Samsung SHW-M120S to be first Android phone with Bluetooth 3.0?

Samsung's all about records: firsts, biggests, smallests, thinnests, you get the idea. Indeed, it was just a few weeks ago that the company managed to slip the very first Bluetooth 3.0 certified handset through -- but these guys never rest, and it looks like they're already prepping to follow up that feat by throwing Android into the mix. The Bluetooth SIG is showing certification for an SHW-M120S model that apparently features a 3.3-inch WVGA AMOLED display, 5 megapixel autofocus primary cam plus VGA secondary, WiFi, GPS, HSDPA, and -- yes, you guessed it -- a Bluetooth Core Version of 3.0, meaning you'll likely be able to fling files around to your house full of Bluetooth 3.0-capable devices with the greatest of ease. The presence of a T-DMB tuner means this sucker is targeted squarely at the South Korean market, but we've no doubt Sammy plans on taking 3.0 global so that it can... you know, have the world's most Bluetooth 3.0 devices. PuntoCellulare seems to have a pretty good shot of it, and it looks pretty much how you'd expect any self-respecting Samsung smartphone to look in 2010 -- in other words, there's nothing that screams "I can wirelessly transfer data short distances at heretofore-unknown speeds" just by looking at it, and that's totally fine by us. Rumor is we'll see this launch "in the next few weeks."

by Ljrit

Editorial: the American phone subsidy model is a RAZR way of thinking in an iPhone world

The concept is simple enough -- pay more, get more. So it has gone (historically, anyway) with phone subsidies in this part of the world, a system that has served us admirably for well over a decade. It made sense, and although it was never spelled out at the customer service counter quite as clearly as any of us would've liked, it was fairly straightforward to understand: you bought a phone on a multi-dimensional sliding scale of attractiveness, functionality, and novelty. By and large, there was a pricing scale that matched up with it one-to-one. You understood that if you wanted a color external display, a megapixel camera, or MP3 playback, you'd pay a few more dollars, and you also understood that you could knock a couple hundred dollars off of that number by signing up to a two-year contract. In exchange for a guaranteed revenue stream, your carrier's willing to throw you a few bucks off a handset -- a square deal, all things considered. So why's the FCC in a tizzy, and how can we make it better? The problem The year is 2010 -- and things have changed. A multitude of market forces have dramatically and fundamentally altered the phone pricing landscape over the last 18 to 24 months in particular; carriers that once had a well-stratified range of feature phones priced between free and $100 plus a lone smartphone or two at the $200 price point now have a confusing jumble of smartphones and feature phones alike spanning the entire range. What's more, the supply chain has matured and R&D costs have been paid down -- a high-end handset that manufacturers needed to retail for, say, $650 five years ago before subsidy might run just $500 today (after adjusting for advances in technology). Confusing matters further is a continued push for relatively high-end feature phones like the HTC Smart, Samsung Wave, and LG Mini that often cost more than their smartphone counterparts. The price pressure is enormous, and realistically, going above $99 on contract is now dangerous territory for anything short of a superphone. Knowing full well that $199 is an unspoken psychological ceiling for most consumers, carriers are left with impossibly little room to price this amazing spread of devices. But it gets worse: these days, it's impossible to ignore the reality of the $99 iPhone 3G, a device that continues to set the benchmark for the level of functionality and capability that a midrange smartphone should deliver a year and a half after its introduction. The price pressure is enormous, and realistically, going above $99 on contract is now dangerous territory for anything short of a superphone -- pretty amazing when you consider that Cingular charged a heart-stopping $499.99 on a new two-year agreement for the RAZR V3 when it launched a little over five years ago. In practice, what does this all mean? To put it bluntly, it means that customers who choose lower-end devices are getting screwed, because no amount of subsidy can make up for the fact that you're paying just $100 more upfront for an iPhone 3G than you are for a lowly Nokia 2230. Verizon has even plainly admitted this in its defense of the infamous $350 "advanced device" ETF to the FCC -- it simply costs more for a carrier to front you a good price on a smartphone than it does a dumbphone. Price pressure has excluded the consumer from feeling that difference, unless -- in the case of Verizon, anyway -- they opt to back out of a contract early, in which case they're met only with negative reinforcement. The solution I'm not advocating that good phones should cost more than they do today. Quite the contrary, actually -- the real problem is that American carriers have yet to fully acknowledge the new reality that high-performance smartphones are commodity items, even as they load their lineups with them, and you end up with a traffic jam of devices and no way to effectively price them. But I'm also not advocating that carriers thin out the herd (I'd never dream of suggesting such a thing). Instead, I'm arguing that carriers need to rethink everything about the way they incentivize commitments, and maybe even rethink the concept of a commitment altogether. Most American carriers partly recoup deeper subsidies on higher-end devices by requiring lucrative data plans, and as annoying as that is, I think that it's the closest we've come to nailing the real fix. The next step is to come to terms with the fact that, for all practical purposes, $0 and $100 are the same thing -- over the course of a two-year contract, the upfront sticker price you pay for a phone is trivial. Seriously, it's a drop in the bucket: total cost of ownership for a smartphone on any of the US nationals can run beyond $3,000 by the time your 24 months is up. European carriers -- operating in a more mature market than their American counterparts -- have long since figured this out, and have completely turned the subsidy model on its end. You can get virtually whatever phone you want for free, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high -- the only difference is the required minimum monthly spend. It makes a lot of sense considering that carriers don't make money off your phone purchase, they make it off your plan -- it's not pure gravy for them, but it's close enough so that they're comfortable deeply subsidizing your hardware. Besides, higher-end phones have been proven to generate higher ARPU (average revenue per user), which only serves to validate the model further. So, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, that's really all there is to it: crib off your European cousins. There's never been a better time, what with the boys and girls in Washington bearing down. Stop trying to play the pricing game from the moment a potential customer walks into the store, because it's only going to get harder -- and rest assured, the days of selling $500 clamshells on contract are definitely over.

