This week was filled with rumors that Apple may finally be pulling the plug on its traditional-spinning-hard-drive MP3 player. Well, the NPD Group revealed to AppleInsider the overall portable media player sales rankings for 2010 in the US. Guess what placed fifth in the rankings?
Apple’s black 160GB iPod classic was the fifth best selling media player in the U.S. for all of 2010, suggesting that the hard drive-based device won’t be exiting the company’s product lineup in the near future.
Many people would tell you that you don’t need a pen to enjoy touchscreen devices. For the most part it’s true: the iPad shines as fingers flick photos into sharing bins and users check off another todo item in Things. Pen input is old fashioned, and quite frankly there isn’t a successful way to do it on a capacitive touchscreen. Though what would happen if we took the pen away from a poet, or a brush away from a canvas painter? Ten One Design defies finger philosophy with an elegant solution for the iPhone 4, iPod touch, and iPad with the popular Pogo Stylus.
Craig Grannell is right about iOS lacking an option to easily restore game backups:
Game Center could have been a solution with cloud-based backups for gamers, but I think this is a wider issue. Apple should provide single backups for any app, not just games. Either cloud-based (tied to your MobileMe account, would be nice) or local, users could restore an app’s library after an OS update in seconds. The problem with the current iTunes backups is that they keep everything in a single package that’s often incompatible with updates / downgrades because, again, apps aren’t separated from system files in the backup file.
A single-app backup method would make everything much easier.
A few minutes ago Apple released an update to iBooks for iPhone and iPad. The new iBooks 1.2.1 doesn’t come with new features over the previous 1.2 version but adds a number of stability and performance improvements. The usual Apple magic recipe for minor updates, we guess.
Go grab it here. [Thanks, Roberto!]
Another great day for app savings! Today Gameloft, Capcom & Sega have started their 99¢ sale. Here’s 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!
Call it a ripoff or “design inspiration”, an iPad app called YouPad, available in the App Store at $1.99, takes the experience and design elements seen in Twitter’s official iPad client and mixes them with Youtube. The result, as you can see from the screenshots, is quite…curious.
The FalconsApp developers claim that the app has been featured in Apple’s “New & Awesome” category, and while we still have to see such a section show up in the App Store, we do believe them when they say YouPad provides a revolutionary way to browse Youtube. Twitter for iPad was very innovative, too. The app seems to feature the same stacking panels navigation, the same background, the same sidebar with icons to browse different sections of Loren Brichter’s application. We can’t judge on stability and animations, but these developers sure have a thing for this kind of interface.
But hey – perhaps it really is a revolutionary app. If you dare to go ahead and purchase YouPad, it’s only $1.99 in the App Store. If you, however, don’t like Twitter for iPad at all, then you should stay away from this one.
Penultimate is one of the most popular productivity apps for the iPad that was featured by Apple several times in the past (it still holds the #3 position in the Top Paid chart) and we covered as well during its update cycle. When the iPad was released last year, Penultimate was one of the first apps to become really, really popular among early adopters and grant the developers thousands of dollars in revenue.
The latest update to Penultimate, version 2.3, adds full support for AirPrint (iOS 4.2 or later required) and multiple page actions that allow users to email, print or delete different sets of pages within a single notebook. Together with other stability and performance improvements, Penultimate really stands out in the handwriting / sketching panorama of apps for iPad.
Penultimate is available at $0.99 in the App Store.
As reported by AppleInsider, a note to investors issued by analyst Mike Abramsky with RBC Capital Markets suggests that the Verizon iPhone’s sales might top 1 million in the first week of availability of the device. Basing on estimated numbers from last week’s pre-orders and available inventory at Verizon and Best Buy stores, Abramsky predicts the 8 month old iPhone 4 can sell 1 million units from February 10th to the 17th, quickly go out of stock and then sell between 3 - 4 million units in the first quarter.
For calendar year 2011, Abramsky sees between 9 million and 10 million Verizon iPhones being sold, though he cautioned the number could be conservative. Those sales figures assume smartphone penetration among Verizon’s customer base will grow from 26 percent in 2010 to 40 percent in calendar year 2011.
The analyst also sees Apple surpassing Google Android’s smartphone share on the Verizon network in 2011. He has forecast the iPhone to represent 40 percent of smartphone sales on Verizon, versus 37 percent for Android.
Other numbers shared by Abramsky include 75 million iPhones sold in 2011 with Verizon accounting to 12 - 13 percent of iPhone sales worldwide. Apple and Verizon haven’t disclosed the official numbers of pre-orders for the iPhone 4 yet, but we guess we’ll be hearing about sales soon, probably as soon as next weekend.
Retail chain Walmart announced this morning that, starting February 10th, they will carry the Verizon iPhone in nearly 600 stores across the United States:
We’re excited to bring iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network, one the most anticipated mobile phone launches in recent history, to Walmart customers,” said Gary Severson, senior vice president, Home Entertainment, Walmart U.S. “As customers continue to embrace smart phone technology, we’ve added nearly 20 smart phone models to our assortment, including the new Verizon Wireless iPhone 4.”
iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network will be available at nearly 600 of the retailer’s in-store wireless areas starting at $199 for the 16GB model. Walmart will offer a variety of iPhone 4 accessories including cases, car chargers, wraps, and hands free accessories from variety of accessory manufacturers. Walmart currently carries the AT&T iPhone 4 in select stores nationwide.
Walmart joins Apple, Verizon and Best Buy as a distributor of the new device. Orders for the Verizon iPhone went live again last night on Apple’s and Verizon’s websites.
