The iPad 2 Dock is by far the accessory people ask about when getting a new iPad 2. Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit and their Digital AV Adapter are clear in purpose; both products add utility to the iPad when used with a camera or television. The iPad 2 dock, however, is a questionable purchase. What utility or benefit will it provide me, and should I pay a pricey $29.00 for a plastic stand that comes with no cable and only provides audio out? The portrait only dock is an additional expense many owners are unsure about, and today we’re taking a look at whether one of these guys can be of benefit to you now that customers are receiving the first batch of shipments in the United States.
The iPad 2 Dock Review
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.
The iPhone Goes Where No Mac Has Gone Before→
The iPhone Goes Where No Mac Has Gone Before
Francois Fortier shares his experience with using Macs and iOS devices in a corporate environment:
However, the iPhones and iPads seemed to have crept into most Enterprise class companies from the top floor boardrooms as well as the server rooms in the basements. Not only does the current version of iOS 4.3.1 play nicer with Exchange Activesync than Windows Phone 7 and even Android but its extra management features provide comparable security to BlackBerry Enterprise Server managed BlackBerry’s. In fact, the iPhone comes out tops on this fight too since it doesn’t require a Client Access License for it to be managed. Apple has even released a free tool to allow Exchange Admins to lock out other iPhone features if the need be. Here is a table explaining the current state of the mobile OS landscape.
It is no secret that Apple has managed to capture the heart of corporate America with the latest Enterprise additions to iOS for iPhones and iPads. As several Fortune 500 companies deploy or pilot iOS devices instead of BlackBerrys, there’s a trend among IT departments and employees: why would you need to use a separate “corporate device” when you can just activate the enterprise features and switch between your personal and business-related apps on a single iPhone or iPad? Sure BlackBerrys still have a couple more functionalities than iPhones or iPads, but the 400,000+ apps available in Apple’s App Store are the key factor here. Employees don’t want to swap devices anymore.
Fortier also writes:
So there I was in between floors checking the location of the next meeting while lugging my colleague asked me to review the notes from the last for one of the action items, and this is when it occurred to me. No one was looking at me weird because I wasn’t using a BlackBerry or trying to wake a HP EliteBook from Vista Sleep of death mode. In fact it seemed perfectly acceptable for me to checking my iDevices, getting the info out quickly and move along
You know something has changed when people are writing books on how to use the iPad in corporate with apps available from the App Store. Macs might as well be growing fast in enterprise, but iOS devices have done in 36 months what OS X couldn’t in 35 years. [via Forkbombr]
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.
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]
#MacStoriesDeals - Monday
If you didn’t already know, we’ve set up a new twitter account for Deals, it’s @MacStoriesDeals. We’ll tweet the daily deals there as well as exclusive weekend deals too. Help spread the word! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!
Nintendo 3DS Sales Affected By iOS Devices→
Nintendo 3DS Sales Affected By iOS Devices
Electronista reports the sales of the Nintendo 3DS won’t match the ones of the original Nintendo DS, according to iSuppli:
Nintendo’s 3DS sales will never match those of the earlier DS line due to competition from Apple and Google, IHS iSuppli said this weekend. The 3DS would hit 11.6 million devices in 2011, but it would always lag behind what the DS line managed at the same point in its history, hitting 69.9 million systems versus 90.9 million.
I was one of the people who stood in line at my local videogame store in 2004 to get an early DS unit imported from the US (back then, games didn’t have regional restrictions), and I bought a DSLite and DSi after that. But something’s changed in the mobile gaming industry since November 2004 (when the original DS went on sale), and that’s the quick adoption of app stores and touch-based smartphones. In fact, iSuppli believes that the iPod touch, the iPhone and iPad are affecting the sales of the 3DS, which is struggling in keeping sales numbers up in Japan. Official numbers haven’t been released yet (they’ll be available later this week), but the 3DS is doing okay for now. It’s just that there’s a general assumption it won’t do as well as the DS in the long term, mainly because the market has changed to accommodate iOS and Android devices as gaming machines that also happen to do many other things – again, thanks to online marketplaces like the App Store. On top of that, DS games are still sold in cartridges at $40 whilst you can find thousands of $2.99 - $9.99 games in the App Store. And with digital downloads, you don’t have to worry about physically carrying around anything except, well, your phone or tablet.
There are a lot of factors to consider when comparing Nintendo’s portable consoles to iOS devices (personally, I don’t believe the console will die anytime soon), but it’s very clear that in this new market many users are playing games on new devices like the iPod touch. Nintendo will keep selling its 3DS models for years, but don’t expect those numbers to be as huge as the original DS.
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]