Several complaints about Wi-Fi issues on the iPad are popping up in Apple support forums. A typical complaint is that the iPad shows no wifi signal, or a very weak signal, where other devices pick it up just fine, reports "TechCrunch" (http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/05/trouble-in-paradise-ipad-users-complain...).
I've experienced no Wi-Fi problems with my iPad. Have you?
-- Dennis Sellers
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Two more analyst firms have upped their outlook on price targets for Apple.
Analysts at J.P. Morgan have lifted their price target for Apple to US$305 a share from $240, citing better-than-expected anticipated sales of the company's Mac, iPhone and iPad products, reports "MarketWatch" (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jp-morgan-lifts-apple-price-target-to-3...).
"We believe the iPad is a decent first step in a new category, but critical mass likely depends on future product generations overcoming current feature limitations," wrote the analysts in their note. "In the interim, though, the Apple faithful and the early adopters should help the iPad beat subdued investor expectations." J.P. Morgan added it expects 825,00 iPads to ship in the June quarter, followed by 1.23 million...
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After flying to Richmond, Virginia and waiting in line all night to buy an iPad, the iFixit gang rushed to an impromptu studio -- and took it apart. Here's what they found:
° The iPad's design is a melding of the iPhone's circuitry and the MacBook Pro Unibody's svelte machined aluminum casing.
° The iPad's battery has 5.5x the capacity of the battery in the iPhone. The iPad actually has two batteries wired in parallel, for a total of 24.8 Watt-hours.
On average, the iPad sips just 2.5 Watts. That's one-fifth the power of a compact fluorescent bulb.
° The rear case is machined from a single billet of aluminum, increasing weight but greatly improving the rigidity of the device.
° The empty void in the upper right corner is where the cellular communications board would go in the 3G iPad.
° The A4 is a Package-on-Package (PoP), with at least three layers of circuitry layered on top of each other. A4 is packaged just like the iPhone processors,...
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Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has introduced a new development platform for iPhone and iPod accessories based on its new PSoC 3 architecture. Designers can use Cypress’s new CY8CKIT-023 PSoC Expansion Board Kit For iPhone & iPod Accessories -- a plug-in board to Cypress’s CY8CKIT-001 PSoC Platform Development Kit -- to streamline design of mobile accessories using the PSoC programmable system-on-chip architecture.
The new kit leverages the iPhone OS operating system of Apple’s iPhone and iPod products and the corresponding iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit) to provide a two-way communication interface between apps from Apple's App Store and corresponding accessories. The PSoC-based development platform enables integrated, modular design of functions such as capacitive touch-sensing, LCD segment drive and much more for traditional iPhone and iPod accessories such as audio docks and speakers, chargers and automotive products.
It also opens up a new realm of...
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Artman21 has released an update (version 1.0.3) of the system preference pane, JeditAnywhere (http://www.artman21.com/en/jeditanywhere/), that lets you edit the selected text in mailers, word processors or other applications with the Jedit X text editor. The new version improves compatibility with VMware Fusion, Eudora and Google Chrome.
With JeditAnywhere, by tapping the option key twice, you can invoke Jedit X and edit the selection without the copy and paste operation. After you've finished editing, tap the option key twice again, and the results will be written back to the selected area of the target application.
JeditAnywhere requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later and Jedit X Rev.2.20 or higher. It costs US$12.
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NLU Products (http://www.BodyGuardz.com) began shipping its ScreenGuardz Total Protection Pack for the iPad. It offers clear device protection available for Apple’s new device.
The ScreenGuardz Total Protection Pack combines screen protection (ScreenGuardz HD Anti-Glare) with BodyGuardz scratch-proof transparent film for the body of the device. BodyGuardz adds a layer of scratch-proof film to the back and sides of the device, while ScreenGuardz uses a static cling application (a less permanent alternative to protective adhesive skins) to safeguard the screen from scratches, oils and other potentially damaging agents. This set comes with a cleaning cloth to keep the iPad dust- and fingerprint-free. When purchased individually, this US$34.95 package would cost $50.89.
ScreenGuardz for the iPad is also available in a screen-only version for $19.95. NLU Products’ BodyGuardz brand is also offering...
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Oyen Digital (http://oyendigital.com/) has released the newly designed MiniPro series of 2.5-inch, bus-powered portable hard drives. The series includes a 1TB model, making it the highest-capacity portable hard drive available.
