Apple sets earnings news for April 24

Apple will let us know on April 24 whether it's doing fabulously, pretty darn well, or -- the horror -- just so-so.
That's when the company will reveal its revenue and earnings for its second fiscal quarter, the one in which it released its new iPad. Consumers scooped up 3 million of those devices in the first weekend alone, in what Apple called "the strongest iPad launch yet." Not too shabby for a tablet that has come to define and dominate the marketplace and popular perception.
Apple surely has quite a head of steam built up. This morning, J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz boosted his iPad forecast for the March-ending quarter to 13.8 million units, and he likewise upped his estimates for iPhone sales to 31.1 million devices.
For the preceding quarter, which ran through the end of December, Apple reported revenue of $46.33 billion and profits of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per share.
Moskowitz also raised his price target for Apple shares to $715, up from an earlier target of $625, because of "mid-term catalysts," including coming refreshes to the iPhone and MacBook lines, and greater penetration into Asia-Pacific markets. Another analyst, Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets, yesterday boldly set a target of $1,001.
Such are the expectations that Apple will continue its steamroller-on-steroids success.
Apple's shares are trading at around $630 this morning. The company's stock crossed the $400 barrier just at the end of 2011, and it hasn't looked back since.

Apple 8-inch iPad Test – Report By WSJ

WSJ (Wall Street Journal) draw closer attention on Apple 8-inch iPad testing. That Apple is currently testing a smaller version of the iPad and Cupertino’s planning to produce a smaller, 8-inch slate to partner its 9.7-inch flagship that, if it ever sees the light of day, would compete with the highly successful Kindle Fire. It’ll pack a screen with a resolution close to the 1024 x 768 display on the current model.

This model might also run on LTE produced by AU Optronics and LG Display, as test device with the same screen resolution as the current iPad 2, which will apparently be replaced with the iPad 3’s high-res “retina display” possibly by March launch.

Apple wants to expand its product pipeline to maintain its leading position in the tablet market by releasing a cheaper model iPad to boost its demand to those on a budget. The Fire’s success suggests a big market for a shrunk-down iPad, if the price shrinks as well.

Does the New iPad Have Wi-Fi Reception Problems? (Update 2)

Users are reporting new problems with the new iPad: the Wi-Fi seems to be a lot weaker than the iPad 2, the iPhone or MacBooks, according to numerous reports on AppleCare support thread. Could this be another antennagate? Have you experienced the same?
Updated with new information on this apparently very real problem.
This AppleCare support thread started like this:

I am in a hotel with my laptop and new ipad3. The laptop wifi reception is as strong as it gets, but the iPad only registers a weak signal. Anyone else having similar problems? Any suggestions?

From there, the answers started to pour in with people reporting the same problem and comparing it to other Apple devices. There are already 63 replies in that thread. Some of them:

Same here ipad2 has twice the wifi range with the same settings as the ipad3. The screens nice but I may return mine if this is the way they all are.

Same here! Will not hold WIFI for more than a few minutes. Two MacBooks and iPhone working fine from same router. Ready to return iPad!!!!!

Same problem. Have the Decorah Eagles live cam running on my MacPro, Mac desktop, and Mac Air on home network no problem. The New IPad - continually loading with occasional brief connection. THIS IS A PROBLEM APPLE YOU NEED TO FIX IT!
Thank you.

And it goes on and on. Of course, this is not proof that there's a generalized problem with the iPad's Wi-Fi connectivity. But it's a strong indication that something may be wrong, at least in some manufacturing batches. The random sample is too high to think otherwise. [AppleCare Forums via AppleInsider]
Update: One of the commenters in the Apple forums had this to say here:

I'm one of the people referenced by Jesus Diaz in his story today on wifi issues. It's not a fabrication, and it's happening geographically across the globe, judging by the comments on the Apple forum. I switched out my iPad 3 three times, and all had the same problem.
Side by side with iPad 2, using speedtest, a government site and a Danish testing site, the wifi connectivity speeds of the new iPad were 1/10th to 1/2 of iPad 2, most often about 1/4 the speed. When you're adjacent to the router, speeds are fine. But as you move away, say, to the bedroom, like I did, my iPad 2 was blazing fast, and I had trouble getting a connection with the iPad 3.
One of my iPad 3's I got from Apple online. The other 3 exchanges were from Glendale, Ca. I saw posts on the forum from across the u.s., and England.
And today, the frequency of the posts is accelerating quickly. I was one of the first posts, almost as soon as I got the iPad 3, over the weekend.

Update 2: Another reader told us a quite enlightening story that happened to him at an Apple Store's Genius bar:

I spent 90 min in the store. We compared the speed on the 3 and my 2. Wasn't a dramatic difference (because we were in the back of the store, closer to the router mothership!) But still there was a difference.
They did an exchange—but we all decided to test the new iPad 3.
We tested it, and still there was a difference - about 2/3 the strength. It wasn't that big.
Then the clerk suggested we try another machine to compare two 3's—and my 2.
When we went to the front of the store—at the entryway to the mall—I was vindicated! Because the signal was weaker—the the 2 was flying—getting 12 or 15—while the 3 was lagging at 3 or 4.
So the manager was called over. It was decided to swap it for yet another 3.
Tested it again and it was still the same problem.
But now everyone was aware that there is a problem with the 3.
Bottom line: I returned it, got my money back - and am back to the 2. It's not as sharp, but it's fast! So, I'll wait a month or so, and see if they manage to improve the wifi issue.

Have you noticed this problem? Have you compared your new iPad's Wi-Fi signal to your other Apple or non-Apple devices? Tell us in the comments.

