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Posts tagged with "iPad"

The iPhone: A Small Tablet→

The iPhone: A Small Tablet

After a few seconds it struck me that what we’ll end up calling these things is tablets. The only reason we even consider calling them “mobile devices” is that the iPhone preceded the iPad. If the iPad had come first, we wouldn’t think of the iPhone as a phone; we’d think of it as a tablet small enough to hold up to your ear.

The iPhone isn’t so much a phone as a replacement for a phone. That’s an important distinction, because it’s an early instance of what will become a common pattern. Many if not most of the special-purpose objects around us are going to be replaced by apps running on tablets.

Insightful analysis by Paul Graham.

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djay: Full-Featured DJ System For iPad With A Gorgeous UI

When the iPad was announced back in January, many of us realized that the device would be perfect for professional DJ software. A large multi-touch surface, a brand new device developed by Apple backed up by the App Store – obviously the iPad was meant for DJ and music applications. Even more than the iPhone (which saw the rise of music making software anyway, in spite of the 3.5-inch screen) the iPad was too perfect for turntable interfaces to not take the risk and start developing one soon after the announcement.

What happened is history: just take a look at DJ Rana June’s Youtube channel and open the Music category in the App Store to get the idea of the success of professional music making / mixing software on the iPad. There are hundreds of apps out there that allow you to record and mix music, and there are dozens of quality DJ apps in the App Store.

The just-released djay by Algoriddim, however, takes the game a step further. It comes with an impressive feature set and underlying technology, it takes advantage of iOS 4.2 audio and streaming functionalities, it’s got stunning user interface and animations. Here’s why you should check it out no matter if you’re into DJ software for iOS devices (and Mac) or not. Read more

Flipboard Unveils Exclusive Partnership With Eight Publishers

Flipboard, the app that allows you to read content shared on Twitter and Facebook in a magazine-like interface for iPad, announced a few minutes ago an exclusive partnership with eight publishers to bring “the beauty of print and the power of the web” together in an dedicated Flipboard section, right into the iPad app.

What this means is fairly simple: these publishers, which include the names of All Things Digital, Uncrate and SFGate, will offer a web interface specifically formatted for Flipboard. Flipboard will still grab an excerpt of articles coming from these sources, but the web view will be different and exclusive. Flipboard will no longer open the standard website when tapping on the “Read More” button, it’ll open the new “beautiful” interface these publishers have created for the iPad app.

The result is quite pleasant and surely better than a desktop web view squeezed into the iPad. Read more

Non-Tablet Users Think The iPad Is Worth More Than A Galaxy Tab

What do average consumers who haven’t bought a tablet device think of the two most popular tablets out there? Most specifically, what’s people’s perception of the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab? Do they think the devices cost basically the same or is it possible that, in some way, that perception has been altered by Apple’s strong success with the iPad? Read more

Pulse Starts Moving Out Of RSS, Embraces Facebook

Pulse, one of the most popular news reading apps for iPad, just introduced a new feature that marks an important milestone for Alphonso Labs’ creation: Facebook support. Pulse now lets you log in with your Facebook account through Connect, enabling you to check on links shared in your stream, your friends’ status updates and your own Wall. The update is available now, for free.

Pulse has come a long way since its first release in May: first the developers got into some sort of fight with the New York Times and saw their app pulled from the App Store a few days after Steve Jobs mentioned it in a keynote, then they got back in the Store and added support for Posterous built into the app to let users quickly “like” posts coming from RSS sources through Posterous’ infrastructure. Read more

BBC: Subscription-based iPlayer for iPad Coming Next Year

According to the Financial Times (subscription required), BBC will launch a subscription-based iPlayer service for iPads next year. iPlayer is BBC’s popular streaming service that allows users to stream programs after the original air date, and it gained support for Mac in 2008.

It also gained a lot of traction since then, with downloads exceeding 100 millions in the first months of 2010. Unfortunately, the service isn’t available in many areas – namely outside the UK. For instance, I can’t access iPlayer’s TV streaming in Italy, and I assume the same happens to US users.

It looks like things won’t change with the iPad subscription either, as Dave Caolo at TUAW reports:

BBC Worldwide said that this isn’t going to happen until “the middle of next year,” and even then only in “certain target markets.” Additionally, no word on pricing was available, though there will be ad-supported free sections as well as paid content.

In the meantime, I’m just fine with Hulu through a US-based VPN.

iPads Being Used for U.S. Marine Recruiting

… This is for fighting, this is for fun!” Sorry, I was feeling inspired by the movie Full Metal Jacket.

Military Times has reported that the U.S. Marine Corps is testing out the use of iPads in recruiting. The blog reported that Maj. Gen. Robert Milstead, the commander of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command, said the Corps is doing well in recruitment, but (like everyone else these days) it faces a shrinking advertising budget. So they jumped on the ‘iPads in Public’ bandwagon. That’s where the iPads come in. Read more

The MacBook Tablet Shows Up, Again

According to the most loyal Apple fan, two are the “dream products” Apple has in store: the iMac Touch and the MacBook Tablet. While we don’t know whether such machines would make for great innovations or terrible hybrids, the loyal Apple geek surely can dream. And it’s not that patents Apple is granted do anything to convince him that these products aren’t real.

As noted by Patently Apple, the much rumored and long-awaited MacBook Tablet showed up again in a patent published a few days ago. It’s a convertible MacBook / iPad-like device with a touchscreen and a physical keyboard, something that Steve Jobs could really describe as a MacBook hooking up to an iPad. Other patents Apple was granted include one for multi-touch scrolling behavior and the iPad’s virtual keyboard.

Dell is getting ahead of Apple in the convertible notebook market with its latest Inspirion Duo hybrid, and we’re not sure whether Apple will actually ship something like a MacBook Tablet in the next few years. It sounds cool thinking about some sort of MacBook Air with a touch screen, but, as usual, Apple patents are something the loyal Apple fan shouldn’t rely on.

Spaced: Beautiful App With The Latest News From Space

NASA is holding a press conference tomorrow “to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”, and what better way to check on the coverage of the conference than Spaced app for iPhone and iPad?

I found this app in the App Store this morning while I was looking for my daily software fix. I’ve always been interested in reading space-related material, but I’ve never really subscribed to a set of sources with my RSS reader or bought magazines for that matter. I just followed a bunch of people who regularly tweet that kind of news and I don’t mind giving Reddit’s space section a read every two days or so. Read more