by Ljrit

Eternal optimist Verizon calls iPad launch 'an opportunity' to sell some data plans

That's the "glass is half full" attitude we like, Verizon -- always looking for a way to sign a few more of those lucrative data contracts, no matter the circumstances! Turns out Big Red is tipping off its staffers on how it can encourage customers to go with the WiFi-only version of the iPad and pair it up with a device like the MiFi rather than shelling out $130 more for integrated AT&T 3G and waiting a few extra weeks. As usual, Verizon's keen on playing up the anti-AT&T sentiment it's cultivated in its recent ad campaign by openly calling its biggest competitor's 3G network "overloaded," but we see one big hangup: 5GB of data on a Verizon MiFi is going to run you $60 a month, twice as much as AT&T will be charging for its dedicated, unlimited iPad plan. Then again, AT&T's own boss thinks WiFi's a bigger deal than 3G for this thing, so who knows -- maybe this is a zero-sum game for both of these guys.

by Ljrit

Mission Impossible Crew Steals $26,000 Worth of MacBooks From Bestbuy

Thieves cut a hole in the roof and rappelled down into a Best Buy, without touching the ground, to steal $26,000 worth of Apple notebook computers, reports NJ.com. Amazingly the bandits performed the whole heist without setting off alarms or being caught on tape. On top of the building, they used a saw to cut through several inches of rubber and insulation, then sliced a 3-foot-wide square in the metal roof. Once inside, the burglars dropped 16 feet to 10-foot-tall racks — avoiding contact with the floor, where motion sensors would have set off an alarm. They snatched the notebooks from the racks, then went back out through the roof. Avoiding store security cameras by choosing a spot where the cameras were obscured by advertising banners, the thieves managed to grab $26,000 in laptop computers and departed down a 3-inch gas pipe that runs from the roof to the ground outside the store. "High level of sophistication," said Detective James Ryan, a police department spokesman. "They never set off any motion sensors. They never touched the floor. They rappelled in and rappelled out." Employees discovered the missing laptops when they arrived to work this morning.

by Ljrit

iPhone Photo Makes UK Tabloids Look Foolish

It doesn't take much to make yourself look like a fool, but in the case of The UK's Sun and Daily Mail newspapers, they have to be feeling quite idiotic right about now. Perhaps not, as these tabloids have a history of running fabulous stories about celebrities, politicians, and the supernatural as a matter of daily business. John Ware, a 47-year old builder, sent the newspapers a photo he had taken with his iPhone that allegedly showed a ghostly little boy dressed in turn-of-the-20th-century clothing, balefully looking at the photographer. You can see the little boy at the right side of the photo, standing in the foreground. The papers dutifully ran the story, with the Sun's example shown at the top of this post. There's only one problem: as Macenstein pointed out, the same little boy haunts the US$0.99 iPhone app Ghost Capture. That's right — it's apparent that Mr. Ware snapped a shot of a demolition site with the app, and then submitted the photo. Our guess is that Ware was having a little fun with the papers, and that the "Got a story? We pay £££." tag line you see at the top of the page might have provided some motivation. Here's hoping that the developers of Ghost Capture add The King to the family of ghosts in the app, so the Sun and Daily Mail can report a rash of Elvis sightings to their readers.

by Ljrit

VeriFone Credit Card Reader To Be In Apple Stores

The Square credit card reader for the iPhone has gotten most of the buzz around here, especially after we saw that impressive demo at Macworld a few weeks ago. But VeriFone's competing reader has been given the green light by Apple itself: the unit has been granted a deal for shelf space. VeriFone will be selling its PAYware Mobile units inside Apple's retail stores coming up as soon as the end of March. I'm not quite sure what the reasoning is behind this one on Apple's side, as the PAYware service seems to be a little more clunky than the Square solution: you have to pay both an activation fee and a monthly fee on top of the per-payment charge that Square asks for, and the reader itself is much bigger, taking up the iPhone's dock rather than just using the headphone port like Square's. Whatever Apple saw in them, you'll be able to get VeriFone's system right along with an iPhone or iPod touch all at the same time.. No matter which system eventually prevails (if indeed anyone needs to prevail at all — there's certainly more than one credit card company, so there's no reason why there couldn't be more than one payment system on the iPhone), this does seems like a model that will change a lot of business transactions in all sorts of industries. It'll be interesting to see how the curve takes off once these things are up and running.

by Ljrit

Steve Jobs Says No Tethering Between iPad and iPhone

Steve Jobs appears to have fired off a tersely worded email reply to a user in Sweeden who asked whether the WiFi-only iPad could be tethered to the iPhone: "No." Jezper Söderlund of the Swedish website Slashat.se reports that he sent Apple's chief executive an email identifying himself as an Apple customer before adding, "I'm also awaiting the release of the iPad. However, I have one question: Will the wifi-only version somehow support tethering thru my iPhone?" The full email headers Söderlund forwarded to AppleInsider appear to indicate that Jobs sent his one word reply at 8:30 AM from his iPhone. Whether one can tether Apple currently supports Bluetooth and USB (but not WiFi) tethering to share an iPhone's 3G mobile signal with another computer in iPhone 3.x software. However, enabling the feature requires approval from the carrier. AT&T does not allow iPhone tethering in the US, nor do some other iPhone carriers in other regions. Well over a year ago in late 2008, AT&T executive Ralph De La Vega said that iPhone tethering was coming "soon." Apple introduced the technical capacity to tether with the iPhone 3.0 firmware in mid 2009, but AT&T failed to deliver any progress in approving an iPhone tethering plan for its subscribers throughout 2009, and has yet to even provide an update on when that will happen. Tethering the iPad to an iPhone In order to use iPhone tethering from a Mac or PC, the computer must be able to connect to the iPhone via USB or Bluetooth, and must support a network connection over that interface. While the iPad includes Bluetooth hardware, it is not yet known if it will support a network uplink connection over Bluetooth (known as a "Wireless iAP"). The iPhone OS does not currently enable this as a feature so it is doubtful the iPad will, particularly given Jobs flat out "no" answer to tethering. Bluetooth support in iPhone OS devices is also limited in many other respects. Being able to access an iAP within the iPhone OS (a "reverse tether") would allow iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users to connect to and share an iPhone or computer's Internet access via Bluetooth, rather than only over a mobile EDGE/3G network or over WiFi hotspot. That's not currently possible. The iPhone OS also offers no support for "reverse tethering" over USB, shutting down the other avenue for connecting an iPad to an iPhone with tethering enabled. The iPhone OS also does not support acting as a gateway to share its mobile Internet access over WiFi to other computers, even though iPhone OS devices can all access any WiFi hotspot. Apple has made no comments about the iPad's ability to tether its 3G access (allowing a computer to share the iPad's mobile access data plan), likely because it is not intended to do so. The data plan on the iPad is priced so much lower than most general purpose 3G dongle plans that it appears clear that AT&T does not expect users to be sharing it for general use from other computers.

