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.
Posts tagged with "apple"
The iPad 2 Dock Review
Apple Hires Carbon Fiber Expert As Senior Composites Engineer
It was yesterday discovered that Apple has discreetly hired Kevin Keeney as a Senior Composites Engineer. What makes this hire interesting is that Keeney is the CEO of a carbon fiber bike designer, Kestrel Bicycles, and has previously worked with Apple on a carbon fiber shell patent in 2009.
There is potential that by making Keeney’s position a permanent one, Apple may be ramping up an effort to produce Apple products with carbon fiber. Like the evolution of using aluminum, which has become a staple in Apple products, the use of carbon fiber could further push its products to even lighter and thinner levels whilst maintaining the strength of aluminum. There are some issues that need to be resolved however, mainly dealing with the cost of carbon fiber compared to aluminum and the reduced ability for heat absorption, which could prove troubling.
Keeney has extensive experience with his 20 years of design work and supply chain management, both of which would be beneficial in any potential job of rolling out a mass-production of carbon fiber based products. It had been falsely rumoured in February that the iPad 2 could potentially replace the aluminum backing of the original with a carbon fiber based one.
[Via 9to5 Mac]
Cracked AirPort Express Key Could Allow AirPlay Streaming To Any Device
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.
Authorized Biography of Steve Jobs Coming Early 2012
Publishing firm Simon & Schuster yesterday revealed that a biography of Steve Jobs is currently being written with an expected release date of early 2012, and unlike previous biographies of Steve Jobs this one has the blessing of Jobs himself. Being written by former Time executive Walter Isaacson and titled ‘iSteve: The Book of Jobs’, it will likely prove to be a fascinating and unprecedented look into the life and mind of Jobs.
Isaacson, who has also written biographies on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, has interviewed Jobs as well members of his family, co-workers and competitors for the book and was supposedly invited by Jobs for a tour of his childhood home. In a statement the publisher of Simon & Schuster, Jonathon Karp, said that “This is the perfect match of subject and author, and it is certain to be a landmark book about one of the world’s greatest innovators.”
A previously unwelcome biography, ‘iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business’ led to Apple banning and removing all books by its publisher, John Wiley & Sons, from Apple’s retail stores.
[Via MacRumors, AppleInsider]
Adobe To Launch 3 New iPad Apps That Highlight Potential of Photoshop Touch SDK
Adobe today announced that it will release Creative Suite 5.5 (a “mid-cycle update”) on May 3 along with three new iPad apps that will complement the full-featured desktop version of Photoshop. The three apps are actually designed as a demo of how developers can take advantage of the new Photoshop Touch SDK (which was released today) and create their own apps that complement and add additional functionality to the desktop version of Photoshop but through an Android, BlackBerry or iOS app.
The three iPad apps; Adobe Color Lava, Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav will all arrive on May 3rd on the same day as Creative Suite’s 5.5 update goes live. Adobe Color Lava (priced at $2.99) is in simple terms a digital paint palette that will allow you to mix paints and generate a five-color palette that can be sent to the Photoshop color chip or swatch palette. Adobe Eazel ($4.99) is essentially a basic drawing program (similar to Brushes) that features a unique interface in which by placing 5 fingers on the screen a pop-up menu will appear above each finger, sliding up with the relevant finger will select that menu which will then let you to alter the relevant value (such as color or brush size) . Finally and perhaps most useful is Adobe Nav ($1.99), this app turns the iPad into a dedicated control that has the various tool palettes displayed, selecting a particular tool will select that tool on the desktop version of Photoshop, the app will also let you easily cycle between the various files you may have open in Photoshop.
UPDATE: Shawn Welch has already shown off his third party app that takes advantage of the new Photoshop Touch SDK. His app, Photoshop Remote, allows users to view a live preview thumbnail of any image that is open on a network connected Photoshop client and it can handle multiple clients at once. It even adds a dashboard that replicates a lot of the functionality of the Adobe Nav application including; “tool selection, color selection, filters, adjustment layers, and more.” Jump the break for his video demonstrating the app.
Also after the break is a video demonstrating Adobe Eazel and Adobe Nav apps and jump over to CNet where they wrote a short review of each of the 3 apps, also if you are a developer that is interested in implementing the Photoshop Touch SDK make sure to visit the Adobe Developer Center.
What’s Going On With Apple and Best Buy?
An article published by CrunchGear last night suggested Apple “blacklisted” Best Buy over a misunderstanding between the company and the retailer which, allegedly, had been holding off on selling iPad 2 units they had in stock. Apple didn’t like the strategy, and stopped sending new iPad 2 shipments to Best Buy altogether. CrunchGear also reported it was unclear why Best Buy would keep iPads in stock without selling them (telling customers iPads weren’t available at all), with this information coming from “a reader who works at Best Buy.” The report also went on to claim that – according to the tipster – Tim Cook was involved in negotiations with Best Buy, and the situation was pretty bad for the American retailer.
