iPad 3 Coming in Early 2012 [REPORT]

Apple has reportedly begun trial production on its next-generation iPad tablet device and it’s scheduled to launch in early 2012.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has begun ordering chips, display panels and other key components for the iPad 3. It is reportedly expected to feature a high resolution (2048×1536), 9.7-inch display, up from the iPad 2′s 9.5-inch, 1024×768 display. (The report didn’t say anything about the iPad 3′s rumored OLED screen, however.)

One supplier claimed that Apple has already placed orders to develop 1.5 million iPad 3s in the fourth quarter.

Apple announced the iPad 2 in March, just 15 months after the launch of the first-generation iPad. The accelerated release cycle has helped Apple maintain a dominant share of the tablet market, which Thursday claimed its first victim: the HP TouchPad.

Apple could not be reached for comment at press time.


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Supply Line Troubles To Delay iPad 3 Launch?

Analysts and pundits have been predicting an iPad 3 with a late 2011 launch for some time now, but if accounts from suppliers in Asia are to be believed, there just is no way that’s going to happen — if the rumors of the high-DPI screen are correct in the first place (and we think they are).

A 9.7″ display sporting 2048×1536 pixels, four times more than the current iPad and three times more than the HD displays on many Android tablets, is quite simply at the very limit of LCD panel manufacturing capability. Apple previously had hoped to have at least five or six million units by the end of the year and placed orders to that effect, but Digitimes is reporting that those orders have disappeared.

The chatter around the display industry water cooler is that Sharp is the only company capable of making these panels with any kind of real reliability; Samsung and LG apparently can’t reach a good yield. If these companies wanted to throw away money, they could invest despite poor yields, as Microsoft did in order to bring the Xbox 360 to market early, but we all know how that turned out. Samsung has actually demonstrated an alternative type of high-resolution display, but it’s unlikely Apple would use it even if it were ready for market.

These screens would be among the highest performing in the world, yet must be manufactured by the millions for relatively low cost. Apple doesn’t make its own displays (among other things), so it’s at the mercy of OEMs like Sharp. And if Sharp says “if anybody could do it, we could — but we can’t,” then Apple has no choice but to take that hit and delay the product.

Meanwhile, the same sources estimate as many as 30 million iPad 2s will be shipped in 2Q11; with no “rare” parts, they can be made as fast as the millions of hands in vast factory towns can put them together.

Of course it has to be said that a product that is not announced can’t, strictly speaking, be delayed. And I’m sure Apple was prepared for this eventuality, likely being informed while collaborating with Sharp that yields might just not hit targets in time. So: a revised launch schedule. January, anyone?


source: Techcrunch

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iPad To Dominate Tablet Market Until 2015

The iPad will continue to dominate the growing tablet market until Android tablets take over in 2015, according to forecasts from Informa Telecoms & Media.

The study estimates that Apple currently owns about 75% of the tablet market, which is expected to expand from less than 20 million units in 2010 to more than 230 million in 2015. By that time, Apple’s share of the market will drop to just 38%, due largely to the proliferation of cheaper and more advanced Android tablets. Still, it will take another year — until 2016 — for Android tablets to outsell Apple ones.

RIM’s prospects for market expansion are less optimistic, the study finds. Once the PlayBook begins supporting Android apps and 4G connectivity — HSPA+ and LTE versions are expected before the end of 2011 — sales are expected to improve.

Other analysts are more bullish on Apple’s market dominance. A study released by Gartner in April predicted the iPad will maintain a 47% share of the tablet by 2015, with Android hovering just above 38%.

Who will win the tablet wars, and how long will it take?


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Exclusive First Look: The Smurfs Movie Storybook App for iOS

The popular children’s cartoon The Smurfs has been adapted for the big screen in the 3D flick The Smurfs Movie, starring Neil Patrick Harris and Hank Azaria. Now showing on iPhone and iPad, in advance of the film’s July 29 debut, is the companion iOS application — The Smurfs Movie Storybook.

The application, developed by mobile children’s book application publisher iStoryTime, is targeted at junior Smurfs fans and follows the storyline of the upcoming feature film.

The $2.99 storybook for iOS, released Tuesday, features images from the film and celebrity character voiceovers. It offers young readers narrated read-alongs with manual flip or auto-play options, and includes a “Spot-The-Mistakes” game.

