The iPad seems like a pretty good deal in the US, where prices start at $499 (£309), but in the UK it costs from £429, and while the product’s selling like crazy here, a lot of Brits just think the price is too, too high to buy.
Sony introduced a Flash-based movie and TV show repository today called Crackle that is meant for GoogleTV. The good news is that it works well on Mac as well and there is some compelling (and lot of not compelling) content on there from Sony Pictures and Movies.
Obviously because it is Flash based, it doesn’t work on iOS devices (haven’t tried with SkyFire) and it will juice your processor on your Mac, but free full length high quality movies? Hard to argue with that.
Update: commenters say it works with Skyfire!
AT&T is notifying its customers this evening of a settlement for “Internet Taxes” charged to its loyal customers…
COMPUTERWORLD: Apple’s in pole position to reach millions more customers this holiday season: all the consumer reports agree the iPad’s set to dominate CE wish lists this year. A year in which one-in-three Android users would ditch their handset for an iPhone.
Entertaining review of the “first iPad competitor” from Matt Buchanon:
This thing is just a mess. It’s like a tablet drunkenly hooked up with a phone, and then took the fetus swimming in a Superfund cleanup site. The browser is miserable, at least when Flash is enabled. It goes catatonic, scrolling is laggy, and it can get laughably bad. When better browsing is half the reason to go for a larger screen, that’s insanity. Not only does it use a stupid proprietary charging/syncing cable, it won’t charge when you plug it into a laptop. Neither of the cameras are anything to write home about. Costing $699 off-contract is embarrassing when the iPad is $499.
Some pretty impressive displays were shown at FPD 2010 today in Japan.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY_ADCTBKVE&w=640&h=390]
Some of this technology will no doubt find it way into Apple’s future products. Samsung, although they make competing phones and tablets, produce a lot of the internals of Apple’s iOS devices.
Expand
Expanding
Close
According to Hardware Upgrade.it, AMD let a slide (or two) slip during their recent Fusion processor presentation which revealed Apple as a future hardware partner.
But are they talking about CPUs or GPUs? All of the machines above currently use AMD’s ATI GPUs. Perhaps AMD sees some value in Apple’s brand and is using that as leverage.
iMacs use AMD/ATI GPUs
Using the context of the Video (see here) it isn’t clear if AMD means GPUs or CPUs. The Fusion chip is something that would seem to be a better fit for ultra-portable netbooks, something like the new MacBook Air which was Intel chips.
Another Apple slide below:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Apple began unleashing iAds across the world last week, with ads from the service reported to begin appearing on iOS devices outside of the USA. Now a report tells us Apple’s more than happy to explore partnerships in some key geographies to build up its service.
A report claims Apple may have crippled AirPrint before it began, abandoning support for printers shared via a network-connected PC or Mac.
On launch, Apple promised: “AirPrint is Apple’s powerful new printing architecture that matches the simplicity of iOS—no set up, no configuration, no printer drivers and no software to download,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users can simply tap to print their documents or photos wirelessly to an HP ePrint printer or to a printer shared on a Mac or PC.”
Expand
Expanding
Close
Apple’s suppliers in Taiwan are complaining that their profits are being squeezed due to currency fluctuations. Touch-panel supplier, Wintek, estimates that it is losing half a percent off of its margins.
Another firm, Largan Precision Co., a camera-lens supplier for Apple, said a 1 percent appreciation knocks 0.4 point off the measure of profitability.
Expand
Expanding
Close
According to Business Week, BlackBerry’s iPad-competitor, PlayBook, will cost less than $500, making it priced very aggressively against the iPad. Ever since the PlayBook’s introduction in late September it has been dubbed a potential iPad killer. The tablet features a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and has two cameras (front and back). The device features a high-resolution 7 inch screen making it DOA since it apparently won’t include an accessory to shrink its user’s fingers.
Still, BlackBerry’s Playbook is an enticing offering with its fantastic technical specifications, dual cameras, portability, great operating system, and of course the token BlackBerry e-mail client and enterprise integration. RIM’s CEO, Jim Balsillie reportedly said:
“The product will be very competitively priced,” and when asked whether it will be about $500, Balsillie said “no, it will be under that.”
Apple’s iPad starts at $499 for the base model that includes WiFi and 16 GB of flash-based storage. When RIM’s CEO was asked if his tablet would be under $500 he could very well mean $499 or something in the $399 to $479 range. If RIM placed their entry PlayBook into the market at $399 that would surely give the iPad a run for its money. Only time will tell how well the BlackBerry PlayBook does but we think many will agree the PlayBook could make a nice dent into the tablet market with a sub-$500 pricing point.
COMPUTERWORLD: We’ve talked a lot about how the iPad is making Apple some space in the enterprise. On launch, critics slammed the device for neither being fit for enterprise use nor for use as a netbook replacement. They were wrong. With iOS 4.2 the iPad is an even better fit for business. I’ve taken a short look at what’s coming inside the upgrade, and identified five high-level iPad apps for business users.
