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Posts tagged with "iPad"

First Impressions and More Details On Apple’s Updated Retail Stores

After last night’s photos of Apple’s changes to the retail experience (dubbed “Apple Store 2.0” in recent rumors and speculation), a MacTalk forum member has posted (via MacRumors) his first impressions of the new retail space and in-store tables featuring interactive iPad displays to offer more product information, compare tech specs, and call a Specialist for further assistance. As previously reported, the iPads being used by Apple next to each device and computer are special units glued to a mounting block that’s also glued to the main table, running a custom app that’s impossible to hide by locking the device or clicking the Home button. Forum poster jack112006 says he’s tried different combinations for pressing the Home button, but none of them worked as the iPads are likely impossible to hack in-store to visualize the underlying OS. Furthermore, as we saw from the pictures, the units are connected to a single cable that, once inside the mounting block, is divided into two separate cables: one for security and anti-theft measures, one (a very thin 30-pin dock connector) for charging purposes.

The second cable is quite special. It is an ultra-thin 30 pin ribbon cable. It is tight against the iPads body in the acrylic block, and is used for charging, and I would imagine periodic device re-imaging for a new product, etc. The software on all the iPads is very special, and is set up so that the Home button is inactive.

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Week Calendar HD Adds New Theme, Gets More Settings and Less Leather

Week Calendar HD is an excellent replacement for Apple’s own Calendar application I reviewed here a couple of weeks ago, when the app made the transition from the iPhone to the tablet’s larger screen. The first version of Week Calendar HD was a solid release, but left many surprised because of its skin that reminded of Apple’s app and, more importantly, of the theme the company implemented in iCal’s upcoming Lion version. Either because Apple called or because the developer realized a calendar application doesn’t need to look like a real-life calendar to be useful, the new version of Week Calendar HD changes the default skin to black leather and introduces a new “Modern” theme that gets rid of the leather-ish background altogether and looks gorgeous on the iPad.

Version 1.1 also comes with several bug fixes (particularly appreciated is the better handling of overlapping events, and the new event popup no longer disappearing) and enhancements to the settings to enable you to further customize the calendar experience throughout all your configured accounts. Custom calendar colors can now be synchronized across devices running Week Calendar with a new option in the settings; it’s now possible to only show daytime hours (very welcome change, as I don’t care about displaying hours I’m not going to be available anyway) and you can set up custom recurring intervals like “every 17 days.” The day view got some improvements too, as it can be swiped to navigate; last, the month view (which I love) got the possibility to hide time of events and change the font size. I’m not sure why events from my OmniFocus Reminders subscribed calendar still look weird in Week Calendar, but I’m pretty sure I’ll figure something out not that font options are available.

Week Calendar HD is a powerful calendar application for iPad, now with a beautiful modern skin, less leather and more settings. Get it here.

Wu: iPad Production Issues Have “Significantly Improved”

According to a new report by Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu relayed by Fortune, the production issues that were affecting the iPad 2 supply chain over the past months have “significantly improved”, with shipments approaching 3-4 million units per month as constraints ease on the suppliers’ end. Wu now estimates 6.8 million iPads for the quarter that ends on June 25 up from 5.9 million units, as well as 17 million iPhones and 3.9 million Macs. Wu notes how the release of the white iPhone marks a “continued strong adoption” of the product, also helped by the availability of the iPhone on Verizon in the United States.

The production problems that hurt iPad shipments last quarter have “significantly improved,” writes Wu, “with better yields and higher output due to successful retooling and conversion of more production lines to iPad 2.” This would appear to contradict recent reports of shortages of both components and labor.

The iPad “still has a ways” to go to hit what Wu says is Apple’s goal of 3-4 million units per month by the second half of 2011, but is “getting closer.”

Contradicting reports posted in the past weeks indicated Apple was still facing production issues with the iPad 2 because of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, alongside other problems encountered at Foxconn’s facilities, which led FBR analyst Craig Berger to believe Apple would be unable to meet the internal goal of 40-45 million iPads produced this year. Among the technical issues mentioned by separate reports recently, the iPad 2 shortages were linked to speaker and display production issues related to light leakage problems discovered in some LG screen units shipped last quarter.

