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RBC Capital Markets released a survey today in which they asked 2000 people how likely they were to buy an iPad 2. 28% of respondents are either “very likely” or “somewhat likely.” That’s a whopping 40% more potential buyers than the respondents of a similar survey released after the first iPad came out. In that survey only 20% of respondents said they were “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to buy the original iPad.

Another interesting finding from the survey is that the prime choice of Wi-Fi iPad models have shifted. With the original survey the most popular iPad Wi-Fi model was the 16 GB one, followed by the 32 GB model, and finally the 64 GB model. The iPad 2 survey shows that now the most popular iPad 2 Wi-Fi model is the 32 GB one, followed by the entry-level 16 GB model, and then the 64 GB model. The popularity of iPad 2 3G models match the original iPad 3G models with the 64 GB one coming in first place, followed by the 32 GB model, and finally the 16 GB model.

[via MacRumors]

40% higher demand for the iPad 2 vs original iPad originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our friends at the MacTech Boot Camp series of conferences for Mac consultants and IT techs are rolling right into 2011. They’ve got a session planned in Dallas for April 27, and then they’re headed up to Boston for another event on May 18.

We’re told there’s still room at the Dallas event, and the usual pricing has been lowered to $395, so you TUAW readers can follow this special discount link to see the show for just $295. Sessions include a packed schedule of panels and demos, lots and lots of networking, and included meals and refreshments — if you’ve never been to one of these and do any Mac consulting or IT work with Macs, they’re definitely worth seeing.

You can even get certified at the events — Apple Certification Testing is taking place the day before each session, and there’s also a proctor-moderated group study session included before that, so you can do some last-minute cramming with your fellow pupils. Testing for MacTech Boot Camp attendees is only $199, significantly cheaper than usual.

Finally, early bird registration is still underway for the sessions later on this year — the conference will be in Los Angeles on July 27, and in Chicago on August 31. If you’re in either of those cities, definitely consider attending.

TUAW is a media sponsor of the MacTech Boot Camp conferences.

MacTech Boot Camp revving up for Dallas, coming to Boston, LA, and Chicago later this year originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Reuters reports that Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics giant that produces iPods, iPhones and iPads in China, is in ongoing talks to invest US $12 billion in building manufacturing facilities in Brazil.

Dilma Rousseff, the Brazilian president, reportedly said that this is under consideration and has said that she considers tablet computing as a viable option to inexpensively bring the Internet to the lower-middle class of Brazil (around 80 million people). However a rough translation from Digital&Midia suggests that it’s a done deal and that iPads would be coming out of Brazil at the end of November. That report should be taken with a large grain of salt… we don’t have a Portuguese speaker in the house, unfortunately, so we’d welcome a more direct translation.

It’s easy to spot some pitfalls in Brazil for Foxconn. The manufacturer is in the business of finding the cheapest cost of production; Brazil has one of the highest import tariffs in South America, and is considered to be quite an expensive place to do business due to such factors as heavy taxes, poor labor laws and a possibly overvalued currency. So at first blush, Foxconn doing business in Brazil doesn’t seem to make sense.

On the other hand, if it were to happen, import tariffs would be avoided, allowing Apple to step into the highly taxed Brazilian market at lower cost. Right now the cheapest iPad in Brazil sells for $860 while the US price of the lowest end iPad 2 is $499. If iPads were manufactured in Brazil the selling cost would drop locally and in neighboring South American countries.

So will it happen? Talks have been progressing for three months according to Aloizio Mercadente, who serves as Brazil’s Science and Technology minister, and there are ongoing negotiations with other technology manufacturing companies at the same time. This leads us to question the Digital&Midia story saying that a deal has been struck. We’ll be keeping an eye to the south for more news soon.

iPads to be made in Brazil? originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cisco has announced that it’s shutting down the Flip video camera line, purchased a few years ago from Pure Digital for a whopping $590 million, for good. That’s a shame — while of course the iPod nano and the iPhone (and now the iPad 2) have carried video cameras of varying quality for a little while now, I really liked using my Flip minoHD, and often used it to shoot a few quick HD videos to edit in iMovie or elsewhere. As you can see in the various comparison videos, the Flip was a more than worthy competitor to Apple’s growing video capabilities, and arguably one reason why Apple moved so quickly on handheld HD video in the first place.