It's equipped with a variety of connection methods including USB 2.0, FireWire 800/400 and eSATA. The series features a rugged housing, measuring 4.9-inches x 0.9 inches x 3.1 inches, using an aluminum construction for shock protection and heat dissipation.
Oyen Digital's MiniPro is compatible with Mac OS 9.2 (and higher) and Mac OS X. All drives include Prosoft Data Backup 3 for Mac OS X.
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Bodelin Technologies will be showing their new ProPrompter HDi (http://www.bodelin.com/proprompter/ipad_remote), a teleprompter specifically made for the iPad and the ProPrompter Presidential, the first live speech teleprompter made for the iPad.
The ProPrompter App, now optimized for iPad, will also introduce Remote Sync and Presidential Sync as free updates for current users of the ProPrompter App. No AC power or external batteries needed as the iPad has a 10-hour battery.
The ProPrompter sports a camera bar, made of light, yet sturdy, aircraft aluminum, which attaches to the base of Pro, and most, consumer cameras. Next is a custom cut of 16:9 studio quality beam splitter glass encased in a padded frame and set in a high impact ABS hood. The key to the ProPrompter HDi hardware is a specially designed iPad specific bracket to securely hold the iPad...
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Apple has sent invitations to the press for a special invitation-only event that will “peek into the future of iPhone OS." The event will be held on Thursday, April 8.
As evidenced by the graphic on the invite, it's almost certainly to be the unveiling of iPhone OS 4. The sneak peak will be held at the Apple Town Hall at the company's Cupertino headquarters.
So what will iPhone OS 4 offer? Only Steve Jobs and Friends know, but it's speculated that it will include more multitasking. iPhone OS 3.x (the current version) only allows a few core apps, such as iPod and Mail, to run in the background while another app is active.
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USAePay has launched the PaySaber (http://www.paysaber.com), a lightweight, portable credit card machine that connects with the iPhone or iPod touch, allowing businesses to process financial transactions on the go. Individuals and businesses, from small business entrepreneurs to corporations of any size, can use PaySaber.
The unit connects with the iPhone/iPod touch to accept mobile payments anywhere, anytime. Its built-in encrypted card swiper purportedly ensures all transactions are safe and secure. The device works with the USAePay PCI certified payment gateway, which stores all of the data securely.
Users can keep retail rates by swiping customer’s cards with PaySaber’s built-in encrypted swiper. Swiping a card insures better transaction fees and chargeback protection. The swiper reads level one and level two card data, which is then encrypted at the time of swipe and sent over to the payment...
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Canaccord Adams technology analyst Peter Misek has raised his price target on Apple to US$300 from $250 or 20%. He's forecasting hot iPhone and Mac sales, as well as much better than anticipated iPad sales.
“Our survey and channel checks indicated widespread sell-outs [of the iPad] at Best Buy stores, however Apple stores appeared to have more stock and thus continued to have inventory. We believe that around 700K iPads were sold so far, including 500K of pre-orders,” Misek told clients in a note today. "We also took this opportunity to channel check Apple’s other product lines and, as a result, are adjusting our shipment estimates for iPads as well as iPhones and Macs.”
The analyst has raised his iPad shipments for fiscal year 2010 and fiscal year 2011 to 3.7 million and 11.3 million from 1.2 million and 3.5 million respectively. For iPhones, he's now forecasting 35.2 million (vs. 34.9 million) and 54.9 million (vs. 52.3 million) device sales in fiscal 2010 and...
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Fourth World (http://www.fourthworld.com) has released WebMerge 2.6, an upgrade to the tool for generating static Web pages from database or spreadsheet data. The new version offers enhanced support for CSS, new template tags, and includes performance and interface enhancements for Mac OS 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") and Windows 7.
WebMerge works with any database or spreadsheet that exports in tab-delimited, merge, or other tabular formats, including FileMaker Pro, Microsoft Access, and most affiliate data feeds. Using simple tags in templates created with any HTML authoring tool, WebMerge makes a new page from the data in each record of the exported file. WebMerge can also create index pages with links to each of the detail pages. Generated pages can be hosted on any web server without the need for a specialized database hosting solution.
A trial version of WebMerge can be used for free to generate...
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Gamepromo has released Pinball for Mac OS X (http://gameprom.com/thepinball) and Pinball Remote (itms://itunes.apple.com/app/pinball-remote/id347819481?mt=8) for the iPhone and iPod touch. Both are free.