by Ljrit

Use Your iPhone As An Electronic “iKey”

The Daily Telegraph reports that a new Apple patent has surfaced which could potentially allow the iPhone, or another Apple portable, to act as a sort of electronic key. The potential applications are as limitless as the number of things locked by old-school metal keys. It could be used for cars, offices, homes, or lockers. Basically, anything that could have an electronic receiver mounted to it in place of a metal tumbler-style lock could then use an iPhone as a key. While Ars Technica notes that "the patent application itself merely describes a unique way of using motion detection to generate an input, such as turning a virtual combination lock-style dial," the patent itself, as reported by the Telegraph, says that the device could be "any suitable electronic device such as a portable media player, personal data assistant or electronic lock" that could open up any number of physical lock types just by communicating wirelessly. Electronic key fobs already exist for certain models of cars, most notably the Toyota Prius, which not only allow keyless entry but also allow you to start the car without a traditional metal key. If Apple actually implements this patent and allows iPhones and iPods to act as an "iKey," carrying a ring of metal keys and fobs around in your pocket could eventually seem as passé as a pocketwatch or pager seems today. While the patent notes that the device would have to be paired with the locks in order to work, and that all communications would be encrypted, people are naturally going to be skeptical about the security of an iKey compared to a traditional metal key. I can see some other potential pitfalls: losing your iPhone, or having it stolen suddenly, means not having access to your car, your house, or anything else accessed with your iKey. Plus, if you're dumb enough to store your access code on your iPhone in a place where a thief can find it easily, it also means that, immediately after finding your home address in Contacts, the thief could gain entry to your house with next to no effort. Or how about this: you come home after a night of carousing at the bar, power up your iPhone to gain access to your front door, but then find a blank screen staring back at you from your iPhone because your battery died. While the idea sounds great on paper and certainly stokes my science-fiction geek fires, the practical application of the iKey sounds like a giant headache.

by Ljrit

At&t Tops 3g Wireless Performance Study

PCWorld reports on the results of its recent 13-city performance tests of wireless carriers in the United States, and Apple's iPhone partner AT&T came out well ahead of the pack in both upload and download speeds while also faring well in reliability. In looking specifically at the iPhone, AT&T again fared well compared to flagship handsets on other carriers, offering significantly higher download and upload speeds with 91% reliability, only marginally lower than the G1 on T-Mobile and the HTC Hero on Sprint. Posted Image AT&T's efforts to address performance issues in the New York City and San Francisco markets also appear to be paying off, with PCWorld's testing revealing average download speeds tripling over a previous survey in New York City and jumping 40% in San Francisco. Overall reliability also improved for AT&T, with successful connections achieved on 94% of attempts, up from only 68% on the previous survey and on par with results for Sprint and ahead of T-Mobile and Verizon on an overall basis. PCWorld's testing did, however, reveal significant reliability weaknesses in San Francisco, with only 55% of connections being successful in its smartphone testing. Complete data and analysis is available in the article, which covers results from twenty locations in each of thirteen cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle.

by Ljrit

Apple Planning To Open 25 Retail Stores In China

Apple is currently conducting its annual shareholders meeting on the company's campus in Cupertino, California, and while attendees were not permitted to bring communication devices into the meeting, Fortune is gathering reports from those in attendance who were able to get details out. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is in attendance and reportedly answering the majority of questions from shareholders after missing last year's meeting due to health issues related to a liver transplant. In addition to expected agenda items such as re-election of members of Apple's Board of Directors and discussion of environmental and sustainability issues that have become a staple of Apple shareholder meetings, one brief item of interest coming out of the meeting is that Apple senior vice president of retail Ron Johnson noted that company is planning to open 25 retail stores in China. The timeframe for the store opening of these stores is currently unknown, although more details may be forthcoming. Apple opened its first Chinese retail store in Beijing in July 2008 ahead of the Olympic Games, and Johnson noted at the time that it was the "first of many" stores the company was planning to open there. A year and half later, however, that location remains Apple's sole Chinese retail store. Plans for a second store in Beijing surfaced in mid-2009, but the project has been put on hold, although Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook briefly noted during his comments at a Goldman Sachs conference earlier this week that a store will be opening in Shanghai by this summer.

by Ljrit

Apple iPad To Go On Sale Friday March 26th?