The reasons for the shutdown likely have more to do with Cisco’s position rather than any competition with video hardware itself — the IT giant picked up the boutique camera manufacturer, some analysts say, because it wanted to get into consumer electronics. But the company just wasn’t ready to deal with that market, and the analysis on this shutdown now says Cisco is just declaring a surrender on a deal it thought would work out.

That said, the field of consumer video electronics is definitely changing fast — as devices like the iPhone become ever more powerful and capable of shooting and even editing video, traditional handheld cameras will have to move fast to keep up.

Cisco to shutter Flip camera line originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Internet is a great resource for developers looking for tips, tricks and solutions to troubling coding problems. Sometimes these nuggets of information are found in highly visited websites like Stack Overflow. Other times, these resources are uncovered accidentally via a series of web links that lead to an interesting blog chock full of information. Such is the case with a recent blog post by Petter Silfver of significantpixels.

Silfver presents a compelling case for developers to spend time designing the iPhone Tab Bar. The tab bar is the core navigation element within an iOS application and its design is often the difference between a good and a great application. Silfver provides six rules for tab bar design that he gleaned from his years of mobile development. The tips range from the common sense such as “never change tab from a non-tab-bar navigational action” to the more complex reasons that determine whether you should customize a tab bar or leave it alone.

Current or prospective iOS developers should take a look at Silfver’s post. Even if you don’t agree with all the points, it is an excellent read for those interested in the design as well as the technical side of application development.

Lessons learned from the iPhone tab bar originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Walker Digital is using its patent library as a giant war hammer against more than 100 companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Walker Digital is a US-based research and development firm for technology patents and holds over 400 issued and pending patents both in the US and internationally.

The company generates an estimated US$200 million in licensing revenue from these patents. Besides its robust patent portfolio, Jay Walker, founder of Walker Digital, also launched Priceline and the two companies were tied closely together at launch.

Reports from AppleInsider and Reuters don’t identify the specific technology involved in this lawsuit, but Walker Digital claims Apple et al. are infringing on patents the company created in the 1990s. The Stamford, Connecticut company reportedly reached out to the companies named in this suit, but its request for licensing fell on deaf ears. Walker Digital then filed its patent infringement lawsuit in US District Court in Delaware on Tuesday.

Apple, Amazon and others are named in Walker Digital patent suit originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Over the past few weeks several websites have popped up that allow iPhone owners to unlock their phones without a jailbreak or hack… for a substantial fee.

The sites CutYourSim and Negri Electronics are advertising “permanent” iPhone unlocks, while the sites Unlockbase and GSMPhoneSource are offering “unlock” services. Prices for unlocking your iPhone range from between US$170 and $180.

What’s interesting about these unlock approaches is that they don’t require any hacks or jailbreaks; per iPhone jailbreak hacker MuscleNerd, they appear to directly access Apple’s database and add IMEI device identifiers to it, which then tells iTunes to unlock the iPhone the next time it is plugged in. CutYourSim even states that unlocking through them will not affect the warranty status of your iPhone, as this is an “official iPhone unlock.”

Readers who choose to go down this route should be extremely careful, however. Though two of the sites advertise the unlock as permanent, it is possible Apple can tell which IMEI device identifiers were unlocked using these third-party websites. If it can, it’s possible Apple could choose to relock the phones. Also if these websites actually have access to Apple’s databases, I expect the sites to be shut down within the next few days. Something tells me Apple Legal isn’t going to take kindly to this.

[via MacRumors]

Websites now offering hack-free iPhone unlocking originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flying Meat introduced version 3 of its popular Acorn image editor today, adding a number of featuring including layer styles, text and live multistop gradients, rotating text and shapes, quick mask, instant alpha channels, new filters, improvements to PSD importing as well as adding PSD exporting and more. Full release notes can be found on Acorn’s website.

Acorn 3 requires OS X 10.6 or later and is available for trial/purchase through its website or on the Mac App Store for $29.99 for the next week, then will return to $49.95. Users upgrading from Acorn 2 can do so for $19.99.