Screenshots Reveal New “Daily Download” App for Apple Retail Employees

Following all the rumors posted in the past week surrounding Apple’s internal retail meetings set for May 22 and the alleged launch of a new retail store experience dubbed Apple Store 2.0, 9to5mac has managed to get their hands on one of those retail-specific iPads we previously reported on, grabbing some screenshots of the new “Daily Download” application for employees. As the website explains, the Daily Download used to be a web application where employees could get access to an internal “newspaper” with various material including news and product indexes.

9to5mac also says that private folder Apple employees were instructed to download from Apple’s servers with GBs of data inside contained disk images of Lion, which is going to be installed on some store machines. It’s unclear, however, how Apple managed to deploy a stable, final version of Lion for retail, when the consumer version is still stuck at beta 3 with several stability issues.

The “gigs of data” for sunday, as far as I can tell from the general consensus around the store and some of my contacts is that we will infact be downloading OS X Lion images and installing on all FOH machines for a Sunday launch. Nothing else fits since all other visual content has already been pulled from the apple servers that we gather content from. Lion is the mutual feeling around the store, even from managers. Speaking of managers, they have been given a general idea about what is happening, but full details will be revealed to them on friday evening.

We’ll know more for sure come Monday morning, May 22, and you can check out more screenshots of Daily Download here. Rumors have pointed to Apple organizing a product launch, a store re-organization and a 10th anniversary celebration for retail on May 22, though at this point an overhaul of some retail store operations seems more likely.

Could Aperture Be Coming to iOS?

This would be a photographers dream come true wouldn’t it? Even if you prefer Adobe’s Lightroom to Apple’s Aperture, I’d love to have the iPad play a larger role in field editing for photographers. The Photos app included on the iPad isn’t exactly prime for professional work (it’s great for displaying and browsing the end result), but Aperture on the iPad would give photographers an intuitive touch interface to edit photos in a library that’s perhaps separate from Photo’s library. Patently Apple reports that Aperture could well be on its way towards touchscreen devices such as the iPad (and maybe that touchscreen iMac we’ve heard about).

It’s the latter that’s interesting in light of Apple’s latest patent revelation that Aperture is coming to touch displays including handhelds like the iPad. It may even come to future desktops and laptops that offer touch displays, according to Apple. An advanced graphics pen would be great for fast photo touch-ups and appreciated by photographers using Aperture on-the-go.

The patent covers various means of interacting with Aperture, from touch input to pen input, and the descriptions of various GUI elements that can provide authors with an easy toolset at the ready for image editing. The authors are intrigued with the idea that Apple may be moving towards various forms of alternate input, such a smart light pen, that could aid future Apple device owners in precision editing.

[via Patently Apple]

Survey Reveals How Consumers Use Their iPad

When the iPad went on sale just over a year ago, many were unsure of what people would use it for and the uncertainty has largely continued to today, where it is still a little vague as to how a tablet fits into people’s lives. Yesterday however, Business Insider published some fascinating data on a whole range of questions that surround the iPad and how it is used. The data was collated after Business Insider issued an extensive survey, on a wide variety of issues and questions, to more than 850 people.

Their survey revealed that for about 70% of respondents, there was only 1 iPad in their household and only about 23% has 2 in the one household – less than 7% had 3 or more iPads in their household. Nearly 40% had downloaded between 20 and 50 apps, whilst 30% had downloaded more than 50 apps – with few paying for more than 20 of those apps and only 6% paying for none. Below are some of the other more interesting results but jump over to The Atlantic for all the results.

  • 87.4% did not even consider an Android tablet before buying an iPad and 90% would not consider a BlackBerry PlayBook or HP TouchPad
  • The number of people with WiFi-only or the 3G iPad is fairly evenly split (52% to 48%)
  • Only 49% subscribe to a monthly 3G data plan (of those who have a 3G iPad)
  • 40% use the iPad as their primary computer
  • The most cited reasons for use of the iPad are; web browsing (35%), using social or communication apps (22%), watching video (12%), playing games (12%) and using all other apps (20%)
  • For consuming news, 38% would use the iPad’s web browser, 34% would use a news site’s app and 28% would use an aggregator like Reeder or Flipboard.
  • 72% read e-books on the iPad, mostly on iBooks but Kindle is a close second