Movie companion applications are becoming must-offer appetizers and desserts by an entertainment industry hungry to drive audiences to theaters. The Smurfs Movie already has its own Farmville-knockoff in the “The Smurfs Village” game for iOS, and app maker iStoryTime has a long-standing relationship with Sony Pictures to create storybook applications for select films.

iStoryTime is also the publishing platform behind the Kung Fu Panda 2, The Penguins of Madagascar, Shrek Forever After and Transformers Mix & Match storybook applications.





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Facebook iPad App Preview Leaks Out

Update: It looks like Facebook has blocked access to the app at this time. Still, you can check out our screenshots to see how the app looks.

Facebook users were able to get a sneak peek of the social networking site’s long-rumored iPad app on Monday by using a jailbroken device and tweaking a file embedded in Facebook for iPhone.

The hack appears to have been first uncovered by Marvin Bernal on Twitter, and TechCrunch has since confirmed “with a source who had previously seen the Facebook iPad app” that this is indeed the iPad app that the company planned to launch with.

Facebook for iPad

Take a look at our screenshots and a description of some of the other features below:

   

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Official iPad Facebook App Hidden Inside iPhone App

Facebook’s iPad app could be a lot closer to launch than we thought. A full-sized, fully-functional version of the iPad app is hidden inside the current iPhone app. That means that, if you are running the iPhone app you already have the iPad executable on your phone.

Discovered by M.G Siegler, Apple writer for AOL’s Tech Crunch, the iPad app is a lot more modern-looking than the tired old iPhone version, and looks a lot like Twitter’s official iPad app. On the left is a source list to navigate between your Wall, info, photos and friends sections.

Up top, below the status bar, you’ll find more icons to take you to different sections (places and chat, amongst others), and if you flip to horizontal orientation you get a combination of both these navigation “aids,” and the top-bar nav icons remain.

In short, Facebook has managed to fully port the signature confusion of its Web site to a tablet app, a not insignificant achievement.

Siegler, who found the app after reading about it on Twitter, calls the app “spectacular.” The discovery was made by a an engineering student named Marvin Bernal, who also gives instructions on how to get it running on your own iPad:

If you are smart enough to know what that means, and yet you still use Facebook, then go ahead and hack away. The rest of us can either wait for the official launch, or wait for Google to release Google Plus for the iPad.


more at Wired

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Make It So: Hands-On With Official Star Trek iPad App

CBS Interactive has launched an official Star Trek PADD application for the iPad. The 190-MB program contains a browsable library of Star Trek information presented with a distinctive user interface modeled after the Federation’s LCARS software environment. And because we’re Star Trek nerds, we thought we’d take a look. You know, for science.

The information that users can read in the PADD application appears to be the same that is hosted in the database on the official StarTrek.com website. The database entries are organized into categories, which include characters, species, vessels, places and episodes. It draws details from all canonical Star Trek sources, including the movies, television shows and animated series.
Selecting a category will cause the application to display a massive alphabetical list of associated entries, which unfortunately isn’t particularly comfortable for casual browsing. There doesn’t appear to be a way to further filter a category by other parameters. I wanted to be able to browse the episode list by show and season, for example, but such functionality isn’t provided.

Does Everyone Know About This Grain but Me?
The breadth of the database is fairly impressive — it has entries on a wide range of topics, including some that are highly obscure or only mentioned in passing during the series. For example, there is an entry about coffee (they still drink copious amounts of it in the 24th century, especially Captain Janeway) and Bob Hope (a favorite of the 22nd-century Enterprise crew).

Despite the breadth, we noticed a few odd omissions. The character section of the database, for example, has a lengthy entry about Porthos — Captain Archer’s pet beagle — but sadly lacks an entry about Spot, Data’s pet cat. Another very serious and disappointing oversight is the lack of an entry about quadrotriticale, a high-yield hybrid of wheat and rye.

The individual entries tend to be concise and less encyclopedic than the equivalent entries at community-driven resources like Memory Alpha and Wikipedia. The style and format of the PADD database entries make the application handy for simple reference, but it’s much less useful than the wikis if you want more substantial background information and insight into historical events of the Star Trek canon.

The longer entries have some basic cross-linking so that you can dig into other entries, but not nearly to the same extent as Memory Alpha. Similarly, it has less supporting graphical media. There is at least one thumbnail for most of the episodes, but a lot of the other informational entries lack images.

For example, the entry about warp drive, which consists of only four sentences, has no graphical accompaniment. By comparison, the equivalent entry at Memory Alpha has a complete history of human and Federation warp technology development and several images.

