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Saturday, April 2, 2011

GarageBand Mac gets updated to pull in iPad projects

The 47MB update is available now through Software Update or via Apple’s site as a standalone installer.

From release notes:

This update improves overall stability and addresses a number of minor issues, including the following:• Support for opening projects imported from GarageBand for iPad. This update is recommended for all GarageBand ’11 users.

*thanks 9to5Mac*

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- Posted using my iPhone 4

12,000 iPad 2s sold on eBay in two weeks. Where did they go?

While we’re awaiting Apple’s conference call come April 20 that will shine the light on iPad 2 sales, eBay has just released their official figures relating to a two-week period of iPad 2 activity on their US site, between the launch and international roll out. CNET reports:

Unsurprisingly the hard-to-get tablet has been moving briskly on the service, reaching just less than 12,000 sales in the two-week period between the U.S. launch and the iPad 2′s launch in 25 additional international countries.
About 65 percent of devices went to US residents versus just 35 percent of the original iPads last year. Canada and Russia are the biggest importer of iPad 2s, eBay data suggests, with the latter commanding the highest average mark-up. The average selling price for the 16GB WiFi iPad 2 was $697 on the auctioning site (versus Apple’s retail price of $499), going all the way up to a $406 premium on the flagship 64GB 3G model. There’s more…

Reflecting the last year’s iPad sales structure, the low-end 16GB WiFi and the high-end 64GB 3G models have been the most popular on eBay. Check out the source link for more data, it’s an interesting food for though.

Samsung rolling out Star Trek-like see-thru LCD panels

First samples of Samsung awesome new display panels have begun rolling out from assembly lines. These isn’t your pa’s display – the Korean consumer electronics maker has outdone itself by developing a new technology, pure Star Trek stuff. According to a press release, not only is the display itself transparent, it doesn’t require backlight because they’ve found a way to replace the traditional backlight with ambient light.

Given that traditional backlights consumer the vast majority of power in a traditional LCD, Samsung’s see-thru panels are tremendously power-savvy as well. The first panels coming out are of a 22-inch variety and sport a 1680-by-1050 pixel resolution with a 500:1 contrast ratio. From the press release:

The transparent LCD panel has a high transparency rate, which enables a person to look right through the panel like glass, and it consumes 90% less electricity compared with a conventional LCD panel using back light unit. It’s because a transparent LCD panel utilizes ambient light such as sun light, which consequently reduces the dependency on electricity for generating power.
More awesomeness, including additional images and video, right below the fold.

Apple has a multi-year contract with Samsung for flat panels and they are known for using the latest tech when it makes sense, like Thunderbolt connection. That said, a next-gen MacBook with a nice frameless display seems logical.

Hold your horses, Samsung for now expects to see the new display tech used by fancy advertising agencies and in boardrooms, for teleconferencing. Besides, transparent display makes little sense in everyday computing, even if the bottom clip showing a 14-inch transparent OLED display notebook is telling us otherwise.

Samsung pledged to hire 300 engineers in the first six months of 2011, which is part of the planned expansion of their Austin, Texas semiconductor plant worth $3.6 billion dollars, EETimes reported today. The company got bashed recently when it was discovered they ship notebooks with keyloggers preinstalled.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Lion Preview notes: iCal redesign, iChat account merge, more

We’re getting our first views of Lion Preview 2 and contrary to earlier reports, this certainly doesn’t feel like a Gold Master. In fact, it doesn’t improve much from the previous preview in terms of stability –which is fine if we are a few months away.

As you can see above, iCal has a new leather bound header (OMG) with faux stitching and interestingly, iChat’s main window houses AIM, Bonjour and Jabber contacts together like Adium.

Also, the Chrome browser crashes pretty frequently for our review copy anyway.

Developers, please post any additional changes you find in the comments.

OSX Lion Preview 2 is out, Xcode 4.1 Developer Preview 2…

Developers, you need to install an update from Software Update first. Then Restart. Then go to the Dev Center and get a redeem code. Then go to the Mac App Store, redeem and download. The download is 3.7GB.

We miss the old days.

Apple also released Xcode to 4.1 Developer Preview 2:

Supplemental 13″ MacBook Air Update solves iTunes freezes

A glitch causing system lockups in iTunes for some MacBook Air owners with Snow Leopard 10.6.7 installed has been fixed with a small update released yesterday. The Supplemental 13″ MacBook Air Update, now available via Software Update or from Apple’s site, “addresses an issue that makes the system unresponsive when using iTunes.” It weighs in at just 461KB and is recommended for all 13-inch MacBook Air (Late 2010) owners running Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.7 (build 10J869).

Microsoft unsure if tablets are a fad

It’s the tablet craze and everyone’s going bonkers over a post PC era where slates rule casual computing. Everyone except software giant Microsoft who remains suspicious of the trend. Because they lack a horse for this race, it isn’t shocking they’re shooting down tablets. It’s the smartphones that are post PC devices, not the tablets, suggested their chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie. Microsoft didn’t jump on the distinction between mobile and portable fast enough, he thinks. But isn’t portable and mobile essentially the same thing, you ask.

Mobile is something that you want to use while you’re moving, and portable is something that you move and then use. These are going to bump into one another a little bit and so today you can see tablets and pads and other things that are starting to live in the space in between. I don’t know whether the big screen tablet pad category is going to remain with us or not.
Check out the source link at The Sydney Morning Hearld for a video. Mundie’s also seen a prototype smartphone screen in the labs that beams HDTV to your retina. “Instead of seeing a screen it can beam individual rays of light into your eyes right on your retina,” he said. Wow, what a mind job.

Contrasting his skepticism about tablets, IMS Research said Tuesday tablets and e-readers will continue chipping away from PCs. The iPad effect has forced players like Acer to lower their sales expectations. Taking this all in, I personally believe there’s a huge market for a canvas other than a smartphone. One needs look no further than Apple’s iPad and the kind of apps taking advantage of its 9.7-inch display, offering user experiences and the level of multitouch sophistication not possible on smallish smartphone displays.

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Saturday, April 2, 2011

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