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Posts tagged with "iPad"

Amazon Cloud Player Doesn’t Work On iOS — But It’s Not A Flash Issue→

Amazon Cloud Player Doesn’t Work On iOS — But It’s Not A Flash Issue

On Android devices, Cloud Player works by way of the Amazon MP3 app. This app does not exist on the iOS platform because it would compete with Apple’s iTunes Store. Presumably, Amazon could make another stand-alone app for Cloud Player or include it in one of their other Amazon iOS apps, but Apple new platform rules on subscriptions make this a bit murky (Amazon’s Cloud Drive is free for 5 GB but costs a yearly fee for more storage).

You’d think the alternative would be to simply launch an HTML based web-app at this point. @GlennF points out that Safari can support background audio with iPhone 3 software as well, though Siegler reminds us the audio player simply doesn’t work. I worry that the lack of support for iOS devices at launch is a huge missed opportunity, especially when you could have directly insulted Apple by playing on their own turf. Now, the talk won’t be about that Amazon launched cloud based storage and streaming, but that they aren’t on the most popular media devices at launch. I’m under the presumption that Amazon wants a native app in the App Store (but can’t), but then again we’re talking about the same company that requires Android owners to install the Amazon Appstore in eight steps. Thankfully for the Amazon MP3 app, it only takes one.

On the upside, 5 GB (then 20 GB for a year if you simply buy an album) of free cloud storage is incredibly generous, and I suspect John Gruber might be right about the development of a tablet or phone to coexist with a new media ecosystem (see the 8-Steps link above).

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Obama Has An iPad→

Obama Has An iPad

Sure the President knows how to sign iPads, but how about owning one? Even if it’s been called “a distraction” in the past? MarketWatch reports, indeed, President Obama has an iPad:

Do you have an iPad?” asked Ramos next.

I do have an iPad,” Obama replied, joking later about also having his own computer.

I mean, Jorge, I’m the president of the United States,” Obama said. “You think I’ve got to go borrow somebody’s computer?” said Obama to laughter. “Hey, man, can I borrow your computer? How about you? You’ve got one?

Obama also says he uses a BlackBerry phone. Perhaps RIM could trust him to have a preview unit of the PlayBook? There shouldn’t be problems with “leaks” at the White House anyway.

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#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!

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Apple Australia Lets You Reserve An iPad 2 For Pickup

If you’re on the hunt for an iPad 2 and live in Australia you might just have a good chance of snapping one up from an Apple Store by reserving one online. That’s right, Apple Australia is letting customers reserve iPad 2’s for pick-up at an Apple Store and the next day no less!

There is however a (large) caveat in that you can only reserve an iPad 2 if that particular store has them in stock – and after going live only 3 hours ago I’ve looked through most of the Australian Apple Stores and none have stock of any of the 12 models.  Apple Stores do however receive stock fairly frequently, at least a few times a week so keep checking if you’ve missed out in this first batch of reservable iPad 2’s.

If you live close enough to an Australian Apple retail store and want to reserve an iPad 2 for pickup, jump over to the Apple retail site. At this stage it seems that Apple isn’t offering to do reserve iPad 2’s in any other country but one would suspect they may transition this system internationally and hopefully soon as it sure beats going to an Apple store everyday to ask if they have the model you want in stock.

[Via MacTalk]

 

Kickstarter Project - The Cosmonaut: A Wide-Grip Stylus for Touch Screens

Last year before everyone was using Kickstarter, a new iPhone accessory showed up on the site and was a phenomenal success. It was “The Glif” - a tripod mount / stand. We’ve covered it’s rise to popularity here on MacStories. The creators of The Glif, Dan Provost and Thomas Gerhardt, are back with a new project, named The Cosmonaut.

The Cosmonaut is a minimal, wide-grip capacitive stylus for touch screen devices (not just the iPad). They modeled this new product after a dry-erase marker since it makes more sense on an iPad than a small stylus that people use on smartphones.

Video after the break. Read more

#MacStoriesDeals - Friday

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!

Read more

#MacStoriesDeals - Thursday

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!

Read more

#MacStoriesDeals - Wednesday

If you didn’t already know, we’ve set up a new twitter account for Deals, it’s @MacStoriesDeals - please follow for Deals-only posts. 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!

Read more

What’s The Next Step For Social Magazines?→

What’s The Next Step For Social Magazines?

Former Design Director of The New York Times Khoi Vinh shares his thoughts on apps like Flipboard and TweetMag for iPad, digital magazines that plug into your Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader accounts to fetch articles to display in a beautiful magazine-like view. As Vinh points out – and as we argued in the past as well – the next step for these apps isn’t optimizing performances or improving the design. It’s all about making the apps “smarter” and capable of playing an important role in your social graph:

I was thinking about this the other day. What if Flipboard was capable of looking at my Twitter stream and automatically find out the topics that I really care about? And after that, what about filtering articles belonging to those topics and visualize the most relevant ones in a top position? With the acquisition of the Ellerdale Project last year, it seems like the Flipboard developers want to bring further integration with the social graph into the app.

The process, however, includes a difficult goal: making sure the algorithm is intelligent enough to understand whether a user wants to read about content he’s interested in, or discover new articles and material thanks to the app and his friends using the same application. It’s a complex system, but someone will get there eventually. The iPad is only one year old.

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