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Posts tagged with "iPad"

Lodsys Responds to iOS Developers Over Patent Infringement Notices

Last Friday there was news that a number of independent developers for the iPhone and iPad had received legal warnings that they were violating patents that Lodsys owned. Suffice to say it sparked an outcry from developers, users and commentators; few had anything nice to say of Lodsys. Well today they have responded to a number of criticisms on their website in a series of Q&A posts. The key patent in question was that of Dan Abelow who sold his portfolio of patents to Lodsys back in 2004.

Its first response was in regards to the fairly frequented notion that Lodsys is a “parasite, troll, should die etc.”, they respond to this in saying that they are just like any other company who sells a product or service – they try to “get value for the assets it owns”. They write in the post “threats and irrationality don’t help.  In particular, the death threats are seriously uncool.”

As for the question of the patents being “too broad”, Lodsys notes how easy it is too look back in hindsight, saying “of course this is how everyone is going to do it”. In response to patent licensing being unethical and similar questions, they say that it seeks an economic return to sell their patent assets, completely legal and furthermore citing the notion that patent licensing encourages future invention.

As for why they directly contacted developers and not Apple, they say it is because Apple (as well as Microsoft and Google) has already licensed the patents in question. They claim that they cannot provide the third party developers with the rights to the patent, and Apple hasn’t approached Lodsys for the purpose of attaining an eco-system-wide license for the patents. They say their goal is not to prevent developers from using the technology, rather that it is to popularize it and charge a relatively small license for it.

They claim in multiple areas that they specialise in efficiently selling rights to patents, they say that by having a consistent price model it also means independent developers aren’t unfairly disadvantaged.

As for how much developers will need to pay, Lodsys clarifies that the in-app purchasing mechanism for example would cost a developer 0.575% of their US revenue over the period the technology was implemented until the patent expires. It gives an example of an app that earns US$1 million in one year would pay US$5,750.

[Via TheNextWeb]

You can read all of Lodsys’ responses on their blog.

Flipboard Blocked By The Great Firewall Of China

It appears that the Chinese government yesterday blocked Flipboard, meaning the app, which is available on the App Store in China, is largely unusable from within China. Flipboad’s CEO, Mike McCue, made the revelation on Twitter yesterday and said in follow-up tweets; “Lots of folks in China had been using us happily until now” and “Guess we had unwittingly poked a hole in their wall which has now been shut down… Presumably unless we block Facebook and Twitter ourselves in China”

The block impacts on Flipboard’s Amazon servers, which are required for users to aggregate their content from various sources, effectively this means that services such as Google Reader, Instragram and Flickr are all blocked from Flipboard users in China. Facebook and Twitter, which were already blocked by the Chinese government, had previously been accessible to some users who used a VPN service, but this latest move has blocked Facebook and Twitter completely from the app.

[Via @mmccue]

AOL Launching Flipboard-like “Editions” for iPad This Summer

Following a trend that sees publishers and companies struggling to deliver personalized content to iPad owners who want to filter news and articles out of their Twitter and Facebook social feeds, AOL is planning on releasing a Flipboard-like magazine for iPad this summer called Editions, BusinessInsider reports. Editions, currently teased on the web with an official landing page, appears to be a much more complex solution than Flipboard though: whilst the iPad app of the year 2010 pulls any link shared on your Twitter or Facebook account, not applying any sort of filtering or smart recognition algorithm, Editions will try to be intelligent enough to only display content that’s relevant to you, related to your location, in a way that reminds of a daily newspaper delivered to you once a day. Call it a mix between Flipboard and News Corp.’s The Daily, AOL’s Editions will even go as far as creating a cover for the top story in your social feed, as well as aggregating all content from AOL-owned publications like TechCrunch and Engadget.

To pick these stories, Editions will look at what your social networks are recommending and the general topics they seem to be interested in, as well as your location (to deliver local news). Then, it will look at which stories you click on and how long you spend reading them, and adjust over time.

Editions is also not meant to replace Web surfing – instead, it will be delivered once a day, just like a newspaper. Temkin noted that AOL’s usage statistics show that people don’t use an iPad like a mobile phone, checking it constantly throughout the day. Instead, usage peaks at morning and night, when people are home and have some time to sit back and read.

Editions will launch this summer (before September 20th, they say) only on the iPad, as AOL doesn’t believe Android tablets will gain much “traction.” The idea sounds interesting – as every concept revolving around automatic news personalization does – but it’ll have to face fierce competition from the likes of News.me (which relies on a similar concept and is developed by the folks behind URL shortening service bit.ly), Yahoo’s upcoming Livestand and the next version of Flipboard, which is rumored to be heavily based on a new algorithm for better news filtering as the result of the acquisition of Ellerdale Project last year. Flipboard recently announced they tripled the app’s usage and doubled the userbase in just over two months.

iOS 4.3.3 Users Reporting WiFi Issues on iPhones, iPads

According to reports surfaced on Apple Support Communities, many users are experiencing WiFi connectivity issues on devices running the latest iOS 4.3.3. These issues are nothing new to iOS – you might remember the problems with the original iPad and WiFi routers last year – but this time it appears they’re affecting iPhone and iPod touch models as well. The story is very similar to last year’s reports: a device fails to connect to a network or is unable to navigate; the WiFi icon doesn’t appear in the statusbar even if the device is actually connected; the device randomly disconnects from a network. You can read more about what users are reporting here, or here.