The game offers the ability to buy new pinball tables and offers start, pause, restart, flipper controls, table tilting, camera controls. Pinball and Pinball Remote have a built-in Help for pinball tables and local and global high score tables. You can also turn on a stereoscopic mode (stereo glasses are required for this).
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When it comes to the MUG Event Calendar, the iPad will be on everyone’s agenda this week, whether it's an officially listed meeting topic or not. Even so, there are plenty of other topics and presenters on the schedule.
Apple Senior Systems Engineer Dave Marra will be at a New Jersey group, Daniel Busse of Apple will be in Illinois, and an unspecified Apple presenter will visit a Nevada group, and we bet they’ll all be focusing on the iPad. The folks from Smule will show off their latest creation to a California group, Elgato’s Mike Evangelist will be the guest of an Illinois group, and Eric Paquin of Microsoft will talk visit a group in Ireland.
Outside of iPad demos, presentations and general banter, topics on the list for this week include Apple TV and EyeTV, Pixelmator, Skype, video asset management, Bluetooth, Google Docs and Calendar, iMovie, and more.
"The MUG Event Calendar" can be found at The MUG Center (...
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Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster estimated that by midnight Sunday, Apple will have sold 600,000 to 700,000 iPads, including pre-orders -- more than double his relatively conservative pre-launch estimate of 200,000 to 300,000, reports "Fortune" (http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/04/04/new-ipad-launch-d...).
Other analysts had published estimates of 300,000 to 400,000. It took Apple 74 days to sell its first million units of the original iPhone, and three days each to...
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The iPad could offer "significant" cannibalization of Apple's laptop sales, according to "Seeking Alpha" (http://seekingalpha.com/article/196954-mac-notebook-cannibalization-from...).
"Seeking Alpha" estimates that there could be $15 (6%) downside to Apple’s stock if iPad sales were to eventually cannibalize about half of Mac notebook sales. Such a scenario could materialize if the majority of prospective Mac notebook buyers are primarily content consumers rather than content creators, the financial site says. )
About 18% of Apple’s stock value is attributable to the company’s Mac business. Mac notebooks are the most valuable component of the Mac business, constituting about 8% of Apple’s stock. In comparison, we...
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Here are the latest iPhone/iPod touch/iPod/iPad apps announced. You can find 'em at the Apple App Store (hxttp://www.itunes.com/appstore/).
To accompany the long-awaited iPad launch, Zondervan is one of the first publishers to release titles in the iBookstore beginning Saturday, April 3, 2010. More than 1,000 titles will be available for download from all product groups. Zondervan plans to release all its future ebooks in an iPad version and is working to release more than 150 additional books in the next three months.
Dragon Dictation, the mobile dictation app you've seen on the iPhone and the iPod touch, is now available to download on the iPad. And it's free for a limited time. With Dragon Dictation for the iPad, users can take advantage of the power of Dragon NaturallySpeaking to speak their email messages just like the previously-released Dragon Dictation for iPhone and iPod touch.
And Dragon Dictation for iPad also lets people speak and save drafts of...
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macProVideo.com has released a tutorial-video about Native Instruments Kontakt sampler plug-in, called"Native Instruments 105: Exploring Kontakt" (ttp://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/nativeinstruments105).
In this tutorial, composer and sound designer Scott Freiman shows you how to use Native Instruments’ Kontakt 4 sampler. Tips and tricks are scattered among this courses interactive tutorial-videos.
After a brief series of “getting started” videos, Freiman gets right into music making with Kontakt. He introduces Kontakt's features. Topics include creating a database of your own samples, using Kontakt as a plug-in, automating Kontakt with MIDI, and getting the most from the Kontakt browser. The course also takes a detailed look at each of the sample collections that make up the Kontakt Factory Library.
This tutorial is priced at US$39.50 for the HD Download, which users can download to their computer and review anytime, or $25 for unlimited monthly access to the...
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ZAGG (http://www.zagg.com) has released the $29.99 InvisibleShield for the iPad. It's described as a "military-grade, virtually invisible, and indestructible film that protects thousands of gadgets from bumps, scratches, and dings with a lifetime guarantee."
The original invisibleSHIELD will provide fingerprint resistance and added grip to the iPad’s smooth surfaces, and at the same time will not compromise the touch screen, says Derek Smith, vice president of sales for ZAGG. he full body invisibleSHIELD sells for US$39.99, and the front only or back only sells for $29.99.