iPhone line photo by goodrob13 While Apple announced that the iPad would go on sale at the end of March, we've yet to hear official details about the actual sale date and procedure. We have heard whispers the Apple is planning on launching the iPad at retail stores on Friday, March 26th at 6 p.m. in similar fashion to the original iPhone launch. A [url="http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-11295-LA-Gadgets-Examiner%7Ey2010m3d2-iPad-Apple-store-employees-will-experience-device-on-March-10"]blog post from the Examiner now makes similar claims of a March 26th launch date with Apple store employees getting training on the device starting on March 10th. The author also claims that the commercials will start beginning on March 15th. Finally, those who camp out for the iPad will receive a "special gift". The 3G enabled version of the iPad will follow the Wi-Fi iPad launch by about 30 days, according to Apple.

by Ljrit

Lovely iPhone Rumor Of The Day: Multitasking In Os 4.0

Outside of notifications, there are other features related to multitasking that iPad users may want to see addressed. One is local background services such as Pandora radio. Apple's forthcoming iPhone OS 4.0 is anticipated to either allow users to select specific apps to run in the background, or roll those services into the system, or to enable specific background tasks. That's an excerpt from an article over at Apple Insider today, mostly talking about the multitasking possibilities on the iPad – but including that lovely tidbit on what iPhone OS 4.0 may bring. I have been feeling more and more optimistic lately that we will see some level of multitasking built into iPhone OS 4.0. It just feels like one of those 'Apple is not stupid' moments. They know what other mobile platforms are doing, they must know users are clamoring for this, and they of course know that the iPhone 3GS in particular is more than ready to handle some multitasking and rapid app switching. I'd honestly be shocked if we don't see something like this in OS 4.0. Of course the devil is in the details and we'll need to see how good the execution is – but reports like these are still very encouraging. What do you all think? Will Apple give us some level of multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0?

by Ljrit

Lakers, Magic Finals Rematch

This was a Finals rematch unlike many other first meetings since a June showdown, slipped into the schedule as the last stop on a tailspin of a four-game Western swing for Orlando and just before L.A. heads out for a monster eight-gamer, on a Monday night, with neither team playing particularly well, on a holiday with the league driving attention to Atlanta and Memphis for Martin Luther King Day. It wasn't like the buildup for Lakers-Celtics a season ago or even Lakers-Cavaliers a few weeks ago on Christmas that didn't have the benefit of the playoff storyline. Everyone -- the NBA, the networks, Nike and its merry band of puppeteers -- cranked the volume for the Cleveland game. But the first reunion since last year's Finals, a pretty competitive championship series at that despite lasting only five games, just sort of happened, a strange development in the hype-machine world. Or as they may have called it around the Lakers: Game 41. "You know, they've got so many games on today that I guess this one kind of got under the radar," coach Phil Jackson said, looking into the thick mass of media during his regular pre-game press gaggle. "I don't know. A lot of guys here, though. Twenty people standing here listening to me, so something's going on." Except that was only a few guys more than normal. There is always press coverage at a Lakers game, as anything the team does counts as news in a city where there's no such thing as too much coverage of the defending champions. But for some reason, this game didn't seem to register as special. Then again, these weren't exactly the Magic and Lakers circa June. It's not just the roster changes either, with Vince Carter in for Hedo Turkoglu for the Eastern Conference champions and Ron Artest replacing Trevor Ariza here. L.A. has misfired lately, relatively speaking, having lost three of the previous six to keep the race for No. 1 in the West just interesting enough that now it may take all the way until the All-Star break for the rest of the conference to deliver concession speeches. Orlando, meanwhile, had dropped six of eight before Monday. And not just typical slump defeats. The string of four consecutive setbacks would have been bad enough, but they were magnified by the list of the opponents: the Bulls, Pacers, Raptors and Wizards. Then, when the losses were to a better quality of opponents, (the Trail Blazers and Nuggets on the road), the unwanted reality check for the Magic was that the margins were 15 against Portland and 18 against Denver. The lead in the Southeast Division was gone and, just as certain, 2009 was done too. "We looked back to review how we played and everything else, but I didn't go back and watch all five games," Magic coach Stan Van Gundy of skipping the trip down memory lane to watch the Finals again. "We know how we played in that series. We took a look at that, and we'll go from there." Jackson, never noted for his diplomacy anyway, said in reference to the Magic losing their way amid injuries and the early Rashard Lewis suspension that "I just don't know what happened to that team in the process." That team being the one that reached the championship series and opened 17-4 this season. That team or this team or whatever they are, they had enough to respond to the moment by turning a 13-point deficit midway through the second quarter into a nine-point lead with three minutes to play in the third. The Magic just didn't have enough to close the deal, getting outscored 15-0 to begin the final period and losing 98-92 in a failure to capitalize on Kobe Bryant missing 15 of 19 shots amid continuing problems with a fractured right index finger. "We understood what type of approach that they might want to take, as far as them still having a bad or bitter taste in their mouth from what happened because they've got a lot of their same guys back," Shannon Brown said after his team-high 22 points. "They were up nine, so we had to fight back. But every game for us is a big game." Cleveland a few weeks ago. Cleveland, Boston and the Madison Square Garden stage coming up. Orlando on Monday in the Finals rematch unlike many others, mostly because it was like so many others around here. Game 41. Next.

by Ljrit

Internet Relay Chat Is Live iModZone IRC

We here at iModZone are pleased to announce we now have IRC. Here are some of the benefits of IRC. 1 You get messages almost instantly. 2 You can be informed with sound of new messages or new people joining. 3 You can chat with an individual person privately. 4 You can start a room for a meeting if you ever need to talk over an application idea to a group of people. 5 You can access it when iModZone's server is down. 6 You don't have to use the web to talk on it. 7 You know who's on the room instead of you going and asking, "Anyone here?" How can you access it? Here are the different ways. Web Clients 1 You can use the preview box on the index of the forums. 2 You can use the iModZone IRC Client, formatted for the iPhone. Please note that this doesn't get your information from iModZone, if you don't have an account on IRC don't enter a password. 3 You can use mibbit. iPhone Clients 1 Colloquy. 2 FlowChat. 3 LimeChat. 4 When I get time, our free one. Mac Clients 1 Colloquy. 2 Adium. Windows Clients 1 mirc. 2 xChat. 3 Pidgin. Linux Clients 1 xChat. 2 Pidgin. Of course there are a lot more IRC clients out there, so just search around and you'll find them. To join our IRC Channel on any IRC Client. The server is IRC.iModZone.net, the port is 6667, and the channel is #iModZone.

by Ljrit

Is Sony Making A Phone To Compete Against iPad??