The Truth Is Just an Excuse for a Lack of Imagination
In addition to information about the Star Trek universe, the database also has entries about actors, writers and other people who were involved in the making of the show. This is useful if you happen to be watching Total Recall and want to check the entry about Marc Alaimo to confirm your suspicion that your favorite Cardassian megalomaniac is in the ’90s Schwarzenegger flick. Seriously, Gul Dukat and Captain Jellico (Senator Kinsey, for the Gaters) appearing in the same movie is more than a little bit creepy.

On the other hand, the fact that the application basically breaks out of character by including entries about real-world topics might disappoint the Star Trek purists.

The application has a built-in search feature that allows you to type in a query with the iPad’s on-screen keyboard. The application will display entries that match the query. The search feature worked relatively well, but the standard iPad keyboard looks terribly out of place in the LCARS environment.

I Love Classic Century Design!
The application’s real novelty is the presentation, which is designed to mimic Star Trek consoles. The LCARS graphical elements are used effectively, but there are a lot of superfluous animated elements that have no functional behavior in the context of the application.

This makes it difficult at times to know which parts of the screen are user interface elements and which are just flashy embellishments that were added to contribute to the Star Trek aesthetic. Readability is also negatively impacted by the eccentric layout and narrow fonts. But let’s face it: Nobody wants an LCARS interface for the usability — it’s all about the atmosphere.

In addition to the brightly colored curves and other distinctive LCARS visual elements, the application also gives you the sounds of Star Trek. It emits a constant stream of blipping, buzzing and background noise of the kind that you might hear on the bridge of a starship or in main engineering. Some users might find the constant noise distracting, but I found myself intrigued by the soundtrack.

When you tap the screen, the application will respond by playing Majel Barret voice clips captured from the show (Barret is Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s wife, best known for her roles as Nurse Chapel, Lwaxana Troi and the voice of the ship’s computer).

The audio clips are used rather loosely in the application, sometimes with comical results. Tapping a part of the screen that is nonfunctional will result in a negative response selected at random. One that comes up infrequently is “this unit is not a replicator.” I laugh every time.

If you stop using the application and let it idle for a little while, it will switch into a sort of screensaver mode that rotates between a map of the Enterprise-D and what looks vaguely like an animated warp core diagnostic. You can exit the screen saver by tapping.

Perhaps Today Is a Good Day to Download
The program is an iPad exclusive, which means that it’s probably not coming to the Android platform anytime in the near future. This may tempt Android users to switch to the iPad … for about 0.68 seconds.

The Star Trek PADD application is a fun gimmick, but the $4.99 price is a bit much for what you get. If you are keen on the Ferengi third rule of acquisition (never spend more for an acquisition than you have to), you will find that you can get better value by simply opening a web browser and navigating to Memory Alpha or Wikipedia.

That said, the application is not a bad purchase for a hard-core Star Trek enthusiast who enjoys a little bit of starship atmosphere. As a huge fan, my effort to resist was futile. I think the amusement I got from the voice clips was enough to make it worth the cost and effort of downloading. But that’s just because my neural pathways have become accustomed to those sensory input patterns.

The developers could probably make the application more appealing to a broader base of Trek fans if they threw in more content or decreased the price a little bit. Let’s hope that they make it so.

You can download the PADD app in the App Store.


more at Wired

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Mobile Hacking: How Safe Is Your Smartphone?

New instances of phone hacking seem to emerge from Rupert Murdoch’s empire on a daily basis. But are the reports of interest beyond Murdoch and his detractors? Should you, as a consumer, fear that your phone will be hacked?

Not yet. Experts say that it’s still fairly easy to hack into your phone, but unless you’re a celebrity, you’re unlikely to be a target. Don’t get too comfortable, though. The era of safe mobile computing may be coming to an end as smartphones and other mobile devices become more popular than PCs.

For the moment, however, phone hacking is the farm team version of big league PC hacking. Methods — particularly in the case of the Murdoch charges which stretch back a decade in some cases — are pretty old school. Robert Siciliano, a McAfee consultant and identity theft expert, says probably the most prevalent way people hack phones is via “social engineering,” a.k.a. lying. For instance, a would-be hacker might call you and pose as the phone company saying they need to update your account and need your password. Or the hacker might get enough of your information to call the phone company and pose as you.

Steve Santorelli, director of global outreach at the Internet security research group Team Cymru, and former Scotland Yard police officer, says that the Murdoch phone hacks probably didn’t even take that much effort. It’s likely, he says, that the victims left a default password provided by the carrier on their phone and the hackers merely guessed correctly. Santorelli says that some carriers still use default passwords. Lesson: Change your passwords often.