A New iPad Annihilated in a Storm of Lasers and Flame

It's only human to want to destroy beautiful things. We smash temples, palaces, vases—sometimes you just need to let loose. Now, here's an iPad being lasered and torched into a flaming heap.
Wicked Laser enthusiast and proficient hater of objects Lowell Niles put together this little video, in which he uses a terrifying selection of beams to burn apart a brand new iPad. Make sure to stick around for the part where two flashlights melt their way through the iPad, producing great plumes of what you can only assume are toxic fumes that spared Niles' life long enough for him to email us.

Maybe the New iPad Is Hot Because Its Processor Is 210% Huger

Apple's unapologetically selling a new iPad that'll go up to 116 degrees in your hands while playing a game. Maybe they should have done something about that, yeah. But the tablet's new processor is so massive, we shouldn't be surprised.
Chipworks, which compared the new hotness (am I right?) on the right to the first iPad's A4 processor on left, has a pretty striking comparison on its hands:

The Apple A4, which by all accounts is still commercially viable given the price of used Apple products on craigslist, measured in at 53.3 mm². Only two (and a half?) generations later, we have the Apple A5X weighing in at 165 mm² – a whopping 210% larger.

It's worth noting that the A5X is still built using a 45 nm fabrication process—which in human English refers to the size of the tiniest parts each chip is made out of. The smaller the number, the more transistors can be packed onto a processor, which generally translates into a more efficient, cooler chip. Apple didn't make its CPU more sophisticated in order to crank out more retina display-filling power—it just made it humungous. [Chipworks via Cult of Mac]

iPad 3 Review: Better Than Anything Else, but Kind of a Letdown

There are many things the new iPad is:

• A lovely object
• A spec bump
• The future of home computing
• The best tablet on the market
• And there are many things the iPad New is not. But we're going to skip right to the end of that list and hit you with the main point:
  
• It is not worthy of a press conference.
• We've spent more than a week with this thing, and yes, the screen is lovely. That A5X processor is a tab-loading, game-rendering beast. Yes, the optional stupid fast LTE connection smokes even my leveled-up home cable connection. And yes: It is pretty. But if you've owned—or even played with—an iPad before, Cupertino's new hotness will leave you cold. It's an upgrade. It feels like an optional configuration rather than something, shall we say... resolutionary. And that, frankly, is a bummer.
  

  Why it Matters

  Make no mistake: This is the best tablet any amount of money can buy: the successor to the best tablet money could buy, which was, in turn, the successor to the best tablet money could buy way back when Steve Jobs was alive and Palm was alive and Android was still a scrappy upstart. But Palm and Steve Jobs are both dead, and Android is a no-foolin' juggernaut now. There are more expensive and more powerful and faster tablets to be bought. But they're substandard.
  Another year has passed; a hundred trillion zillion Android devices have come and gone, and the iPad remains comfortably at the top of an ever-growing hill by virtue of the most refined mobile operating system on the planet and an industrial design that even looks decent when it's poorly copied.
  But here's the thing: This iPad is cruising. It's still living off its predecessors' reps and some seriously excellent inherited software. Its design isn't new, and, in fact, it violates one of Jobs' Laws by getting thicker instead of thinner. And on the OS side, Apple seems to have stopped innovating. The opportunity for a competitor to crash Apple's party is now.
  
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  Like

  Swipe. Tap. Play. Watch. You know how a tablet works. In this case, it's wonderful. iOS 5.1 is incredibly refined and mature. Touch-events are instantaneous, and everything loads with a dual-core spring in its step. The extra RAM keeps even complicated Web pages at the ready during a multi-tab browsing sesh.
  The difference in power between an iPad 1 and a new iPad is dramatic; but when you compare Apple's latest tablet to the one that came right before it, the difference is imperceptible unless you're running a seriously heavy app. Real Racing 2 HD, for example, loaded an average of 6 seconds faster on the iPad New than the iPad 2. But in races to run image-heavy websites like Gizmodo or must-have apps like Netflix, the discrepancy is negligible—if you pick it up at all.
  The 2048 x 1536 pixel Retina display is positively lickable, bursting with color and sharpness and saturation that make comics and high-res photographs look impossibly good. Text looks sharper on the new iPad than on any other electronic device; an e-reader is still easier on the eyes, but that's because light coming off a screen can wear out your peepers. In terms of glowing electronic displays, there is none better than on this device. Anywhere. There are a million more pixels in the new iPad than in a 1920 x 1080 HDTV. Think about that: This little 9.5-inch slate has more dots than the 50-inch flat screen you ooh and aah over. The effect is dramatic—sometimes.
  Other times, frankly, you don't notice it. Because it's not like the iPad 2's display is bad. It isn't, not by any stretch. And most of the time, you aren't close enough to your tablet's screen to pick up the pixels anyway. Yes, the Retina display is an unquestionable upgrade. But it is an upgrade you can live without.
  
