iPhone 4 Finally Coming to India, iPad 2 Approved In China

By Federico Viticci

Almost 10 months after the original release date in the United States, carriers Bharti Airtel and Aircel have confirmed that they will bring the iPhone 4 to India “in the coming months”. No details about pricing and availability have been provided, but at least this should be good news for Indian users that have been waiting for the device to launch on their local networks (assuming they didn’t go ahead and imported an iPhone 4 months ago, that is). India isn’t new to these delayed launches: the iPad 1, for example, was released a year after the announcement from Steve Jobs.

Furthermore, India has always seen an unexpected rise of iOS devices’ prices in the past – something that Apple never addressed specifically but that’s likely linked to the different economy of the country (smartphones have a 5% market share) and issues with international shipments. It’s also worth remembering that last year a rumor suggested India’s Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices were in talks with Apple for a CDMA iPhone 4 – which has been released on Verizon and it’s now awaiting an international expansion.

Last, as noted by 9to5mac the iPad 2 has been cleared for sale in China and should be launching soon:

The product obtained the license after passing a series of tests. It has a validity of five years, expiring on April 8, 2016. This move signals that the iPad 2 is set to make its official entry in the Chinese mainland market soon.

Apple’s Chinese website still has a “Notify Me” page as you can see here. The iPad 2 was released in 25 countries on Friday, March 25th.

iPhone 5 Production Starting in September? Cheaper iPhone Still In The Works?

By Federico Viticci

According to a note issued by Avian Securities this morning, the next-generation iPhone will go into mass production in September – suggesting a late Fall 2011 / early 2012 public release. Avian Securities claims that “conversations with yet another key component supplier” confirms that production will start in September, with a lower price iPhone model still in the works and on Apple’s “roadmap”, although no details about the production of this rumored cheaper iPhone have been provided by the component suppliers.

Supporting out comments over the last month, conversations with yet another key component supplier indicates that production for iPhone-5 will begin in September. This is consistent with Avian findings in the supply chain in recent months and we believe the consensus view is moving towards this scenario. In addition, our conversations also indicate the existence of a lower-spec/lower-priced iPhone in Apple’s roadmap. However, while our contacts have seen the placeholder in the Apple roadmap, they do not yet have insight into specs or production timing. This leads us to believe that any launch is likely a very late 2011 or more likely a 2012 event.

Amazon Advertises “iPhone 5” on Google

By Federico Viticci

The iPhone 5 hasn’t been announced yet – actually, no one knows if it’s even going to be called iPhone 5 – but apparently online retailer Amazon thought it was a good marketing strategy to buy ad links from Google for the search term “iPhone 5.” As noticed by The iPhone 5 News Blog, Amazon has already started advertising the iPhone 5 on Google – the obvious problem being that there’s no iPhone 5 available on the market and the ad takes you to an iPhone 4 page on Amazon.

I don’t think Amazon knows anything about the scheduled release of the next-generation iPhone (which is rumored to happen in Fall this year), and I believe this is simply a tactic to insert a placeholder on Google for people searching for iPhone 5 news on Google, and drive some traffic to Amazon’s iPhone 4 offerings at the same time.

There’s no doubt a lot of “iPhone 5” searches are performed on Google every day, and it’s pretty clear Amazon is trying to generate some pageviews for these queries – perhaps not cash, as someone who’s looking for an iPhone 5 should recognize he’s being fooled to buy an iPhone 4 instead. Not cool, Amazon. [via Macgasm]

JBL’s On Air Wireless AirPlay Speaker Dock Now Shipping

By Federico Viticci

Unofficially revealed by the FCC in December 2010 and teased a few weeks ago by JBL itself with a signup product page, the On Air Wireless speaker dock with AirPlay functionalities is now shipping to Best Buy locations and Apple Stores. We’ve covered the On Air Wireless in the past, but here’s a quick recap: the device has built-in AirPlay support, meaning that it can receive audio from iOS devices, or Macs through iTunes; with the integration of an LCD display, it can also display artists’ information and album artwork for a richer wireless music experience; with the exclusive HALO radial design, it should guarantee an optimal audio quality to send music throughout your room. It is one of the first speakers (let alone speaker / dock) to display metadata coming from AirPlay, but there’s more: the thing has got playback control buttons, a clock with dual alarms to wake you at different times of the day, a digital FM radio and a USB port for firmware updates. It can be yours for $349 – it’s a premium product with lots of functionalities and deep AirPlay integration clearly meant for iOS and Mac users.