Sony is developing a new lineup of products to compete with Apple's growing stable of portable devices, according to the WSJ. Journal sources say, the company plans to release a new smartphone which is capable of downloading and playing Playstation games. In addition, plans for a device that combines a netbook, e-reader, and PSP are underway. The new product is designed to compete against the Apple iPad and similar devices. As part of Chief Executive Howard Stringer's turnaround plan Sony plans to distribute movies, television shows, music, and games to these devices via the Sony Online Service. While the company has made progress in cutting costs and streamlining its production; it has not delivered a game changer product to tie in their online service and help move the company forward. Hopefully, Sony will be able to build a worthy rival for Apple's iPad. This would push Cupertino to innovate further with consumers winning out in the end.

by Ljrit

How The Apple Ipad Could Kill The Kindle

The new Amazon Kindle DX has a few weeks to live—and the magazine and newspaper industries may not have much longer. As soon as Apple unleashes the rumored iPad, Amazon's attempt at hardware design will vanish quicker than Betamax. Amazon won't mind, but magazine and newspaper publishers sure will. Apple and Amazon could be the best of enemies. Look at their entirely complimentary business strategies. Amazon sells content. The company went into the hardware business to spur more e-book sales. It intends to make a killing selling e-textbooks for the new Kindle DX. Yeah, sure, Amazon makes money on the Kindle, but its heart is in the books. Apple sells hardware. Apple became the world's leading online media store so it could sell more iPods. Its heart is in the iPods. Enter the iPad. The Apple people usually complain about how much they hate a product category just before they enter it. Recently, Apple's COO Tim Cook said that he thinks netbooks are pretty useless, and that the iPod touch is Apple's netbook. This feeds into BusinessWeek's rumor about the "iPad"—a $699 tablet that would look like a bigger iPod touch. Apple hates netbooks because netbooks cannibalize notebooks. But the company would love to sell another Apple device into homes. The iPad doesn't replace anything Apple currently sells. You type on your laptop at your desk. You surf with your iPhone while on the go. But you'd relax with an iPad on the couch, prop it up by your bed, or rest it on the airplane tray table. That's all stuff you do with existing devices, of course, but an iPad would make it more natural, just as a Kindle does. The Kindle's success doesn't come from its brilliant hardware. Yes, the new Kindles are much prettier and slimmer than the original Kindle, but they're compelling because of their 3G networking and their tight integration with Amazon's store. Apple has that integration, too, via the iPhone Kindle app, and it has a much deeper legacy of building multipurpose hardware than Amazon does. The Kindle DX seems to have three primary markets: textbooks, newspapers, and magazines. Other companies, including Hearst and News Corp., are said to be going into the media pad space to save their magazine subscription dollars. They're doomed. In exchange for your monthly contract, the iPad will give you the whole Internet, and 35,000 iPod touch applications, including—get this!—the Amazon Kindle application. Amazon won't stress out about this too much. It will still be selling e-books, and now it will be selling e-textbooks, too. The big losers will be newspapers and magazines that hope to sell Kindle subscriptions. They'll be forced to put their free Web sites behind a pay wall or find some other way of making money. Textbook companies and traditional book publishers aren't in so much danger, because they've never offered all of their content online free. The iPad also won't just be an e-book/Internet reader. It's sure to be a terrific media player—a sort of widescreen iPod, the perfect thing for watching a movie in bed or on the plane. Apple won't position it as a general-purpose computer, as the company doesn't want to cannibalize its MacBook business. Don't worry too much about the iPad's $699 price. Apple has been open to carrier subsidies, which typically shave $200 or more off the price of a device in exchange for locking you into a contract. That business model has been tremendously successful—so successful that unlocked phones, while available in the U.S., have never been able to take off. Apple has also always had strong relationships with colleges and universities, so we're sure to see educational discounts to promote the iPad as a virtual textbook. The iPad's monthly fee will be a sticking point, of course, but it's not an insurmountable one. Verizon's new Open Development Initiative has been letting makers of non-voice devices roll their own service plans. The ODI hasn't been used for a big consumer device yet, but it could let Apple roll out an iPad with bucket plans for data at various tiers; an on-device data meter could tell people when it's time to buy more. So far, the ODI hasn't been compatible with subsidies, but Verizon seems to be very enthusiastic about working with Apple; maybe together they could make this work. The big question is whether Apple will release an iPad at its next big press event on June 8, or whether it will decide to wait. Typically, Apple announces products in June, September-ish and January-ish. It will announce the iPad when it's ready, whenever that is. But Amazon and the magazine companies shouldn't just be preparing competing devices: They should be preparing new business models for the new world where anyone can access Web content on a large-format pad, anywhere, at any time.

by Ljrit

Will The Apple Ipad Eat Your Tv?