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  No Like

  
  Thanks to that bigger battery, the iPad New lasts just as long as the iPad 2—an exactly-as-advertised 10 hours of real-world use and days upon days of standby time. But the differences end when charging time comes around. In our tests, it took up to twice as long to charge new 'Pad's 42.5-watt-hour battery—as many as nine hours of plug time. That means that an average American sleeper could plug his iPad in at night and wake up to one that's still not fully juiced. That sucks. You know what else kinda sucks? The new iPad gets warm—a well-documented 116 degrees. No, it's not gonna burn you. But it does make you want to put the thing down. That is a problem for a device that's meant to be held.
  One way you shouldn't hold the new iPad is like a camera. Even though Apple wants you to. This is messed up: Apple's engineers worked some serious magic on the rear-facing "iSight" camera, bumping it up to 5 megapizzles and outfitting it with an infrared filter and side illumination tricks like you'll find on the iPhone 4S. Congratulations: You have a capable digital camera the size of a magazine. But while the iSighter got all fixed up, the front-facing "Facetime" camera remains VGA. Which is stupid. Because videochatting on an iPad is really wonderful. Talking with far-off friends or family members and actually seeing them react to the conversations is one of those legitimately magical moments when you realize that yes, technology can make your life better. But not any better than it can with an iPad 2.
  But the biggest issue with the new iPad is buyer's remorse. If you own an iPad 2 and buy an iPad 3, you will feel it: that sightly nauseous sensation that you just spent $500 on something that isn't much better than what you already had. If you took all the hype around this thing at face value—yes, we were part of it, but nothing compared with the breathless pomp and braggadocio of Apple itself—you'd think the new iPad was a miracle. It's not. It's little more than marketing, and that's a change for Cupertino, which has a long history of delivering on huge promises. Fortunately, Apple has a 14-day return policy.
  

  Should You Buy This?

  If you don't have a tablet and you want to buy a tablet, buy this tablet. It's excellent. But unless you are a comic book fanatic or do a ton of reading on your previous-gen 'Pad, there is no reason to upgrade from an iPad 2. It's simply not that much of a difference. Yes, it's better brighter faster stronger, but the hard truth of this new iPad is, it's not very new.
  
  

  View the gallery
  
  Apple iPad
  Price: $500 - $700 Wi-Fi; $630 - $830 LTE and "4G"
  Screen: 9.7-inch 2048 x 1536 pixels
  Processor and RAM: Dual Core Apple A5X; 1 GB of RAM
  Storage: 16GB, 32GB, 64 GB
  Cameras: VGA front-facing; 5 megapixel rear
  Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.3 x 0.37 inches
  Weight: 1.43 pounds
  Gizrank: 4.5
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•  Thank You Team Source 
• :  http://gizmodo.com

These Are the Apps on Mr. Burns’ iPad

Mr. Burns used his iPad in the recent Simpsons episode Them, Robot, and, like the rest of us, he loaded it up with apps. They are funny: Am I Alive, Ukulele Hero, Google Naps, Captain Billu's Whiz-Bang, Angry Burns and the one I really want to buy at the App Store: Trap door.
Actually, the whole episode was quite good. Notice he's using a first-generation iPad, unlike the real Mr. Burns. [Thanks Robyn!]

Thank you team http://gizmodo.com/

Baldur’s Gate iPad Will Support Multiplayer, Cost Less Than $10

The enhanced iPad version of classic role-playing game Baldur's Gate, slated for release this summer, won't cost you more than $10. Also, it will support multiplayer.
An enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is in the works for iPad later this year as well.
This is all according to Cameron Tofer, COO of developer Beamdog, who told me today in a phone interview that it would be "crazy" to charge more than $10 for the 1998 PC game.
"Baldurs Gate is a pretty big game and we're not cutting it down to size," Tofer said. "There's a boatload of content there, 80+ hours. But past ten dollars doesn't make sense."
We'll have more on the future of Baldur's Gate, including details on how the upcoming port will take advantage of the iPad's touchscreen interface, tomorrow morning.
Republished from http://kotaku.com


Thank You Team http://gizmodo.com

What Would It Take For Apple to Make a New iPad Truly Exciting Again?

The new Apple iPad is kind of a paradox: At the same time it's both the best possible tablet you can buy, and yet, it's a disappointment. It retained the crown with an incremental performance bump.
Waah, poor us: saddled with a piece of technology so well-executed in its first two iterations that the current generation is a letdown by virtue of not being Earth-shattering. We took a timeout from our tears to wonder: What would make a new iPad truly different, and even amazing?
It's not about specs. A5X doesn't mean anything to most people outside the circles of gadget nerds like us, our blogs' comment sections, and the labs of the people who make the A5X. Ask someone who loves their iPad why they love their iPad—it has nothing to do with numbers. And it shouldn't. Nobody's life should have to tilt at the whim of a Tegra processor. The iPad has altered people's daily routines because it lets them look and literally touch things—ideas and people—like never before. That's fun! But it's a couple years old now.
Apple needs something that fundamentally changes the iPad. It needs something that makes the iPad a different, better sort of object, rather than just a refined one. Look, everyone's a critic. We're trying some constructive criticism—a wish list of ideas for a new iPad that actually feels new. So how about some (or just one!) of these?

Looo-oong Battery

Ten hours is none too shabby for a powerful processor tucked behind a giant, bright, sharp screen relaying WiFi goodies. But 10 hours still puts the iPad inside the bounds of gadget I need to remember to charge regularly. When you have to keep your eyes on a power bar that might be red, the tablet ceases to be a thin friend and becomes an anxiety.
Imagine if the next iPad could run for days without a charge. Imagine battery life—rather than processor bumps that won't make much difference—taking priority inside the machine. Just imagine a subtle solar cell on the iPad's back that would at least slow the battery drain while you're using it outside. Let Jonny Ive worry about making it look good. And focusing on a more efficient processor instead of a more powerful one would let Apple squeeze extra hours out of your pad—and we'll take extra hours and days of life over a few aggregate seconds shaved off app launching.

Indestructibility

Do you get really upset when you drop your magazine on the street, or spill coffee on a book cover? No, you don't, because those events don't really make any difference. Those objects can take the abuse.
It's an unfair comparison, but one that Apple should aspire toward. If the tablet is going to someday be a permanent computer sidearm, more attached to our person than perhaps even the phone, it needs to be able to take serious licks. Waterproof it, dust-proof it, shock-proof it. It's done elsewhere—it can be done here. It's not like Apple doesn't love sealing its gadgets up tight to keep us out, anyway.

