Archive for May, 2010
May 25th, 2010 at 5:33 PM EST | by inu846W
Vijay Rakesh, an analyst with Sterne, Agee & Leach, said Tuesday that Apple is currently manufacturing between 1 and 1.5 million iPads per month, and that the company could double that production in the September quarter to meet demand, if needed. He based his numbers on checks with memory-chip manufacturers overseas.
“We believe most of the manufacturing bottlenecks are now solved in the iPad supply chain even though memory continues to be a constraint,” the analyst said, according to the Associated Press.
Read more: MacObserver.com
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May 25th, 2010 at 5:16 PM EST | by inu846W
I love to play chess and was looking for something that worked well on the iPad. The large screen and crisp graphics make board games on the iPad an attractive proposition.
Based on some reviews, I installed tChess Pro for US $7.99. I wasn’t disappointed. While you can use the app to let two people play, I was more interested in playing against the computer. tChess Pro is a very strong opponent, but you can modify the levels that the game plays. It was the first time in a computer based chess game that I felt like I was playing a human, although at most levels except the lowest, I was getting clobbered.
The app allows you to set up games, add time controls, and there is an opening library mode that helps you understand the finer points of the game. You can take back moves, get a running analysis of your game, and get hints for the next move if you want them.
Other impressive features include the ability to email a game to someone, and you can choose from multiple board and chess piece designs. I especially liked the feature that allows you to use two fingers to rotate the board to any angle.
The game also contains built-in chess instructions; they are well written and a great place to start for beginners. It was the kind of thoughtful touch that makes the app rather special.
Read more: TUAW.com
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May 25th, 2010 at 5:06 PM EST | by inu846W
Imagine this: you put your iPad into its dock next to your desktop (or laptop), and it transforms into a heads-up display of all the important stats from your machine. Maybe add some news and weather, and your “Today” list from your favorite to-do app. I’m sure there are a good number of people who could care less about this kind of thing, but ever since I saw Steve’s post on Air Display, I started pondering the possibilities. This is my proof-of-concept. See the gallery for less-blurry images of the results.
I set up ScreenRecycler on my MacBook Pro and used iTeleport to turn my iPad into a third monitor. That part was easy enough, and I found a few screen resolutions that work pretty well. Next, I opened up GeekTool 3 and duplicated a few of my Geeklets (little widgets that run shell commands and scripts to print data onto your desktop). These were dragged to the iPad to create a workable display configuration, including:
* Time and date
* Calendar for the month with current day highlighted
* Current weather (with icon)
* Heaviest processes by memory and CPU usage
* 5-minute average system load
* Some uptime and memory stats.
Read more: TUAW.com
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May 25th, 2010 at 10:52 AM EST | by inu846W
Apple retail stores overseas will open early on Friday, with the international launch of the iPad set to start when doors open at 8 a.m. local time across the globe.
Apple’s regional websites for stores in the U.K, France, Canada, Germany, Australia, Italy, Japan, and Switzerland all indicate that they will open at 8 a.m. this Friday, May 28, for the international launch of the iPad. The device is also set to on sale in Spain, where Apple does not have any retail stores.
A retail purchase is likely the best option for customers who did not buy an iPad when preorders were first made available earlier this month. Since May 12, all new iPad preorders are not scheduled to ship until June.
The iPad will launch in a total of nine countries on May 28, with nine additional locations — Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore — receiving their iPads in July. Apple has said it will announce dates for nine additional countries at a later date.
Read more: AppleInsider.com
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May 25th, 2010 at 9:45 AM EST | by inu846W
The iPad will be arriving at homes across the globe this Friday as Apple begins its international roll-out. Much has been made of AT&T’s excellent contract-free data plans in the United States, but is the rest of the world going to be so lucky? No. In some cases, you may be better off ignoring the iPad plans altogether and (literally) hacking together your own solution.
AT&T offers cheap chunks of data (250 MB for $15), or a truly unlimited plan for just $30 a month. By contrast, many carriers in other countries are up to the usual telco tricks and offering contract-only plans, or “unlimited” data plans which slow bandwidth to a trickle after just a couple of gigabytes. I got a 64-GB iPad 3G shipped in by esteemed Wired New York Bureau Chief John C Abell, and it arrived last week. Official iPad plans have been detailed here in Spain, but as they are crazy-expensive and also not yet available, I rolled my own.
Read more: wired.com
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May 24th, 2010 at 2:55 PM EST | by inu846W
Journalists and computer programmers teamed up in San Francisco over the weekend to see what kind of news-related iPad apps they could come up with in the space of 48 hours. Modeled on 48-hour film projects, the competition—called Hacks/Hackers Unite—came up with 12 different apps, including winners two winners: “Who’s Reppin’ Me?” which uses geolocation to identify who your representatives are and then pull in news stories about them and allow you to communicate with them via Twitter; and “Citizen Kid News,” a news app for kids.
The 80 competitors also produced tools to create news quizzes, tools for photographers to create slideshows, and a recipe framework for food stories.
The competition was the brainchild of Burt Herman, a former Stanford Knight Fellow, who several months ago started hosting Hacks/Hackers meetups in the Bay Area to get journalists and technologists talking together.
Read more: mediabistro.com
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