The Apple iPad will probably never replace television, but it is likely to cut a big piece out of it. Chad Evans of MLB.com, the official website of US Major League Baseball, is leading the attack. Last August, MLB.com announced that it was to stream full-length live games for the iPhone and iPod. Now, it is taking that to the iPad. "We couldn't just take our existing iPhone app and make it bigger," Evans said proudly when presenting his iPad app. "This big display really allows us to create a much more immersive experience." Alongside the live full-screen video will be onscreen stats and data: You can scroll through a team's lineup on the bottom, click on players to get specific data, and there is a scoreboard on the top. Emerging media producer Gary Hayes says about this new the digitalisation of television: "We are finally entering an era where the second and third screen – the PC and the mobile – are truly converging." The increasing links between social media and TV are now embodied in a single device. Live sport wherever you go is likely to be the iPad's most attractive video offering, but it won't be the only one. A generation has grown up used to watching TV series and movies on laptops, and the iPad might be a more handy alternative. "The larger and shareable display of the iPad means on-demand TV and streamed web video/TV can retain its 'scale' and integrity while finally becoming portable, but more importantly become a viable second 'networked' screen actually in the TV room itself," says Hayes. iTunes has a TV and movie store with a catalogue of over 50,000 TV episodes and 8,000 films, 2,000 of them in high definition video – as Steve Jobs proudly demonstrated with a clip from Pixar's animated film Up. And both might be taken soon somewhere else. "The device though opens up many possibilities for interactive producers such as rich, synchronized web pages and apps alongside broadcast TV and the 'friendly/social' non-laptop device will encourage more 'group' activity in the same room," says Hayes.

by Ljrit

10 Things Missing From The Ipad

(WIRED) -- The iPad was supposed to change the face of computing, to be a completely new form of digital experience. But what Steve Jobs showed us yesterday was in fact little more than a giant iPhone. A giant iPhone that doesn't even make calls. Many were expecting cameras, kickstands and some crazy new form of text input. The iPad, though, is better defined by what isn't there. Flash- Many people will bemoan the lack of Flash in the iPad. It wasn't mentioned, but eagle-eyed viewers would have seen the missing plugin icon on the New York Times site during yesterday's demo, and given that Apple clearly hates Flash as both a non-open web "standard" and as a buggy, CPU-hungry piece of code, it's unlikely it will ever be added, unless Apple decides it wants to cut the battery life down to two hours. Who needs Flash, anyway? YouTube and Vimeo have both switched to H.264 for video streaming (in Chrome and Safari, at least -- Firefox doesn't support it), and the rest of the world of Flash is painful to use. In fact, we think the lack of Flash in the iPad will be the thing that finally kills Flash itself. If the iPad is as popular as the iPhone and iPod Touch, Flash-capable browsers will eventually be in the minority. OLED- One of the biggest rumors said that there would be two iPads, one with an OLED screen and one without. But as our own Apple-master Brian X Chen pointed out, an OLED panel of this size runs to around $400. Add in the rest of the hardware and even the top-end $830 model wouldn't be making Apple much money. OLED also has some dirty secrets. It may be more colorful, but it uses more power than an LED backlit screen when all the diodes are lit up (white on black text is where OLED energy savings shine). It is also rather dim in comparison, and making an e-reader that you can't use outdoors would be a stupid move from Apple. USB- The iPad is meant to be an easy-to-use appliance, not an all-purpose computer. A USB port would mean installing drivers for printers, scanners and anything else you might hook up. But there is a workaround: the dock connector. Apple has already announced a camera connection kit, a $30 pair of adapters which will let you either plug the camera in direct or plug in an SD card to pull off the photos. The subtle message here is that it's not a feature for the pros: the lack of a Compact Flash slot says "amateurs only". Expect a lot more of these kinds of accessories, most likely combined with software. How long can it be before, say, EyeTV makes an iPad-compatible TV tuner? GPS- Apple put a compass inside every iPad, so you'd think that there would be a GPS unit in there, too. The Wi-Fi-only models get nothing, just like the iPod Touch, but more surprising is that the 3G iPads come with AGPS. Assisted GPS can be one of two things, both of which which offload some work to internet servers and use cell-tower triangulation. The difference is that some AGPS units have real GPS too, and some don't. We'll know which the iPad has as soon as we get our hands on one. Multitasking- From the demonstrations at the Jobsnote, it appears that, like the iPhone, we can't run applications in the background. This will annoy many, but it will not matter at all to the target user, who will be using the iPad to browse and consume media. In fact, this user will benefit, as the lack of CPU-cycle-sucking background processes is likely a large part of that ten-hour battery life. If you are authoring content, like this post, then multiple browser windows, a text editor, a mail client and a photo editor all make sense. If you're reading an ebook, not so much. Keyboard- Nobody really thought the iPad would have a physical keyboard. That won't stop the whining, though. The difference, again, between the iPad and a MacBook is that one is a multi-purpose device and the other is a media player. The fact that Apple actually has made a keyboard for it is the biggest surprise (apart from the $500 price). In fact, this little $70 accessory will mean that, despite its simplified nature, the iPad is enough laptop for many people. Why bother with a $400 netbook when you can have this instead? Camera- No video camera, no stills camera, and no webcam. The first two will likely never make it into a future iPad, as we all have our iPhones or actual cameras with us, too. But the lack of a webcam is odd. I have this down as a straight cost saving measure, and it is the only thing that stops me buying an iPad for my parents, who I talk to on Skype. There seems to be no other reason not to have a webcam in the bezel other than price. We expect to see one in v2.0. Verizon iPhone users hate AT&T, but the only alternative is T-Mobile, whose coverage isn't as good. Until Verizon switches to the world-standard GSM SIM card, don't expect to see an Apple product on its network. You can forget all those Verizon iPhone rumors right now. 16:9- The iPad screen is a relatively square, by today's standards, 4:3 ratio. This is not ideal for watching widescreen movies: you get a thick black bar top and bottom. But take another look at the hardware: the Apple on the back, and the position of the home button both tell us that the iPad is meant to be used in portrait mode, at least most of the time. And a 16:9 ratio in this orientation would look oddly tall and skinny, like an electronic Marilyn Manson. It's a compromise, and a good one. If you really do spend most of your time watching movies on the iPad, maybe you should think about buying, you know, a big TV. HDMI- There will be video out, likely through the dock connector, as we were told in the presentation that you can hook the iPad up to a projector. But no HDMI out? How do you hook it up to your HD monitor? The short answer is that you don't. The maximum audience for an iPad screening is two. You want more? Use your laptop and hook that up, or your desktop machine. Remember, there are two kinds of people who will buy the iPad. One, nerds like you and me, who care about things like HDMI and also already own a computer that can do that. And two, people who are buying this instead of a computer. Those people will probably still have DVD collections, or even VCRs. They don't even know what HDMI is. I think I can guess what Apple thought about putting another expensive connector into the machine just to please a few geeks.