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There was good news for Apple today with new research from price comparison site Kelkoo UK stating that 40 per cent of consumers are ready to ditch their laptops for a tablet PC like the iPad, reports "V3" (http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2260785/four-ten-uk-consumers-fancy").
When it comes to the iPad, 23% felt its functionality was too limited at the moment, while 32% said they didn’t see the need for one at all. However, Bruce Fair, managing director of Kelkoo UK,says the iPad could do for the tablet market what the iPhone did for the smartphone market and pave the way for a host of imitators.
“When it comes to transforming the fortunes of niche markets, Apple undoubtedly has the ‘Midas touch’,” he told "V3." “The iPad is a hybrid of Apple’s best loved products all under one roof, which is good for consumers as it could lead to significant cost savings. Like netbooks, the iPad provides the basic functions offered by a laptop at a margin of the cost -- which in the...
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Since Apple introduced the iPad in late January, Flurry Analytics (http://www.flurry.com/) -- a cross-platform mobile application analytics provider -- says it's noticed a significant spike in developer support, indicating early excitement for the promise of the device.
As April 3 draws near, developers continue to develop for the iPad at a fever pitch. Today Apple added a toggle switch to its online iTunes store that allows consumers to view apps available specifically developed for the iPad. About 2,000 iPad apps were listed upon Flurry's initial count.
Comparing the two pie charts from Flurry, the first notable difference is that iPad made up 22% of new projects starts within Flurry over the last 60 days. In March, over 3,000 unique applications were created within Flurry. A second point of interest is that Android's share of new project starts has decreased from 18% to 10%.
However, it...
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DODOcase (http://www.dodocase.com/) is announcing its limited first edition iPad case. Hand built and designed in San Francisco, CA the DODOcase takes the best of the traditional hardcover book/journal and brings it to an iPad case with inspiration from the Moleskine writing journals we all know and love, says Patrick Buickley, founder and CEO of DODOcase.
The DODOcase's protective cover is constructed using traditional book binding techniques. The iPad is held in place by a carved bamboo piece with foam inserts for added protection. Lightweight, strong and eco-friendly, the DODOcase design enables easy access to your iPad on the go with a fold around cover and a simple lift out for when you want to take the iPad from its case, says Buckley.
Orders are being accepted now at DODOcase online. Due to high demand cases will ship in 3-5 weeks. The price is normally US$49.95, but, for a limited time,...
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In addition to Apple retail stores, Apple’s new iPad will be available at most Best Buy stores this Saturday, April 3, beginning at 9 a.m. But with just 15 units available per store, it is likely the highly anticipated iPad will be elusive.
Milo.com, tracks the real-time in-store availability of Best Buy products, and almost 50,000 other retail stores nationwide. Early adopters in hot iPad pursuit can simply enter their location and type “iPad” on the Milo.com Web site or from their mobile phones and Milo.com will find the nearest Best Buy location with it in stock.
iPresentee (http://www.ipresentee.com), a developer of add-ons for Apple’s iWork and iLife applications, released Mail Stationery 1.0 templates to be used with Apple’s Mail software. It's a collection of 65 templates for Apple Mail.
What's more, iPresentee is presenting 15 free Easter Mail Stationery templates. Most of the templates includes extra design variations. Messages created with Mail Stationery can be read by popular webmail services and email programs on both Mac computers and PCs.
Moreover all Messages created with Mail Stationery can be viewed on iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. New Mail Stationery templates comes with an installer to make sure the templates end up in the right place and would be displayed in Apple Mail New Message Stationery menu automatically.
Mail Stationery 1.0 is priced at US$25 and requires Mac OS X 10.5n. Free Mail Stationery templates for Easter holiday...
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The iPad's attractive design, compelling applications and multi-touch capability will help to offset the omission of Adobe Flash from the device and send demand soaring in 2010 and beyond, according to a preliminary forecast by iSuppli Corp. (http://www.isuppli.com).
Worldwide iPad sales are expected to amount to 7.1 million units in 2010. Sales will double to 14.4. million in 2011 and nearly triple to 20.1 million in 2012, says iSuppli.
Sales in 2010 will be driven by early adopters and others attracted to the iPad's unique touch screen-baed user interface, the research group says. In 2011 and 2012, iPad sales will be driven up by a range of factors, including a flood of new applications, improved functionality and declining prices.
What's more, iSuppli reps say this forecast is "conservative." Factors that could boost sales beyond their preliminary expectations are swift feature enhancements...