For a cool $70, you can now connect your iOS device directly to your HDMI TV via the USB Fever HDMI dongle. Sounds nice, but for an extra $27 you can stream HD content to your HDMI TV with AirPlay (released soon) and AppleTV. That sounds nicer.
Adobe has introduced a public beta of Audition for Mac, its professional audio toolset for recording, mixing, editing and mastering.
Sure is getting cold here. Soon I’ll be wearing gloves to keep warm, and that’s where my troubles will begin as people call me up on my iPhone – my touch-sensitive smartphone doesn’t respond well to a gloved hand. (I’d use mittens but I think they look passe). What’s to do? Looks like helps on the way, because Japan’s Hitachi Displays has developed a projection-type touch panel capable of detecting insulators such as plastic and cloth.
Expand
Expanding
Close
We’re living in an iPad world, in which Apple holds 95 percent of the tablet market and nearly everyone owning one of the devices says they’re pretty satisfied. But now the iPad is breaking out, and entering corporate, enterprise and medical industries with a vengeance.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Apple has iWork 11 ready for release but is holding back its introduction to debut the software along with the Mac App Store, itself scheduled for launch by early next year.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Update: Barron’s is reporting that CEO Mark Pundsack says the assets of the company are still up for sale and Apple did not in fact purchase the company.
“The rumor is false,” Wi-Gear CEO Mark Pundsack said via e-mail in response to an inquiry from Tech Trader Daily. “Wi-Gear and its IP are still available for sale.”
Macworld also spoke to the CEO who said “I wish”
We’re reaching out to our source for clarification and will report back shortly. The confusion could have come from one of the co-founders of Wi-Gear joining up with Apple.
Update 2: Our source assumed that the movement of Wi-Gear co-founder Michael Kim to Apple was an indication of a purchase. We unknowingly used this same event to “verify” his story. We tried to get ahold of Pundsack but were unable to. We’re sorry, we were wrong.
A source tells 9to5Mac that Apple scooped up a small Bluetooth wireless headphone designer in San Francisco two months ago. The company, called Wi-Gear, made three generations of A2DP stereo headphones called iMuffs as well as a Bluetooth 2.0 adapter for older iPhones and iPods that don’t support Bluetooth 2.0. Wi-Gear’s products were specifically geared to be used with Apple iOS devices.
The company is now closed…
Adobe’s Kevin Lynch on Apple’s stance with Flash:
“I just think there’s this negative campaigning going on, and, for whatever reason, Apple is really choosing to incite it, and condone it.”
I wish he said “fanning the flamewar” so I could have joked about how Flash is keeping my MacBook fans on putting out my CPU fire.
Seriously though. It almost seems like he is unaware how bad Flash is on the CPU. Comparing performance favorably with HTML5 is borderline nutty.
COMPUTERWORLD: There’s been some talk on Lion’s new user interfaces and the removal of active indicators to show active applications in the Dock. Does this mean the Dock itself is set for change? Today a new European patent filing has emerged which describes an all-new system of “scrollable menus and toolbars.”
Toshiba has introduced new solid state storage that’s compatible with the MacBook Air but offers up to 256GB of capacity.
These are the same as those used in the MacBook Air, which are also manufactured by Toshiba. Apple’s association with Toshiba is extensive. Toshiba made the hard drives at the center of the original iPod range, for example).
Expand
Expanding
Close
Currently, the only thing limiting OSX Server running virtualized on generic hardware is Apple’s insistance that it only run on Apple hardware. VMWare, VirtualBox and Parallels have complied and made it impossible for OSX to run on anything but Xserves and Mac Pros.
Apple has allowed the virtualization of OSX on Apple’s own hardware since a change of EULA in Leopard.
But perhaps Apple is loosening its hold on the OSX Server? An interesting tidbit from Virtualization.info shows there is some code which could indicate that Apple OSX Server might be made to run as a VM on its vSphere Cloud infrastructure software.
Expand
Expanding
Close
An interesting little exchange of words went down at the XSanity forums this weekend. After Friday’s news of the death of the Xserve, Eric Zelenka, Apple Senior Worldwide Product Marketing Manager for server, storage, and management products, chimed in with something to rest everyone’s beating hearts.
Apple remains committed to the development of server products, technologies and services. Today’s announcement does not impact the future of Xsan or server software on Mac OS X.
A little over nine hours later, he deleted the message. Why?
COMPUTERWORLD: Strange days, on the one hand you see Apple discontinue its main enterprise product (the Xserve) in the same week as we see the company’s enterprise credentials climb a notch or two, and we also learn the company’s looking to mobile payment solutions in order to bring people without credit cards inside its future iWallet economy.