Unbelievable Body

The perfect magazine—glossy, pliable, and lovely—has a design an iPad should seek to emulate. Beating a magazine at its own game might be the greatest thing Apple's ever done. Imagine an iPad as slick as a Vogue, as thin as a Consumer Reports, and light enough that you could hold it as long as you wanted without arm strain. (This one and a half pound thing isn't going to cut it, guys.) Oh, and flexible. Yeah, flexible. That's sci-fi stuff for now (sort of), but an iPad that could naturally bend and crumple and then spring right back would be astounding. And it's inevitable.
Until that inevitability, giving us the same hardware stunner we experienced when the MacBook Air floated down. That would be just as killer. Light. Thin. Light. Thin. Light. Thin. We should never feel like we're using the iPad when we're using the iPad.

A camera that matters

Way to go, Apple—you put a brilliant camera on the wrong side of the product. Nobody except clueless uncles and Spike Lee (come on, Spike) use their iPad to take photos that way. You look like an idiot. Even if you're Spike Lee. We feel confident in predicting that using the iPad as a giant camera will never take off. It will look dumb in perpetuity.
Meanwhile, the front-facing cam is stuck in the late-90s with some VGA bullshit. Yet this is the camera that stares us in the face on FaceTime, connecting us with people we care about. This is the camera that should be dazzlingly high resolution. This is the camera that should track our face no matter how we're holding the iPad or where we dance around the room. This is the camera that should make us live that scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Hell, take the camera off of the back entirely if it'll make front magic feasible. Good riddance.

Full size

No smudges

Lipophobicity. Look it up. An iPad screen that doesn't just feebly "resist" fingerprints, but avoids them altogether, would be a feat of engineering, and fair tribute to that retina display.

Kill the connector

The iPad is using pretty much the same dock connector the iPod used a decade ago. That doesn't make sense. Apple promised us great things from Thunderbolt, and hasn't really delivered anything. How about a tiny, blazingly fast Thunderbolt connector for the iPad? One that could sync everything—HD movies, hi-res photos, new albums—in a matter of seconds. It can be done.
Or, hell, kill the connector entirely. Take advantage of 802.11n wireless and actually hit speeds between your computer and iPad approaching the 600 megabit/sec limit. Use inductive charging if possible, or swallow your pride, Apple, and use micro USB like the rest of the universe.

***

Apple knows it doesn't have to do any of this. For now. It can put out a minor upgrade every year and sell millions and millions more iPads—so why try? Because trying is what made Apple the most valuable technology company in the world.
Apple has shown that it can take its best current product (say, an iPhone 3GS), disassemble it, and put it back together as something golden and incredible and worthy of spectacle. Say, an iPhone 4. The step between those two phones was radical. The way the 4 was built, the way it felt, the screen, the camera that was like nothing else—it was dramatic. A fundamental change. After a few more years of institutional incrementalism, these iPad press conferences are going to stop justifying themselves. With enough cautious updates, the iPad will just turn into another thing you can buy. There's no magic future there. But the magic future is what we all want.
Magazine photo: Laborant/Shutterstock
Smudge photo: withassociates
Broken screen: irrezolut

Thank You Team : http://gizmodo.com/

Apple Claims the iPad’s Charging "Bug" Is Actually a Feature

Since it was launched, people have been complaining that the new iPad doesn't charge properly, reporting that the device isn't fully charged even when it claims to be. Apple has now responded, stating that this is actually on purpose.
All Things D reports that Apple broke it down for them: The iPad displays that it is 100-percent charged before it is. At that point, it continues to charge to capacity, before dishcarging a little, and then charges back up to 100 percent again. Speaking to All Things D, Apple VP Michael Tchao explains:

"That circuitry is designed so you can keep your device plugged in as long as you would like. It's a great feature that's always been in iOS."

So while the tick has only surfaced now, it's apparently something we've in fact been living with for years. Tchao also reassures users that the percentage differences involved are small, so any difference has a minimal impact on battery life.
While it might sound like a cop-out, it's probably accurate. These days, batteries are complex things, which use microprocessors to control their charging. Back in the good ol'days, a charging analogy based on pouring ions into a cup was about right. These days, you probably need an electrical engineering degree to actually understand the process of charging a fancy battery. As Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe told All Things D:

"[W]e shouldn't apply our prejudices formed (both good and bad) from older generations of battery technology to today's systems... If it says it's charged, consumers should assume it is, and not worry about whether the charger is drawing current."

So, in other words, quit worrying about whether your iPad has charging issues or not. It probably knows better than you. [All Things D]

Thank You tEam : gizmodo.com/

Is the iPad Gimped for International Users?

The new iPad has garnered its fair share of abuse since launch. But for international users, there's a bigger concern than crappy charging or a little extra heat: it turns out that it's virtually impossible to use its LTE capabilities anywhere other than North America.
The Wall Street Journal reports that complaints are amassing from disgruntled iPad owners and regulatory authorities around the world. From the WSJ:

"In Australia, the company agreed to tell consumers more clearly about the tablet computer's capabilities and will head back to court in a fight to retain the iPad's 4G branding. Meanwhile, Sweden's consumer watchdog is considering whether to start an investigation into whether the labeling is misleading...
"The new iPad also is incompatible with 4G networks in Germany, where telecom operators have started to roll out LTE mobile networks in earnest. Consumer organizations said they weren't aware of complaints, however. Apple in Germany declined to say whether the incompatibility had affected sales."

