicked out of the App Store.
The Time person of the year public vote-winning Julian Assange-founded Wikileaks has attracted controversy with the leak of a series of US diplomatic cables which illustrate the seamier side of international diplomacy.
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