Personally, I did notice my iPhone 4 keeps disconnecting from my home network (running on an AirPort Extreme station) a few times every day. It’s kind of annoying as the disconnection lasts between 30 seconds and 1 minute, but like I said it’s not happening more than 3 or 4 times a day – surely not “all the time.” On my iPad 2, WiFi signal is stable (doesn’t drop) but it’s lower than before even a few meters away from my router. Again, these are issues I wasn’t experiencing on iOS 4.3.1 or 4.3.2 and definitely seem to fall in line with Apple Support Communities’ discussion threads.

Most of the times, though, there’s no need to panic. If iOS really has a WiFi bug, you can stay assured Apple will fix it soon with a software update – if the reports will get stronger in the next weeks, Apple will issue a new version of iOS like they did before. Several users, however, forget that having a proper network configuration helps a lot when having to deal with multiple mobile devices; if the issue is not in the network, resetting your iOS settings to factory usually helps in resolving all WiFi connectivity problems. If the issue persists (like on my iPhone), then it’s certainly something Apple will have to take a look at. [via ReadWriteWeb]

iPad Cannibalization Of PC Market Slows

The iPad’s cannibalization of the PC market may have slowed if the latest NPD market research report is any sign of things to come. The report found that new purchasers of the iPad are less likely to have foregone purchasing a PC than the early adopters of the iPad. It found that of those who had purchased the iPad over the holiday season, 12% would have decided against a PC purchase when they bought an iPad. This is a 2% drop from the 14% of those decided against a PC amongst those who had owned their iPad for 6 months or more.

Netbooks were saved the most, with iPad cannibalization falling by 50%, which actually led the netbook market to grow by 21% between September 2010 and March 2011. NPD also believes that the slowing of PC sales over the past couple of months has more to do with Windows 7 than the iPad:

The explosion of computer sales when Windows 7 launched, as well as the huge increase in netbook sales at that time, are much more to blame for weak consumer PC sales growth than the iPad

The report contradicts what analysts were calling the “iPad effect” in the first quarter of 2011 when US PC sales fell 10.7%. In fact at least one analyst, including Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley, revised her 2011 PC shipments down after predicting a tablet cannibalization rate of 29% - which is nearly 3 times what this NPD report says was the rate when it surveyed customers in March.

[Via AppleInsider]

Report: Buyers Go With Either The Most Expensive Or Cheapest iPad

Apple offers quite a number of variations on the iPad 2, you can get it in white or black, with 3G or just WiFi, and in sizes of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. Well it turns out that the most popular model, according to research firm Context, is the 64GB 3G iPad.

The research was done by Context in Western Europe and it found that more than half of all iPad buyers would choose either the 64GB 3G model (also the most expensive), which accounted for roughly 33% of sales, or the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model (curiously the least expensive model), which received 22% of sales. On that evidence, as TheAppleBlog points out, consumers are going “all or nothing” – and many more seem to be saying “all”.

The report also discovered that the iPad represented 80% of tablets sold during the first quarter of 2011 – in line with a Nielsen report from last week. Yet this is a 5% drop from the previous quarter, a consequence of some take up of Android tablets. Curiously, one of the analysts from Context noted that it is likely that less publicised Android tablets such as the Acer Iconia will do better than the Xoom or Galaxy Tab. Nonetheless, Context has no doubts that at least by the end of this year, Apple will still hold top spot for tablet market share.

 

iKeyboard Promises A Better Typing Experience On The iPad

I bought an original iPad last year, and an iPad 2 when it came out in the United States on March 11. If there’s one thing I had to get used to during this last year when using the tablet, that would be the virtual keyboard. Coming from an iPhone background the use of a virtual keyboard on the iPad instead of a physical one wasn’t a surprise (is there really anyone who thought Steve Jobs would accept keys on the iPad’s screen?), but still it required some serious exercise to get actual writing done. There’s no shortage of apps for writers and the iPad is also a great email machine, but getting used to fast typing on the large virtual keyboard was hard. Like most iPad users, eventually I managed to overcome my issues with “hunt-and-peck typing”, and now I write any kind of piece or email message on my iPad just fine – perhaps not as fast as I could on my computer, but still fast enough to enjoy the experience provided by apps.

However, some people clearly couldn’t get to fully appreciate or get used to advantages offered by iOS’ virtual keyboard, opening the door to a plethora of alternative solutions like cases with built-in keyboards and external Bluetooth keyboards to carry around all the time. The iKeyboard, a Kickstarter project you can check out here, aims at offering a solution between virtual typing and external accessories, adding minimal weight and bulk to your iPad, still promising to dramatically improve your typing experience.

Once placed on top of the virtual keyboard, the physical iKeyboard will simply provide better tactile feedback and give you a sense of the distance between keys on screen. The creator explains:

My solution is to provide the feedback missing from a virtual keyboard by “grafting,” or piggybacking, a real keyboard onto the screen. My invention—the iKeyboard—will sit atop the virtual keyboard and be lightweight. It will add little bulk and not increase the footprint of the tablet. It will be easy and fast to deploy and remove.The iKeyboard will improve accuracy and typing speed, letting tablet users do real writing. It will set the brain free. In certain settings—the lecture hall, the library, the classroom—the iKeyboard will be an essential tool rather than just a useful accessory.

I’m not sure about the convenience of constantly adding and removing an accessory from your iPad’s screen, but I have to say this idea sounds more intriguing than stuffing your tablet into a bulky case or being forced to use an external keyboard for writing long documents. You can contribute to the project on Kickstarter, and check out the promo video below. Read more