Press release below, order page available on the Apple online store. [via Engadget] Read more

Cracked AirPort Express Key Could Allow AirPlay Streaming To Any Device

By Federico Viticci

When Apple introduced AirPlay with iOS 4.2, they brought wireless streaming for music and video to iOS devices, as well as iTunes on the desktop thanks to the old AirTunes technology that allowed music streaming to an AirPort Express station connected to speakers with a simple audio jack. After the unification of streaming under the AirPlay name, several hacks in the past months allowed iOS and Mac users to enable streaming on unsupported devices such as iPhones or Macs. Developer James Laird, however, has achieved a different goal than simply activating audio and video receiving functionalities: by reverse engineering the AirPort Express (and thus AirTunes) private key used by Apple to stream audio to external music speakers, he released ShairPort, an open source AirPort Express emulator.

My girlfriend moved house, and her Airport Express no longer made it with her wireless access point. I figured it’d be easy to find an ApEx emulator - there are several open source apps out there to play to them. However, I was disappointed to find that Apple used a public-key crypto scheme, and there’s a private key hiding inside the ApEx. So I took it apart (I still have scars from opening the glued case!), dumped the ROM, and reverse engineered the keys out of it.

The concept behind ShairPort is very simple: instead of enabling streaming from an app to an official AirPlay device from Apple or third-party vendor, Shareport can turn any software or hardware into a wireless music receiver thanks to the cracked private key used by Apple. Being the project open source, virtually anyone could build a hardware receiver or application that streams music just like the AirPort Express station does through the AirTunes protocol.

While it’s very unlikely that manufacturers will adopt this hack to turn their devices into AirPlay receivers (why using the hack when you can just become an official AirPlay partner?), I’m sure we’ll see interesting things on the software end this week. ShairPort can be installed anywhere, opening to the possibility of gaming consoles, computers, or mobile devices gaining AirPlay functionalities previously reserved to the AirPort Express.

Go download ShairPort here. [via MacRumors]

“Post PC” Doesn’t Mean “Sans PC”→

Linked By Federico Viticci

“Post PC” Doesn’t Mean “Sans PC”

Michael Gartenberg weighs in on the “post PC” argument started by Steve Jobs at the iPad 2 media event, when he said devices like the iPad are the perfect example of the “post PC” technology era we’re living in:

The iPad and other devices are not here to displace the PC (by which I mean all personal computers, whether they’re Macs or PCs running Windows). In fact, post PC means after PC, a new generation of products that build on the PC. What it doesn’t mean is sans PC, that is, without PC. The personal computer will no doubt be with us for a very long time… but that doesn’t mean we’re not in the post-PC world.

Gartenberg is right, I don’t think Steve Jobs meant “iPads will replace desktop computers in the next 12 months” – rather, something more like “We’ve seen the numbers, and the iPad is clearly a device different from computers that average users actually want to buy”.

Think about it: iPads can’t “replace” Macs yet if only because a Mac is needed to develop iOS apps. And of course, hundreds of other tasks iOS devices still can’t perform. For this reason I think associating “post PC” with “replacing” is a wrong assumption. It’s obvious the iPad can’t replace a desktop Mac – and yes, also because of the cable that’s needed to sync content. But are we seeing a trend? Yes. And what about 10 years from now – what will the average PC sold at Best Buy look like?

“Post” doesn’t mean “sans”, but the post-PC era has definitely started.

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Bloomberg BusinessWeek “Very Pleased” with Apple’s Terms, Releases iPad App with Subscriptions

By Federico Viticci

Amidst the debate surrounding Apple’s subscription system for the iTunes Store, Bloomberg BusinessWeek has released an iPad app that implements Apple’s new app subscriptions – and unlike many other publishers that agreed to test them, BusinessWeek’s ones are pretty cheap and attractive. New issues will be released every Thursday with in-app update, they weigh in at around 30 MB (very lightweight, considering other iPad magazines managed to achieve the 500 MB quota with hours of waiting for a download to finish) and they’re priced at $2.99. Print subscribers can get all the issues for free, but if you want to subscribe to the digital edition (with contains all the content of print, plus exclusive articles and rich interactive features) you’ll have to pay $2.99 – not a bad deal if you consider most app subscriptions have been priced at $4.99 and BusinessWeek’s own print edition costs $4.99 per issue. Finally, an iPad app that’s cheaper than its print counterpart, and has more content and automatic updates.

PaidContent reports BBW is also “pleased” with Apple’s subscription terms for publishers. From an interview with Oke Okaro, Bloomberg’s global head of mobile:

We are very pleased with Apple’s terms,” he said in a recent interview. As for being able to glean more information about their readers—something magazine publishers value highly, as it gives them more details with which to attract advertisers and build circulation—Okaro said that there will be a lot opportunities through things like reader surveys to get users to share information willingly.

We recognize that there is overlap among the audience for all versions of BBW and that’s reflected in this app. We’re simply looking at where our audience is going and we’re following.

The BBW iPad app features a video section with a “behind the scenes” look at the feature story from the cover of the magazine; interactive market information by simply tapping on a company’s name within each article; possibility to create a “personal archive” and manage past issues without affecting the archive. More importantly, the BBW app also comes with a search feature and font resizing options – something that suggests the developers haven’t simply used images to provide static pages, but real text – thus the issues being available at 30 MB from the App Store.