Plenty of other countries, including the UK, just haven't rolled out 4G networks yet. But for the ones that have, consumers are complaining that Apple doesn't make a big enough issue of the lack of compatibility. Covering its back, on the Apple website it does mention that "4G LTE is supported only on AT&T and Verizon networks in the U.S. and on Bell, Rogers, and Telus networks in Canada." Clearly that's not enough.
The issue arises because the frequency bands used by 4G networks differ from country to country—and Apple has clearly decided to make the new iPad a US-centric device.
Essentially, anyone outside the US or Canada is paying a premium—in fact, the device costs more in Europe—to subsidize a technology they can't even use. That sucks. Currently, there seems to be no evidence that Apple is going to rectify the problem.

Thank You Team : gizmodo.com

Screen Rage is the New Temper-Tantrum

At five years-old, it's no fun getting interrupted while you're focused on something. As a parent, I compensate for that by employing a series of intricately planned measures to guide my son from whatever he happens to be doing towards whatever it is that I want him to do instead.
The extremity of these measures depends entirely what's being interrupted. If he's playing outside with his sister, the steps I take are fairly mundane. I give him a few, gentle time checks ("five minutes until dinner" … "3 minutes until dinner" …), and then offer something enticing enough to make putting down the ball seem like less of an intrusion ("Tonight's chicken has both teri and yaki on it!").
If I need to transition my son from building a cardboard village with grandma to going to bed for the night, I need to combine my time checks with some subtle threats and an Obi Wan Kenobi-like response to his three hundred or so repetitions of some variation of, "No. I don't want to. But you said. Why are you doing this to me?"
The techniques are all pretty simple and effective. Until it's time to get him to put down the iPad.
The time checks, subtle threats, and feeble attempts at reasoned parenting are useless. You don't bring a knife to a gunfight, and you don't bring traditional parenting strategies to a fight to wrestle a possessed child back from a retina-display, 3.1 million pixel, demonic poltergeist.
Anyone who's been within a thousand miles of one can tell you… There is no tantrum like a Put-Down-the-iPad Tantrum.
First I need to prepare. I put on my hazmat suit, helmet, and thick, dark goggles to make it less likely that I too will be pulled into the light. Any parent of an iPad-era child will be familiar with the other tools in my arsenal: Ear plugs, body padding, iron manacles, shock paddles, a straight jacket, an inflatable kayak (speaking in tongues while the head spins exorcist-like 360s can release a significant amount of saliva), WiFi jammers, tear gas, tasers; and for re-entry, candles, classical music, smelling salts, and several black and white paper printouts of familiar places and loved ones.
And even with all that, I give myself about a 50% shot of bringing my son's attention back to the terrestrial world before the iPad battery runs out.
Of course, as in most cases, our kids are simply modeling our behavior. Having a disproportionately enraged reaction to being interrupted during screen-time is a characteristic that's hardly limited to five year-olds. I regularly find myself snapping at my kids or feeling overly irritated with adults when faced with the seemingly simple demand that I drag my gaze away from my screen when I'm in the middle of something (anything really). And since I'm always-on, and my screen provides access to so much of what I do – work, social life, leisure time, writing this article – I'm permanently in the middle of something. My son was born around the time of the original iPhone. So I've been asking him to "Just give me a second" for his whole life.
It's not just that we're often distracted. It's the short-fused anger that bubbles up when life pulls us away from our screens. Sadly, it might not be that surprising to see a technology addict in this state of mind. But the same behavior often surfaces among folks who are recent smartphone converts. I've seen people who have historically maintained a swami-like calmness to their demeanor snap angrily at someone who interrupts them when they're focused on their new screen.
Even for the formerly ascetic, it's a slippery slope. Om … Om … Om … OMG!
Wanting to focus and being irritated by distractions and interruptions is nothing new. I'm sure my dad missed a few of my childhood moments while he was at the office. But now the office is seamlessly connected to games, music, texting, email, social networking, entertainment, and everything else. The hierarchy of things worthy of earning our focus has largely collapsed. If it glows, it's worthy. The screen doesn't care what you're doing. I see modern parents miss childhood moments while they're playing Words with Friends. "Just give me a second…"
In a way, staring at a screen is lot like being alone in your car. When someone cuts you off, you adopt a totally different personality; one defined by urgency and often explosive anger. No one can hear you scream as you speed down the highway with the music blaring and windows rolled up.
Screen rage is the new road rage. Except everyone can hear you scream.
These days, about the only thing that's more frustrating than being interrupted while we're interacting with our screens is trying to get the attention of someone else who's interacting with theirs. Maybe this occasional glimpse into the digital mirror gives us hope that there's a light at the end of the tantrum tunnel.
Of course, that light could just be coming from another screen.


Thank You Source : gizmodo.com & team

APP OF THE DAY: Bus London review (iPhone/iPad)

28 March 2012 18:00 GMT / By Hunter Skipworth

London is complicated enough before you even consider taking on its public transport system. An absurd number of bus routes and underground and overground trains transport people across town, usually in a rather sluggish manner, every single day.
The smartphone can provide some basic alleviation from the pains of negotiating the city, usually thanks to its built-in maps app. We have discovered recently, however, that - thanks to things like Oyster and an increased effort by Transport For London to provide data to travellers - third-party applications are getting really good. From the ones we have played with, easily our favourite is Bus London.

Bus London

Platform

iOS

Price

Free

Where

iTunes

Bus London is a simple app at heart, but the functions it provides are hugely useful. First, once your details are entered, you can see your Oyster card balance. This is important because it saves you from that nasty situation when you hop on a bus and have no credit. Sadly you can't top up from within the application but at least it will give you some warning before you get lumped with the £2.30 cash charge for taking the bus.