by Ljrit

Art Lebedev's Segmentus clock gives you a digital reading using its analog hands

We're not quite sure whether you need a really active or a really idle mind to come up with this, but the dudes over at Art Lebedev Studio have just unveiled their latest conceptual design. Continuing the theme of faux-Latin names, this is branded the Segmentus clock, and sports hands just like an antiquated analog clock, but unlike an analog clock it seems to have a good 20 or 30 of them. Working in unison -- you might call it like clockwork, but we'd rather you didn't -- they then produce a digital time reading, which might not be easy to read, but we're sure will tickle all the artistes out there. Art Lebedev calls it "true postmodernism," and you can find a live demo on the company's site at the source link below.

by Ljrit

How to Create Your First iPhone Application

What if you had a nickle for every time you heard: "I have the perfect idea for a great application!"? It’s the buzz on the street. The iPhone has created unprecedented excitement and innovation from people both inside and outside the software development community. Still for those outside the development world, the process is a bit of a mystery.

This how-to guide is supposed to walk you through the steps to make your idea for an iPhone app a reality. This post presents various ideas, techniques, tips, and resources that may come in handy if you are planning on creating your first iPhone application.
[By the way: The network tab (on the top of the page) is updated several times a day. It features manually selected articles from the best web design blogs!]
1. Have an idea – a Good Idea

How do you know if your idea is a good one? The first step is to even care if your idea is solid; and the second step is to answer the question does it have at least one of the indicators of success?


Zoom In in How to Create Your First iPhone Application Does your app solve a unique problem? Before the light bulb was invented, somebody had to shout out “Man, reading by candlelight sucks!” Figure out what sucks, and how your app can make the life of its user more comfortable.
Dog Tricks in How to Create Your First iPhone Application Does the app serve a specific niche? Though there aren’t any stats on the App Store search, the usage of applications is certainly growing with the explosion of App Store inventory. Find a niche with ardent fans (pet lovers, for example) and create an app that caters to a specific audience.
Do Not Press in How to Create Your First iPhone Application Does it make people laugh? This is a no-brainer. If you can come up with something funny, you are definitely on the right track and your idea may be the golden one. Heck, I hit a red “do not press” button for 5 minutes yesterday.
Wine Phd in How to Create Your First iPhone Application Are you building a better wheel? Are there existing successful apps that lack significant feature enhancements? Don’t be satisfied with just a wine list, give sommeliers a way to talk to their fans!
Popper in How to Create Your First iPhone Application Will the app be highly interactive? Let’s face it, most of us have the attention span of a flea. Successful games and utilities engage the user by requiring action!

Action: Does your app fall in to one of these categories? If yes, it’s just about time to prepare the necessary tools.
2. Tools Checklist

Below is a list of items you’ll need (*starred items are required, the rest are nice-to-have’s):

* join the Apple iPhone Developer Program ($99) *
* get iPhone or iPod Touch *
* get an Intel-based Mac computer with Mac OS X 10.5.5,
* prepare a Non-Disclosure Agreement (here’s a sample) *
* download and install the latest version of the iPhone SDK if you don’t already have it.
* a spiral bound notebook*

Action: Load up on your required supplies.
3. What Are You Really Good At?

What skills do you bring to the table? Are you a designer whose brain objects to Objective C? A developer who can’t design their way out of a paper sack? Or maybe you are neither, but an individual with an idea you’d like to take to the market? Designing a successful iPhone application is a lot like starting a small business. You play the role of Researcher, Project Manager, Accountant, Information Architect, Designer, Developer, Marketer and Advertiser – all rolled into one.

Remember what all good entrepreneurs know – it takes a team to make a product successful. Don’t get me wrong, you certainly can do it all. But you can also waste a lot of time, energy and sanity in the process. Don’t go crazy, reference the checklist below and ask yourself: What roles are the best fit for you to lead? Then find other talented people to fill in the gaps. The infusion of additional ideas can only enrich the product!
Skills Checklist

* Ability to Discern what works/doesn’t work in existing iPhone Apps
* Market research
* Outlining App Functionality (Sitemap Creation)
* Sketching
* GUI Design
* Programming (Objective C, Cocoa) (we assume here that we are creating a native application)
* App Promotion and Marketing

Remember to have contractors sign your non-disclosure agreement. Having a contract in place tells your contractor "I’m a professional that takes my business and this project seriously. Now don’t go runnin’ off with this idea."

Action: Select skills that are a good fit for you to lead. For those roles where you cannot lead, hire professionals.
4. Do Your Homework: Market Research

Market research is a fancy way of saying "Look at what other people are doing and don’t make the same mistakes." Learn from the good, bad and ugly in the App Store. Coming up with creative solutions in the app concept development and design starts with analyzing other (maybe similar) applications. Even if you encounter a lot of poorly designed apps, your mind will reference these examples of what not to do.

Good Ugly in How to Create Your First iPhone Application

Action: Answer these questions:

* What problem does your app solve?
* What products have you seen that perform a similar task?
* How do successful apps present information to users?
* How can you build on what works and make it unique?
* What value does your app bring to your audience?

5. Know the iPhone/iPod Touch UI

If you want to create an iPhone app, you need to understand the capabilities of the iPhone and its interface. Can you shoot a .45 caliber bullet out of your iPhone? No. Can you shoot videos? Yes!