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek app is available now for free in the App Store with in-app subscriptions. The app follows the magazines that implemented subscriptions in February, and anticipates a trend that should grow bigger come the June 2011 deadline – when developers of existing App Store publishing apps will have to enable subscriptions.

Blogsy: A Better Blogging App for iPad

By Federico Viticci

The lack of great blogging apps for the iPad always puzzled me as a strange inconsistency with a device – and overall, a platform – that in the past year has proved to be more than a simple ecosystem for games and utilities. The iPad – and to an extent, iOS – has become more than a lightweight piece of glass and aluminum for watching movies and playing some Angry Birds. Sure it’s great at those tasks, but then I look at OmniFocus, Simplenote, iFiles, or LogMeIn and I realize there’s so much to do on this device than just consuming content. The iPad was indeed quickly dismissed by many as a “media tablet” when it came out last year: but think about the musicians, the writers, the designers and the movie editors that did all those amazing things using only an iPad. Clearly, this isn’t just about playing games anymore. This isn’t about the passive interaction with content: it’s about the two-way relationship with consuming and creating content made possible by the 75,000 apps available in the App Store.

But then I look at bloggers, people like me, and I don’t understand why it is so difficult to rely on the iPad as a tool for working purposes. Let’s be honest: if you’re a geek and you happen to run a blog with lots of new posts added every day, you’ve had issues with using the iPad as your main work machine. We’ve all been there before: the soft keyboard takes a while getting used to, but it’s the lack of great blogging software designed specifically for the iPad that make us question the possibilities opened by this device as far as blogging is concerned. Getting down to my personal issues with the iPad and writing for MacStories, I identify three main problems: the official WordPress app isn’t that great (an euphemism); among the alternatives, several apps lack advanced functionalities like remote draft editing or custom fields; both 3rd party apps and the official WordPress one are terrible at allowing you to easily insert links, photos, and videos. We’re swimming in a sea of text editors, but as I said many times on Twitter in the past we need a more powerful app – something that combines the simplicity of text editors with rich features like media management and full access to the WordPress backend. I know, I’m asking for a complex solution, and quite possibly a software built for a niche rather than the Doodle Jump masses.

After months of waiting for the perfect blogging app to come around and convince us that the iPad could also be used professionally for blogging, I looked at Blogsy with a bit of skepticism. At first glance, it seemed that this new app borrowed a lot from dPad, an HTML editor I reviewed a while ago that’s aimed at quickly inserting media in documents. Considering that Blogsy, however, was touted as an app for bloggers with WordPress and Blogger integration, I decided that I could take it for a spin. Read more

$200,000 Program Gets Kindergartens iPad 2s & Apps

By Federico Viticci

In the past months, we’ve heard several stories about the iPad being deployed in education with pilot programs aimed at testing the device in educational contexts Apple perhaps didn’t think about in the first place as a possible main focus for the tablet. Many schools all over the world have shown interest in the iPad, mainly thanks to the large selection of software available that makes it easy for teachers to find exactly the apps they need, and for students to be engaged with a great digital experience. Singaporean schools added iPads to their teaching resources, and a $100,000 school program we mentioned last December got every 4th grader at two elementary schools in Hancock Count an iPad full of apps for reading books, doing math, and so forth. Overall, the biggest surprise wasn’t the iPad itself as a technological advancement: rather, it was about how student of every age interacted with it and was willing to learn more through software that impressed teachers, Apple, and bloggers.

Of course there’s more coming. The iPad 2 was released a few weeks ago, and those schools that didn’t have the chance to deploy it in their educational program last year now can have access to an overall better device, with a thinner and lighter design and better battery life. A new $200,000 program was approved in Auburn, Maine to give every kindergarten of the district access to this new teaching resource that is Apple’s iPad, complete with apps bought from the App Store and “insurance” (we assume it’s AppleCare). The district has bought 285 iPad 2s to use in the classroom; eventually, all elementary schools in Auburn will get an iPad as the program begins its rollout in May, and should be completed by the end of September. The 285 iPad 2s are only part of the initial rollout.

So why did the school board approve the program? Because teachers who owned an iPad saw an improvement in how kindergarten kids were learning the alphabet (always a difficult task) thanks to educational apps. So rather than buying new laptops (which are expensive), the district and the school board opted for iPads. Simple as that.

Maybe Apple didn’t expect this quick success in education, or maybe they saw this coming all along. I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that – once again – it’s not really about the specs, the RAM or the openness. These teachers could have asked for Xooms but they didn’t. It’s about the platform, the experience, the pleasure you get from using a device, the intersection of technology and liberal arts. There’s nothing more honest and genuine than a kid having real fun, and if educational software can do that whilst retaining its ultimate purpose of teaching stuff – then I think we have a winner here.

Check out the news video below. [via TUAW] Read more