We’re planning an in-depth review of Acorn 3 for later this week to take a look at all the new features. So stay tuned for that!

Acorn 3 released, adds quick masks, layer styles and more originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pieceable has introduced an online tool that lets iPhone developers offer a preview of their application to prospective customers. The tool, called Viewer, uses Flash to display a version of the application that can previewed using a web browser. Developers can easily implement this service by adding a line of Pieceable-specific code to their iPhone app compiling the app for the Xcode iOS Simulator (rather than an actual device) and uploading their application file to Pieceable’s website. Pieceable will generate a web link to your app that you can share with others. The tool only supports iPhone apps; a future version will add support for the iPad.

Pieceable is a premium service, but a free trial is available that lets you share one application for one hour with one person at a time. A Pro version costs $60 per month and lets you share an unlimited number of applications for an unlimited amount of time with ten simultaneous viewers. If you need something in between, Pieceable offers a Basic plan that lets you upload five applications for an unlimited amount of time with three simultaneous viewers.

Similar tools already exist for Android. Bluestacks recently launched a Windows-based viewer for Android applications and Amazon’s new Android Appstore lets users demo select applications from within their web browser. While Android developers have options to offer online and desktop demos of their applications, Pieceable’s Viewer is the first such web service for iOS devices.

[Via GigaOM]

Pieceable lets iPhone developers demo apps in a browser originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flickr image by tpholland

I’m pretty convinced every time an analyst opens his or her mouth about Apple and we post it, a kitten is eaten by a bear somewhere*. This week’s “Wacky Analyst Random Rumormongering” comes from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek who claims that Apple is about to launch “a new far reaching cloud-based service” based on video. Oh, really? Let’s examine the reasons why we are visiting fantasyland, shall we?

At least Business Insider was so bold as to say this is “informed speculation,” although that’s pretty much what these analysts do, isn’t it? Unfortunately, the speculation appears to have happened in a brushed-aluminum vacuum chamber, where Apple is capable of setting terms with media companies and ISPs at-will and everyone works in a completely ego-free marketplace — but none of those things are true in reality. Besides, the “streaming media” speculation has been around ever since this data center had a concrete foundation.

Misek claims the data center is going live soon and that Apple will build others around the world. Plus, he says this data center is “too big” for mere music. Well, we knew the data center would go online this Spring, since Apple told us all this in a quarterly earnings call. The part about building more around the world is pure speculation. Apple uses Akamai for caching, so why bother with more data centers so soon? It’s possible, but I see no evidence considering how long it took them to build this data center. Then again, Apple Retail has had a meteoric rise… As for the thing being “too big” for video, what about software services? This isn’t just about storing petabytes of data, this is also about uptime, scaling and keeping monstrous amounts of data intact. You know, like email and calendars and possibly office documents.

Continue reading Don’t hold your breath for an Apple video streaming service

Don’t hold your breath for an Apple video streaming service originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Aqua interface has been a staple of Mac OS X since version 10.0, but now it appears that Apple is toning down the aqua appearance of its operating system in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. As you can see from the screen shot above, Apple has removed a lot of the aqua trimmings from drop-down menus, they’ve also taken the pill-shaped aqua buttons and given them a more flat, rectangular appearance.

In addition to the changes above, Lion has also stripped out OS X’s aqua scroll bars and replaced them with iOS-like scroll bars which fade away when not in use. The white pill button found in the upper-right corner of a Finder or app’s window, which shows or hides a window’s toolbar, has also now been replace with a full screen button.

I’m a fan of the new look myself. I’m glad Apple hasn’t totally abandoned the aqua interface, but it’s nice that they’ve toned it down. If you want to see more of the subtle changes listed above, click on over to AppleInsider, which posted the above images.

Mac OS X Lion to tone down the Aqua originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A recent survey by Google-owned AdMob found many consumers are spending more time on their tablets and less time sitting at their personal computers, using their smartphones, watching television, listening to the radio, or reading paper books. The survey highlights the rapidly shifting habits of customers in a tablet market AdMob expects will reach 165 million devices over the next two years.