The good news is that you don’t have to memorize the encyclopedic Apple User Interface Guidelines to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t in iPhone Apps. Download and play with as many apps as you can, and think about what functionality you want to include in your product.

Take note of:

* How do well-designed apps navigate from screen to screen?
* How do they organize information?
* How MUCH information do they present to the user?
* How do they take advantage of the iPhone’s unique characteristics: the accelerometer, swiping features, pinch, expand and rotate functions?

Action: Download the Top 10 apps in every category and play with all of them. Review the Apple Guidelines for UI design and list at least 5 features you’d like to incorporate into your app.
6. Determine "Who will use your app?"

We assume here that you’ve already determined that your app will bring value and that you will have a raging audience for your app. Well, fine, they are raging fans, but who are they really? What actions will they take to achieve their goals within the app?

If it’s a game, maybe they want to beat their high score. Or perhaps they are a first time player – how will their experience differ from someone who is getting a nice case of brain-rot playing your game all day?

If it’s a utility app, and your audience wants to find a coffee shop quickly, what actions will they take within the app to find that coffee shop? Where are they when they’re looking for coffee? Usually in the car! Do present an interface that requires multiple taps, reading and referencing a lot? Probably not! This is how thinking about how real-life intersects design.

Action: Line item out the different types of people who will use your app. You can even name them if you want to make the scenarios you draw out as real as possible.
7. Sketch Out Your Idea

And by "sketch" I mean literally sketch. Line out a 9-rectangle grid on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and get to sketching!

Ask yourself:

* What information does each screen need to present?
* How can we take the user from point A to point B to point C?
* How should elements on the screen be proportioned or sized in relation to each other (i.e. is this thing even tap-able?)

Sketch in How to Create Your First iPhone Application
Image credit: Cultured Code

Thumbnailing your ideas on paper can push your creativity far beyond where your imagination might stagnate working in an sketching application! You can also buy the iPhone Stencil Kit to quickly sketch out iPhone UI prototypes on paper.

Action: Create at least one thumbnail page of your application per screen. Experiment with various navigational schemes, the text you put on buttons, and how screens connect. If you want to transfer your sketches into digital format, iPlotz is a good tool to check out.
8. Time for Design

Iphone Gui in How to Create Your First iPhone Application

If you are a designer, download the iPhone GUI Photoshop template or our iPhone PSD Vector Kit. Both are collections of iPhone GUI elements that will save you a lot of time in getting started. If you’ve solidified your layout during sketching, drawing up the screens will be less of a layout exercise and more about the actual design of the app.

If you are not a designer, hire one! It’s like hiring an electrician to do electrical work. You can go to Home Depot and buy tools to try it yourself, but who wants to risk getting zapped? If you’ve followed steps 1–3, you’ll have everything you need for a designer to get started.

When looking for a designer, try to find someone who has experience designing for mobile devices. They may have some good feedback and suggested improvements for your sketches. A few places to look for designers: Coroflot, Crowdspring, eLance. When posting your job offer, be very specific about your requirements, and also be ready to review a lot of portfolios.

Action: If you are a designer, get started in Photoshop. If you are not a designer, start interviewing designers for your job.
9. Programming

Xcode in How to Create Your First iPhone Application

Even though this how-to is sequential, it’s a good idea to get a developer on board at the same time when you line up design resources. Talking with a developer sooner than later will help you scope out a project that is technically feasible and within your budget.

If you are a Objective C/Cocoa developer crack, open Xcode and get started! A few forums to join if you haven’t already:

* Apple Dev Forum
* iPhoneSDK (moderated by Erica Sadun)
* iPhoneSDKForum
* iPhoneDev Forums
* iPhoneSB

If you are not a developer, you know what to do – find one! Specify the type of app you want to produce – whether it is a game, utility or anything else. Each type usually requires a different coding skill set. A few places to look for developers: Odesk, iPhoneFreelancer, eLance and any of the forums listed above.
10. Submit your application to Apple Store

OK, so how do you submit your application to Apple Store now? The process of compiling your application and publishing the binary for iTunes Connect can be difficult for anyone unfamiliar with XCode. If you are working with a developer, ask them to help you:

* Create your Certificates
* Define your App ID’s
* Create your Distribution Provisioning Profile
* Compile the application
* Upload to iTunes Connect

Action: If you are a developer, map out a development timeline and get started. If you are not a developer, start interviewing devs for your job.
11. Promote Your App

If a tree falls in the middle of the woods and nobody was around to hear it does it make a sound? Apps can sit in the store unnoticed very easily. Don’t let this happen to you. Be ready with a plan to market your app. In fact, be ready with many plans to market your app. Be ready to experiment, some ideas will work, others won’t.
Strategies for maintaining/boosting app sales:

* Incorporating social media. If your users make the high score on his or her favorite game, it is a good idea to make it easy for the user to post it to Facebook or Twitter. Think about how your app can incorporate social media and build that functionality into your app. At a minimum, set up a fan page for your app on Facebook and Twitter and use them as platforms to communicate with your users and get feedback on your app.
* Pre-launch promotion. Start building buzz about your app before it has launched. E-mail people who write about things that relate to your app and see if they will talk up the upcoming release of your app.
* Plan for multiple releases. Don’t pack your app with every single feature you want to offer in the very first release. Make your dream list for the app and make sure that the app is designed to incorporate all of the features at some time in the future. Then periodically drop new versions of the app to boost app store sales.

Action: Make a list of 20 promotional strategies that target the audience for your app. Take action on them yourself or hire someone who can!
11. Stay Focused and Don’t Give Up!

It’s easy when you are working on your first app to get all AppHappy, dreaming up a zillion new app-ideas. Dream, but don’t get sidetracked by new ideas. Your first app needs to make a big splash and getting involved in too many projects at once can dilute your passion for making your first application a success.

Action: Get out there and go kick some app!