On top of this, the application will search for nearby bus stops, based on your location and then tell you what routes travel from each, giving arrival times as well. This is all handled in an incredibly slick manner and makes transporting yourself by bus across London as painless as possible. In fact, it is miles better than the TFL website itself and lays out data in a much more manageable way.
A fare calculator will help those not familiar with London's pricing system for the bus. There is also a route search, which can do things like give you specific buses on a street or tell you the address where routes begin or end. It's all very comprehensive, especially given its a free app.
Bus London comes highly recommended for seasoned Londoners or those who plan on taking a trip to the city. It should, in theory, mean you don't get yourself lost. 

Thank You : Source : pocket-lint.com : & team  

Tapose iPad app brings new meaning to multitasking with split-screen display

28 March 2012 18:04 GMT / By Danny Brogan

A new iPad app has been approved that will enable split-screen viewing, bringing a whole new dimension to multitasking and emulating a concept first shown off by Microsoft in 2009. Tapose will enable users to make notes or drawings on one side of the display while having full access to other internal apps as well as the browser.
There are plenty of other strings to Tapose’s bow, too. For example, the lasso tool allows the user to simply choose an image or web page by circling it with your finger or stylus and dragging it on to the parallel screen. You also won’t need to use up additional memory on your iPad, as Tapose provides web storage for any audio, video, notes and photos you use via the app.
Tapose has supposedly been ready for release for some time now but has faced various hurdles laid down by Apple. Allegedly Apple was unhappy at the concept of two different windows being open simultaneously, before kicking up a stink over the way the app used widgets showing calendars and reminders.
Thankfully all seems sorted now and the app has been approved for sale in iTunes with an expected retail price of $2.99. No word on a UK arrival but we’re fairly confident it will be available for download soon.

Thank You : Source : pocket-lint.com : & team  

Pocket-lint Podcast #78 - iPad 4G refunds, PlayStation 4 Orbis and Vint Cerf...

30 March 2012 8:30 GMT / By Rik Henderson

It's a big welcome to a new Pocket-linter this week as contributing editor Danny Brogan makes in debut in a discussion that includes the Apple iPad 4G advertising woes.
The team also chats about when it met the "father of the internet" Vint Cerf, and what the prospective name of the PlayStation 4 - Orbis - actually means.
And Pocket-lint's owner interviews Ubisoft's head of digital, Chris Early, on the games publisher's mobile phone and Android plans.
Editor of news and ex-Gamesmaster telly presenter Rik Henderson is also joined by editor of features and BBC radio regular Dan Sung.
Ensure that you listen below or subscribe via iTunes in order to get your all new and improved Pocket-lint Podcast hit from every Friday morning at 8.30am...


Thank You Source : pocket-lint.com & team
 

Google to take on Apple with its own iPad rival

30 March 2012 10:02 GMT / By Danny Brogan

Google is to go head to head against the likes of Apple and Amazon by launching its own range of tablets sources on the internet claim. The devices will bear Google’s name much in the same way as the Google Nexus One did in the smartphone market. So does this really mean Google is to go it alone in its quest for tablet glory? Well yes and no.
Google themselves won’t actually be providing the hardware for the tablets, with the likes of Samsung and Asus lined up to do the donkeywork. However, under the bonnet it will be all Google. Of course Google Android tablets are already available, but whereas the likes of the Motorola Xoom or LG Optimus Pad had their manufacturers own skin and personality ingrained in the device, these tablets will be Google branded and Google powered.
The series of Google tablets will be sold directly to consumers through an online store, though currently there’s no word on when we might be seeing one of these bad boys.
It’s a brave move by Google who failed to get the results it wanted when it tried this strategy in the smartphone market, something they put down to other Android phones being on par with their own Nexus One. Would this suggest Google has finally decided it can do a better job than the Android tablets currently available? It would appear so.
Eric Schmidt, president of Google hinted back in December that a Google tablet was on the cards and it now seems that road plan has kicked into overdrive.

Thank you : Source : pocket-lint.com & team
 

New iPad versus 5 tablet competitors: which runs hottest?

You need not fear heat blisters when handling the new iPad. Apple's new tablet is neither a burn risk, nor even particularly hot in the grand scheme of competing devices.
We know because we tested the iPad against five other tablets.
Sure, the new iPad, like all electronics hardware, heats up when pushed to its limits. This is just a matter of physics. Processors, batteries and back-lit displays generate heat under load.
Consumer Reports proved this when it recorded a temperature of 46.4C on the back of the new iPad -- this after plugging the tablet into a wall socket and playing a demanding 3D game, Infinity Blade 2, for 45 minutes. This little stunt spurred a lot of online chatter, but it didn't explain whether the new iPad's heat generation is above and beyond that of other tablets on the market.
So Wired decided to investigate.
First we recreated the Consumer Reports testing scenario (though in our testing, we used an infrared thermometer instead of a thermal camera, as in the original experiment). After 20 minutes of intense Infinity Blade 2 action, we were able to get the iPad up to 37.7C. After 45 minutes, the iPad hit 42.2C at its hottest point on the back of the tablet.
We then turned our sights to other tablets -- how hot would they get when running graphics-intensive games? Infinity Blade 2 is an iOS exclusive, so we needed to find a different control game, something that runs on all platforms, but also taxes a tablet's processor and graphics engine. We ended up using Dead Space, a first-person shooter that's available for most tablets on the market, and includes 3D graphics.
We started our gauntlet of testing with the new iPad. Like all the tablets we cross-tested, we started with a completely cool device, and kept the iPad unplugged to more closely approximate a real-world use scenario. We played Dead Space for 30 minutes, by which point the iPad's back-panel heat had already plateaued.
The result? The third-generation iPad reached just 34.4C in its hottest rear chassis location (slightly below, and to the right of, the Apple logo when the tablet is held in portrait mode). 34.4C is not an uncomfortable temperature in one's hands, and it's also well short of the alarming 46.6C publicised by Consumer Reports, as well as our own 42.2C reading. Dead Space may not tax the iPad's internals as much as Infinity Blade 2, but it's still a demanding 3D game in the tablet space, and will certainly evoke hotter run temperatures than a mail program, YouTube or Angry Birds during continuous use.
So that's the new iPad -- it spiked at a temperature that's warm but not unseemly. And its heat generation isn't even all that notable when compared against the pack. Now check out the heat generated by other tablets after 30 minutes of Dead Space action (from warmest to coolest):
ASUS Transformer Prime -- 36.9C
Kindle Fire -- 35.8C
BlackBerry Playbook -- 35.2C
New iPad -- 34.4C
iPad 2 -- 34.2C
Acer Iconia Tab A200 -- 32.2C
Not only was the new iPad merely tepid in terms of heat generation, it was also one of the cooler-running tablets in our test. But let's take Consumer Reports' 116 degree reading at face value. It may cause sweaty hands, but is it any danger to consumers?
Dr. Jeffery DeWeese works at the Bothin Burn Unit at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco. He told us 116 degrees "shouldn't be of any concern" for the average adult, and the temperature "isn't going to burn anyone on contact."
In the end, the new iPad wasn't the hottest-running tablet, nor was it coolest. It landed square in the middle of a heat test that involved a variety of devices running the same app in real-world conditions. Computers, tablets, smartphones -- they all get warm when pushed to the limit.

