Posts in news

New Thunderbolt Products Are Coming: Announcements from NAB

Since the introduction of the new MacBook Pros in February, many have wondered how long it would take for third-party manufacturers to ship the first Thunderbolt-compatible products. Developed by Intel and brought to the market by Apple, Thunderbolt is a brand new I/O technology that allows for multiple data transfers at 10 Gbps connection over a cable, with an additional 10 Watt feed to power external devices with the addition of “daisy-chaining” one peripheral to another. You can read more about Thunderbolt in our initial roundup.

At the NAB trade show that’s currently ongoing in Las Vegas, several companies have unveiled their first Thunderbolt products that will ship later this year starting in July. As reported by MacRumors these products are aimed at video editing / movie professionals, but they show the industry is clearly interested in supporting the new technology that’s rumored to be implemented in upcoming refreshes of the iMac and Mac mini lines as well. AJA, Blackmagic, and Promise have all announced Thunderbolt-enabled peripherals for audio capture and playback device (Blackmagic’s UltraStudio 3D) or “high-framerate 2K 3D, 4K and 5K workflows, and portable HD connectivity” (AJA). Promise had already announced its Pegasus storage line with Thunderbolt back in February.

Early reports coming from the NAB show floor indicate the Thunderbolt enclosures from Promise “scream” with the updated CS 5.5 suite, and hopefully we’ll have the chance to check out demo videos and benchmarks in the next few hours.

Meanwhile, we’re all waiting for the Final Cut announcement rumored to be scheduled for tomorrow at the tenth annual SuperMeet at the Bally’s Event Center. According to people familiar with the matter, the new Final Cut will take advantage of Thunderbolt and feature iPad integration, as well as file based workflows.

Best Buy Forcing Customers To Buy Service Plan To Get An iPad 2?

Following last week’s reports about Best Buy holding iPad 2s in stock without selling them to customers because of “an upcoming promotion”, a new story comes today from a CrunchGear reader that had to buy an additional Best Buy Service Plan in order to get one of the iPads held by the store. CrunchGear reports the guy initially asked for an iPad 2, but he was told they had none in stock. Upon further inspection of the store, he noticed 40 iPad boxes stacked on top of each other, and asked why they were there. An employee told him those iPads were sold, but later a manager confirmed he could get one if he agreed to pay $109 for a Service Plan (not required by Apple).

I said that doesn’t seem right. He then told to try and find one somewhere else they can do what they want. To make a long story short I purchased it just to find out if that was policy. I just went to another store spoke to a manager and was told that is not policy and should have not be forced to but the coverage just to purchase an iPad.

Obviously, a customer shouldn’t be forced to buy an additional support plan to get an iPad 2. We also don’t believe this is part of Best Buy’s rumored “upcoming promotion” – why would anyone want to spend $109 more with no discounts on the whole bundle whatsoever? Rather, people can just get a $79 AppleCare protection plan.

Did you try to buy an iPad 2 from Best Buy recently? Did they try to convince you to buy a Service Plan together with the device? Let us know in the comments below.

Parrot to Engage in AR.Drone Combat SIM with AR.FlyingAce

Model airplane enthusiasts, iPhone owners, and any geek who likes a good ol’ fashioned RC helicopter hasfallen in love with Parrot’s AR.Drone quadricopter, a WiFi controlled helicopter that is piloted using the iPhone. Made to fly indoors (or outside with a special streamlined shell), the AR.Drone can pipe video back to your iPhone’s display, engage virtual targets, and tag other AR.Drones for a half real-life and half virtual-reality based air chase (AR.Pursuit which is available on the App Store for $2.99). iLounge via TUAW reports that a more complete dogfighting solution is coming for your flying drones called AR.FlyingAce will enable you to show down opposing players after taking enough virtual damage. Players on the same WiFi network can compete in multiplayer matches to be the last one standing. It’s just like playing laster tag, except you can sit on the couch instead of diving behind it. We’ve posted the promo video after the break, and you can expect AR.FlyingAce to hit the App Store on April 15th.

[iLounge via TUAW]
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HP Launches ePrint Service For iPhone: Print & Pick Up Documents on the Move

Say you what you want about wasting paper and physical prints, but there’s still a necessity for physical documents, and Hewlett Packard is unveiling their ePrint service for the iPhone so you can print and pick up documents from just about anywhere (previously only available on Blackberry). Compatible with HP AirPrint printers, or via a registered public ePrint location, you can print documents on the fly using your iPhone and pick up your papers at a local printer, whether it be at home or at your hotel’s front desk. At public locations, your prints can be collected only with a retrieval code at a pickup desk (FedEx has 1,800 locations for ePrint). I don’t know how much you want to trust the person behind the counter, but for printing a map or getting a hard copy of a local flyer, it’s certainly a nice option to have. For enterprise users, you can print to your private-cloud so you’ll have your documents as you return to your desk (HP advertises their ePrint Enterprise Solution separately). HP’s ePrint is a free download in the App Store.

[via Yahoo Finance]

iPad 2 + Head Tracking: Glasses-free 3D

Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay from the Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble at the EHCI Research Group have created one of the most impressive and, overall, amazing tech demoes for the iPad we’ve seen recently. By combining head-tracking technology that uses the iPad’s front facing camera with basic 3D graphics, they have developed a glasses-free 3D experience that doesn’t require the accelerometer, but it’s entirely based on the camera and the movements of a user’s head in front of the screen.

As you can see in the video after the break, graphics on screen change accordingly to the position of the user to give the illusion of tridimensional objects moving on the display. It is pretty amazing that this system only uses the camera and the effect is so well conveyed in a video.

We track the head of the user with the front facing camera in order to create a glasses-free monocular 3D display. Such spatially-aware mobile display enables to improve the possibilities of interaction. It does not use the accelerometers and relies only on the front camera.

Glasses-free 3D has been deployed by Nintendo in its latest 3DS portable gaming console, and a series of reports in the past suggested Apple could implement glasses-free 3D gaming for the next-generation iPod touch. The demo we have here today is truly impressive, so make sure to check it out below. Read more

Adobe TV Now Streaming to iOS Devices

Following the announcement of the Photoshop Touch SDK that will enable developers to write Photoshop-compatible iOS and Android apps, the scheduled release date of the CS 5.5 suite and the first demoes of third-party Photoshop software for the iPad, Adobe has also revamped its Adobe TV website (which contains several CS suite video resources and tutorials) to offer native video streaming for phones and tablets. The move came a little unexpected, as the website was well known for working under the Flash format on desktop computers, but incompatible with iPhones and iPads. This is changing today with a complete rewrite of the website that now detects the user agent of a mobile device and serves the proper video content without the need of Flash:

We just launched Adobe TV Mobile, which means you can now watch all your favorite Adobe TV videos on your iPad, iPhone, iPod, Android phone, and Android tablet. Simply visit tv.adobe.com from your tablet or phone and you’ll be automatically re-directed to an optimized experience for your device.

Adobe says the new website has nothing to do with the debate over Flash content on iOS devices, it simply was one of the most requested features and it’s been implemented because Adobe believes in ”delivering our  content to all platforms and devices that are meaningful to our audience.” If you’ve been looking for a way to consume Adobe Tv content on your iPads and iPhones, now it’s the time to open Mobile Safari and start streaming. [via TUAW]

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

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?

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.

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Amazon Advertises “iPhone 5” on Google

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]