There are, of course, more technologically savvy ways to hack your phone as well. A would-be hacker, for instance, might get a bit of information about your account and send a phishing email purportedly from your carrier asking you to log in. At that point they will have your password and other sensitive information. Smartphones also provide an opportunity to install monitoring software. iPhone owners are probably the safest in that regard, unless they jailbreak their phones, Siciliano says. Android users are less secure since publishers can upload their apps directly to Android Market. In March, hackers added malicious code to 58 Android apps, infecting 250,000 phones. “Android is more vulnerable because it’s a more open system,” says Siciliano. “While Google does vet its apps, some do slip by that are malicious.”

Once an app is installed, it can record all your calls and texts and, depending on what kind of apps you have and what you do with your phone, possibly get personal data related to banking and credit cards. There are other possibilities as well. A hacker could commandeer your phone into sending thousands of texts or making calls beyond your monthly minutes, causing you to rack up huge bills.

Such attacks are still pretty rare.”The low hanging fruit is still the PC,” says Siciliano. “If you are a criminal hacker, Microsoft’s OS is the most hacked software on the planet.” Yet that could be changing quickly. A recent survey by Flurry showed that consumers are now spending more time on mobile apps than on the web. Another by Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers estimated that combined tablet and smartphone shipments eclipsed those of desktops and laptops this year for the first time.

Security firms have taken notice. Market research firm Infonetics predicts sales of mobile security software will grow 50% each year through 2014, when it will hit $2 billion. AT&T also plans to start selling a security offering to customers next year.

In short, sometime soon phone hacks may not just be Hugh Grant’s problem. Says Santorelli: “If I had money right now, I’d bet on the Russian mafia. Mobile hacking is going to be huge.”

more at Mashable

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Amazon To Launch Tablet By October

Amazon’s rumored tablet computer will be introduced before October, according to a report.

The tablet, which would vie with Apple’s iPad 2, among other products, will be one of three new hardware products from Amazon coming in the third quarter, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The other devices are a touch-screen version of the Kindle and an “improved and cheaper adaptation” of the current Kindle, which sells for $139. (Amazon on Wednesday also cut the price of its Kindle 3G, which works off AT&T’s wireless network, from $189 to $139.) Though the report states that the tablet won’t have a camera, no further details were provided.

Rumors of an Amazon tablet have circulated since May. In particular, Peter Rojas of Gdgt speculated that an Android-based tablet made from Samsung was on the way.

Such a device might make sense since the market for ereaders seems to be splitting between single-function devices like the Kindle and the iPad. Amazon rival Barnes & Noble is attempting to address both segments of the market with its Nook Color — whose latest iteration includes support for Android 2.2 (Froyo) and Adobe Flash along with an app store with hundreds of apps — and Simple Touch, a $139 device that competes head-to-head with Kindle.

Amazon reps could not be reached for comment on the report.

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FAA Approves Use of iPads

The newest devices in consumer technology are usually absorbed into the business community at some point and the better the devices the quicker they are absorbed. That has been especially true of the iPad as more and more people are seeing how many things the devices can do. Restaurants and bars have already handing out iPads as a way to both view the menu and browse around the company websites so their patrons get a better feel for where they are eating or drinking but the biggest step in integrating the iPad into everyday use might have come with the announcement that the FAA has approved the use of the iPad as an electronic flight manual.

The usual flight manual that is made of paper weighs in at a cumbersome 40 pounds and several thousand pages and can be a bit of a job to go through the thing. Using the iPad, all of these pages and pounds can be replaced by the iPad which weighs in at a less than hefty 1.5 pounds. Before this ruling, the airport cockpit had a ton of books that actually came together as the flight manual, but the iPad will be able to serve as the rules and regs packet as well as the flight log and everything else that makes up the 40 pounds of manual.

Technically, this is actually the second step in a multi-tiered approach to moving from totally paper manuals to digital. Apple iPad 2 MC769LL/A Tablet (16GB, Wifi, Black) NEWEST MODEL In May, Alaska Airlines was given permission by the FAA to use iPads to use for digital flight, performance and systems manuals that eventually cut 25 of the 40 pounds of paper that is used in the cockpit. Being able to reduce the amount of weight that is carried around is just part of the upside that is involved in using iPads. The digital flight manuals also allow the pilots to access whatever information they need quicker and easier. The iPad manuals have a ton of hyperlinks that allow the pilots to get even more information as well as full color, interactive graphics.

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