Thank You : Source : www.wired.co.uk

Australian regulator takes Apple to court for misleading 4G claims

Australia's advertising regulator is taking Apple to court because the new iPad doesn't connect to the country's lone 4G network.
In Australia, telecoms firm Telstra offers 4G internet but because it uses a different part of the spectrum to US networks the iPad can't connect to it.
Despite that, Apple still calls the premium iPad a "Wi-Fi + 4G" tablet, but clarifies in the small print that the device can "connect to the 4G LTE networks of AT&T in the U.S. and Bell, Rogers, and Telus in Canada."
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission isn't happy. In a statement it says that "Apple's recent promotion of the new 'iPad with WiFi + 4G' is misleading because it represents to Australian consumers that the product can, with a SIM card, connect to a 4G mobile data network in Australia."
"This is not the case," the statement says. The commission will make an application to to the Federal Court in Melbourne for orders against Apple, on 28 March.
The ACCC says it is "seeking urgent interlocutory relief to ensure consumers are made aware of the correct technical capabilities of this device." To that end, it wants advertising to be corrected, it's seeking injunctions and penalties against Apple, and is hoping to get "refunds to consumers affected."
So what about Britain? Apple calls it a "Wi-Fi + 4G" iPad in the UK too, despite the fact that there are no 4G networks in the UK and there are no assurances that this iPad will even work on future 4G networks.
"Everything Everywhere will be in a position to roll out a 4G LTE network in the UK by the end of this year, albeit not for this iPad," one UK telecoms firm told Wired.co.uk, as part of our comprehensive guide to the new iPad's 4G promises. Europe will use different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum to America.
Wired.co.uk asked the Advertising Standards Agency about similar advertising would be allowed in Britain, and a spokesperson told us that "without going through due process we can't say whether the ad is likely to be problematic".
"All UK ads should avoid containing anything that is likely to mislead," the ASA told us. "The Advertising Code states that ads must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information or by presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible or ambiguous way."
"If anyone has concerns about the iPad ad then they can lodge a complaint with us and we will establish whether or not there is a problem under the Code," the spokesperson said. If that's you, you can lodge your complaint here.
Apple has been in trouble with the ASA on multiple previous occasions. In 2008 it claimed that "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone", but without Flash or Java (at the time), the agency decided that the TV advert was misleading and banned it.
Later that year, an advert that claimed that the iPhone 3G was "really fast" was banned, because the ASA found that Apple was exaggerating its claims in its voiceover and visuals.

Thank You : wired.co.uk

Six problem that the new iPad has

The new iPad from Apple has received overwhelming response from consumers with three million units selling in just three days of its launch. However, the new tablet with famed Retina display is also facing its share of negative publicity with reports pouring in about the problems with the New iPad.

Heating issues

Many consumers are complaining that the tablet heats up fast while charging and is substantially hotter than what iPad2 used to be while charging. Some magazines have reported that it heats up to 47 degree Celsius compared to just 39 degree Celsius of iPad2.

WiFi issues

Network connection issues are not new for Apple with iPhone 4S facing major issues with network connectivity when held in a particular way.

The New iPad also reportedly does not properly connect to WiFi networks, giving users a weak signal. Hopefully this one doesn't turn out to be that big an issue.

Bigger apps

The New iPad comes with a retina display with better resolution, and this also means that the apps for this tablet will be bigger in size (MB) and will eat up more space. Since this tablet has no provision of external memory, you have to go for bigger storage version (32 GB and 64 GB) than the 16 GB version.

Takes much longer to charge

PCworld has reported that the New iPad takes as much as six hours to fully charge its battery, which is the longest duration among 40 tablets the magazine tested. However it should also be noted here that it also has one of the best battery backup time for any 4G device, thanks to a bigger battery.

Other complaints

USA based warranty provider 'SquareTrade' says that the tablet is more fragile than the iPad2 and completely shatters when dropped from shoulder height. Other than that people are also complaining that the tablet eats up a lot of data, and also doesn't support Facetime (video chat) function on LTE network.

The New iPad also doesn't support SIRI, the popular voice command service - which though is planned and not accidental from Apple.