Among the 1,430 tablet owners who participated in the survey, 77% admitted to spending less time with their personal computers after buying a tablet, 43% said they now use their tablets more than their personal computers, and 28% claimed to use a tablet as their primary computer. Most tablet users, 68%, spent at least 1 hour each day with the device, primarily for playing games (84%), searching for information (78%), or email correspondence (74%).

The survey results didn’t reveal any future buying decisions, but these new usage patterns may suggest a near future in which consumers spend less time and money on notebook and desktop computers. Are you spending less time at your personal computer since getting an iPad or other tablet device? Will it make you less likely to buy a notebook or desktop machine in the future? Let us know in the comments.

[via BGR]

Survey illustrates iPad’s effect on PC market originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve ever laid eyes on a Palm Pre smartphone, you know that one of the features that makes its owners excited is how the phone is charged; it’s simply put on top of a charger called a TouchStone and the battery is topped off via inductive charging. There’s no need to plug a charging cable into the device itself.

Mobee Technology’s Magic Bar is designed to perform a similar inductive charging task, except not with a phone. Instead, it’s designed to keep your Magic Trackpad and Apple Wireless Keyboard topped off with power.

The US$59.99 Magic Bar won’t be available until late June, and works by replacing the batteries in the wireless keyboard or trackpad with a rechargeable battery cylinder. When your Mac begins squawking about your keyboard or trackpad needing new batteries, you slide the interface device into a dock that looks similar to the TwelveSouth MagicWand. Through induction, the battery cylinder is recharged, after which time you can pull the trackpad or keyboard out of the dock.

The Magic Bar is powered through a standard USB connection, so it doesn’t require a separate power brick. I’m frankly perplexed by the product, since it adds yet another USB cable to the back of a Mac and would take up space on a desktop. It’s also twice the price of the $29 Apple Battery Charger, which takes the minimalist approach to “green power” by providing six rechargeable batteries and a tiny plug-in recharger.

Still, the Magic Bar will likely get the attention of those who are impressed with the concept of inductive charging. Pre-orders begin on May 15, 2011.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

Mobee Magic Bar offers wireless charging for Magic Trackpad, Apple keyboard originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It was 50 years ago today that the son of a Russian farmer rocketed into space and became the first man to orbit the earth. Yuri Gagarin’s 108 minute trip in his Vostok spacecraft ushered in the era of manned space flight, as the US followed up with the Mercury, Gemini, and later the Apollo missions to the moon. In 1975 the US and Russia stopped competing and began the Apollo-Soyuz missions. Joint missions continue today on the International Space Station.

To celebrate the event, Distant Suns 2 for the iPhone and iPod touch is free today only. The app is a pretty complete star map, with 130,000 stars, 88 constellations and the Messier catalog of galaxies, nebula and star clusters. I’ve reviewed the app in the past and found it a worthwhile purchase. It’s even better for free. Author Mike Smithwick produced one of the first computerized star map programs way back in 1985 for the Amiga 1000. Mike also produced Distant Suns 3 for the iPhone and iPad which is even more sophisticated and is designed for the iPhone and iPad. It’s on sale for US $4.99 today only.

A couple other astronomy app notes of interest. Star Walk, the award winning astronomy guide has been updated to include augmented reality. It activates the camera, and superimposes accurate star positions over the portion of sky you are pointing too. It’s very cool to use during the day too, because it will show you where the planets and other objects are that are made invisible by the sun. The iPhone version of Star Walk is on sale for $0.99 and that sale ends today. The app also now supports TV out on the iPhone 4.

Continue reading Distant Suns celebrates 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s epic ride with a free app

Distant Suns celebrates 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s epic ride with a free app originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Office 2011 version 14.1 (Service Pack 1) is now available from Microsoft’s website. As announced on April 6, the update includes a variety of improvements to the new Outlook for Mac, including built in support for Apple’s Sync Services that allows users to more easily synchronize Outlook data with other Mac OS X software like iCal and BusyCal and devices like the iPhone and iPad through iTunes.

The update also includes the usual fixes for “critical issues” and patches a security vulnerability that could allow an attacker “to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.”

Microsoft offers more details about the software update on its official Office for Mac blog. Even if the update isn’t showing in Office’s AutoUpdate utility yet, you can download the 246MB package here.

[via MacUpdate]

Microsoft releases Office 2011 Service Pack 1 originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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