As it usually happens with rumors involving Apple, the report got picked up by several blogs last night. But since CrunchGear posted the tip they received from a Best Buy employee, it all got more interesting. CrunchGear updated their original report with a purported email from Tim Cook sent to the tipster. Read more
Analysts: Did Apple Sell 19 Million iPhones in Q2 2011?
Two weeks ago, Apple officially announced the Q2 2011 conference call, where the company will unveil the financial results for the quarter that ended on March 26. The second fiscal quarter usually marks a decline in sales after the holiday season, but this year analysts are facing an interesting scenario: in the second quarter, Apple released the Verizon iPhone after years of rumors and speculation, and launched the iPad 2 both in the United States and internationally. Whilst previous Q2s have followed the unspoken standard of lower sales than the big boom of Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping, this year’s conference call is set to provide more insight into Verizon iPhone’s sales (which were rumored to be “below expectations”, although many disagree) and the (allegedly) huge success of the iPad 2, which is still nowhere to be found in most Apple retail stores and has a 2-3 weeks shipment delay on Apple.com.
Just like last quarter, Fortune has posted the predictions of pro and “amateur” analysts about how many iPhone units did Apple sell in the quarter. According to the analysts contacted by Fortune, Apple might have sold between 13 million and 20 million iPhones, with most predictions averaging around 16 million devices sold.
The health of Apple’s quarterly earnings – and its stock price – will depend heavily on how those two factors balanced out. The iPhone is the company’s biggest money maker; in Q1 2011, it represented nearly 40% of total revenue.
The 43 analysts we polled – professionals and amateurs – were split on the question of whether iPhone sales rose or fell in Q2. Twenty five believe Apple sold more; 18 think it sold less. Their estimates ranged from a high of 19.8 million from Susquehanna’s Jeff Fidacaro to a low of 13.24 million from Goldman Sachs’ Bill Shope.
In Q1 2011, Apple posted a record revenue of $26.74 billion with 7.33 million iPads sold, 16.24 million iPhones and 4.13 million Macs; a graphical analysis of the Q1 offers a good overview of where Apple’s sales are and what’s generating profit for the company. In the past weeks, other analysts claimed 2011 could be a $100 billion revenue for Apple. While we look forward to see whether or not Horace Dediu and Turley Muller will go close to Apple’s actual results this time around too, you can check out the full chart if predictions and estimates below. Read more
Microsoft Releases Bing for iPad
Bing for iPad has just been released onto the iTunes App Store and it is Microsoft’s first app to make it onto the tablet device. Just like their Bing iPhone app and the Bing website, the daily image is the first thing you’ll notice with the app and it looks beautiful on the iPad’s screen. Furthermore the app gives you a quick glance of key information of Weather, News, Movies, Trends and more in a bar at the bottom of the screen.
The app contains a wealth of features and has been exceedingly well-designed to take advantage of the iPad’s strengths - this can definitely not be called just a search engine app. Those bottom tabs of information are a gateway into a full screen of lots more information. However probably the best feature of the app is the Trends page which gives you a very nice, almost FlipBoard-esque, page with all the top searches on Bing, along with a relevant image. Like the iPhone app it features a Voice Search (which works pretty well) and search, whether it be done via text or voice, can be for a website, news, image, video or map.
There is a lot of swiping that can be done in the app and it allows you to go back and forward from your last ‘panel’ of information, whether it be a web search, news page or weather. Bing Maps is included and fully functional letting you search for an address or business, find local business and even get directions.
The iPad app is curiously only available in the US iTunes app store which is certainly odd considering the web version does have international editions, that even have a different daily picture. However even weirder is that I downloaded it from the US store and ran it in Australia and it not only gave me the correct weather but the daily image was the Australian one and even Bing Maps showed my location and correctly showed local businesses, only the movie theatre times didn’t work. Jump the break for some more screenshots of the app.
Apple Patent Reveals Potential E-Ink And LCD Hybrid Display
A new patent revealed today shows that Apple has given consideration into a hybrid display that could dynamically switch and even simultaneously use e-ink and a traditional LCD system for displaying content for a device such as an iPad. The patent filed in October of 2009 and entitled “Systems and Methods for Switching Between an Electronic Paper Display and a Video Display” has a clear purpose in that it could be used for easier reading of text, particularly in an application such as iBooks.
The system described in the Apple patent would work by placing a translucent e-ink display above the traditional LCD panel (and below the touch panel), and depending on what content is supposed to be displayed, the switching on and off of the panel would be done by the system rather than the user. E-ink displays have some clear benefits in that they do not require a backlight, are less likely to induce eye strains than the bright screens of an LCD display and can be read in direct sunlight, as this Amazon ad last year highlighted to great effect.
An LCD obviously reigns supreme with high-resolution, dynamic and coloured content whilst e-ink is best for static text in black and white. The Apple patent aims to solve such an issue by allowing for separate display regions that can be independently activated when necessary. It was in fact previously rumored that the iPad 2 would have greater anti-reflective and anti-smudge treatments as a way to improve reading on the device but such a system described in this patent with a hybrid display of e-ink and LCD technology would be a far superior answer to the problems of reading in direct sunlight.
[Via AppleInsider]