The original article was posted here

Thank You Yahoo

LTE option poses data dilemma for iPad, smartphone users

The new iPad's LTE option, which enables access to fast 4G networks, means customers can use up an entire month's worth of data in a couple of hours. Bandwidth-versus-cost poses a dilemma for carriers, too.
The new iPad's LTE option, which allows access to fast 4G networks, has also shocked some customers who found they can eat up an entire month's worth of data watching just a couple hours of streaming video.

For a long time, analysts and even carriers have urged customers to download videos and other large files over Wi-Fi to avoid the high price of using a cellular connection .

But that hasn't stopped owners of the new iPad and some recent LTE Android-based smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus from leveling renewed criticism at carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless for imposing high data fees.

In December, Computerworld illustrated the problem by downloading a single 128-minute HD movie over LTE to a Galaxy Nexus. The 3.7GB movie file took less than two hours to download .

The new iPad adds a whole new level of temptation, since it features a high-resolution 9.7-in "Retina" display with 3.1 million pixels, making it a great way to view everything from movies to online games to televised sports. A fast LTE network offers a consistent connection for streaming video and faster download capabilities than 3G networks.

Data price plans for tablet users start at $30 a month for 3GB of data on AT&T or 2GB on Verizon. Using that pricing model, a single HD movie download would cost $50 over Verizon (the $30 plan for 2GB, with two $10-per-GB overage charges) or $40 on AT&T.

As a result, some customers are asking: Why have a great new smartphone or tablet running over LTE if you can only watch video for such a short amount of time?

"People aren't going to stand around forever and just deal with limitations on data usage, and it's not incumbent on the user to monitor his own bandwidth consumption," wrote Erik Fecher in a comment on Computerworld . "It's completely the responsibility of the service provider to accommodate it."

The Wall Street Journal this week also found new iPad customers who quickly zipped through their respective data plans, with the issue generating similar comments .

Neither Verizon or AT&T wanted to comment about data usage costs. However Verizon did offer up a number of "tips" via email for consumers seeking "to manage their data allow allowance on...any mobile device."

The Verizon tips, not surprisingly, include using "Wi-Fi to help extend the life of your data plan" at home or elsewhere. "Checking email is not a huge use of data, but streaming video is, so you may want to use Wi-Fi when streaming video," Verison said.

The carrier also has a data calculator , and urges users to download a data widget for Verizon LTE tablets running Android. The widget is currently not available for the iPad.

The wireless industry clearly sees the need to protect their networks.

"Carriers need to keep the data usage rates fairly high to avoid being overwhelmed by the users of these these content-crazy devices," said Jack Gold, an analyst for J. Gold Associates. "So I wouldn't expect carriers to be making data more attractive anytime soon."

Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group, said the "core of the problem is under-capacity of networks.... If you are a carrier basically selling more [bandwidth] than you have, you aren't really motivated to reduce prices, because that would drive up demand and you already don't have enough."

Enderle, Gold and other analysts said many consumers already avoid buying LTE and 3G tablets to keep their costs low, resorting to Wi-Fi-only devices.

Just one in 10 tablets sold uses a cellular connection, analyst Chetan Sharma reported this week. Many tablet owners already have a smartphone and don't want to pay for both services, he noted.

The controversy has raised a number of possible scenarios for carriers. One approach would be to set up family and company group plans in which 3G or 4G wireless data use for a given month is shared across a group of people and their various devices.

"I do expect to see data sharing plans [from carriers] by the end of the year or early next year," Gold said.

Another approach would wrap the data costs of an online app, movie or sporting event into the overall cost of the app. Carriers could meter this data by using technology similar to 800 calling services where the vendor pays for the data. On-demand wireless video services are already emerging that include the cost of data.

Currently there's not a mechanism to allow an app provider to include the cost of data usage when selling an app, Enderle said. But Amazon's early e-reader devices -- not the Kindle Fire -- do allow users to download a book with the wireless download cost bundled with the book. "Eventually, some apps will have connectivity as part of the package," he predicted.

A third approach is emerging: cellular-to-Wi-Fi roaming technology, which would make it seamless for a tablet user on 3G or LTE to roam onto a Wi-Fi hotspot .

Carriers aren't expected to allow their customers to roam to Wi-Fi from cellular totally free, but it isn't clear how much they would charge, analysts said.

The Hotspot 2.0 technology initiative has begun a second round of testing smartphones, tablets and laptops with embedded software that handle secure and seamless cellular-to-Wi-Fi handoffs, said Niels Jonker, CTO of Boingo Wireless. Boingo runs hotspots in many airports and sits on the board of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, which is promoting the Hotspot 2.0 initiative.

Jonker said software updates for existing phones and software embedded in new phones will be available in the early part of 2013. "The time to mass adoption is pretty close, not five years off," he said.

The handoff from cellular to Wi-Fi with Hotspot 2.0 would work over smartphones and tablets and laptops and "would be fully automatic and part of a customer's plan," he said.

"The cellular carriers are very much into this, and are motivated," he added. "They understand full well that there's no way they can service a crowded place like a stadium of full of people taking and sending photos at once in any other way [than with Wi-Fi] and even LTE won't scale to do that for them."

Jonker said it is ironic how the large carriers describe LTE as offering so much more overall network capacity, but continue to testify to the Federal Communications Commission about tehir need for more spectrum. While Cisco has estimated there will be a 27-fold increase in wireless data growth in the next two years, LTE is expected to only add a five-fold increase over the prior wireless network capacity.

"We need a bigger solution such as Wi-Fi offloading, and there's not a carrier not on board with that," Jonker said.

As to whether Wi-Fi offloading could potentially cut into carrier revenues, Jonker said that the biggest economic consideration for carriers should be to "keep their users happy. And they can't build out their [cellular] networks cheaply enough to do that."

Thank You : computerworld.co.nz