This Saturday morning, January 22nd, Apple’s App Store reached the incredible number of 10 billion downloads.  A year ago Apple announced that it had reached the 3 billion downloads mark.  Within this single year the number of downloads grew at an amazing rate. On January 14th, Apple offered a U$ 10,000.00 prize for the person responsible for the 10 billionth download.  This morning the company published a message informing that the mark had been reached and that they will be announcing he winner of the prize.

Even though everyone already expected the iPad 2 to come equipped with one or more cameras, it is interesting to have this confirmed.  Images found in beta 2 of iOS 4.3 show the screen of the iPad with three new icons which seem to be fore FaceTime, Camera an Photo Booth applications. This image is used as an overlay to give the user a preview of how the device will look with a new wallpaper. MacRumors has a blowup of the image. While confirming the presence of cameras is interesting in itself, it is very interesting to see that Apple is not only bringing in the camera related functions of the iPhone...

Apple has announced that iOS 4.2.1 will be available for download today.  This means it will be released two days ahead of the last date to be mentioned in the rumor mill. It certainly won’t be too soon for all the anxious iPad owners that have been eagerly awaiting this release. Apple has released a media statement with very confident tone.  One imagines that they have reason to take that stand as the iPad’s first 2 days of “pre-sales” in South Korea  had over twice the number of devices sold than the first week of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab selling on their home turf. The...

Apple released iOS 4.2 Golden Master to developers today.  This is typically  the final build of a new version of the operating system and should reflect what Apple will make generally available to iOS device owners. Apple had announced iOS 4.2 availability for this November and this release indicates that they are going to make it without trouble. This release of iOS will be the first 4.x version to be compatible with the iPad. This will bring multitasking capabilities to the iPad as well as add printing capability to latest generation iOS devices.  Another feature which will be added to devices of...

While there doesn’t seem to be any shortage in people interested in buying an iPad, Apple is moving to expand distribution in the iPad through an agreement with Target. It seems confirmed that Target will start to carry the iPad on October 3rd.   This move might signal that Apple is comfortable with how its production capability has been increasing.  Actually it seems very comfortable as it moves to  add a large new distribution channel should demand a large number of units as sales spreads to all stores in the retail chain.

Apple has confirmed that the iPad will be released in China this nex Friday, September 17th.  It will be interesting to see how the Chinese market reacts to a device that has been taking the world by storm. Initially only the Wi-Fi models will be available to the Chinese customers, directly from Apple. Apple is the world’s most populous country and over the past several years has seen a lot of economic growth.   Apple is probably expecting to sell a good deal of iPads over the coming months in that country. A brand new Apple Store opened recently in Shanghai and it will be interesting to see if...

A great bit of news for iPad owners that are also movie lovers.  HBO Co-President Eric Kessler has stated that the company’s  HBO Go streaming service will be available on the iPad and other mobile devices within six months. Unfortunately this service will probably only be available for residents of the United States as is the case with NetFlix and other such services.  This leaves iPad users from other countries with whatever video content they can sync directly from their home or work computers. This information was published as part of an article on Bloomberg, but  iPad Watcher dug it up...

Music and music instrument apps have always been popular on the iPhone and iPod Touch.  If a video I ran into today is any indication I would say that they are becoming quite popular for the iPad as well. A couple of fellows got together and produced a short, but very interesting, music clip where all the instruments where played on iPad apps downloaded from Apple’s App Store.  The video which has been nicely produced might just offer us some interesting insights on a possible twist in the future of music performances. I have embedded the video below, if you would care to watch it. The total...

In an interesting turn of events, Oracle announced that it was suing Google over copyright and patent infringements on its Java intelectual property. While this is not directly linked to the iPad or Apple, it is certainly of interest to those that are  following the moves by several major electronics and computer makers to bring iPad competitors to market. Sun acquired the rights to Java along with Sun in April 2009.  The first statements by Oracle seem to indicate that they don’t intend to try to force Google to stop using Java and Java derived technologies in Android, but rather intend to...

During the previous several months the iPad managed to kill off just about any tablet computer that was mentioned as a new product, but just about any company.  HP was the first to show clear signs about just how serious it takes the iPad when it dropped its plans for the  Windows 7 based Slate and acquired Palm for a hefty 1.2 Billion USD.  This can be a good move, if HP manages to come up with a good game plan for bringing webOS devices to the market. At the same time, Apple sent tsunami like waves into several other markets such as that of dedicated ebook readers which saw significant price...

The rumor that a 7 inch iPad might be in the works for release by early 2011 started circulating today and was quickly picked up by most technology blogs.  It seems that the rumor started from a post on iLounge and spread from there. I’m not really sold on that idea, though. I can think of several activities, such as reading fiction, which I would prefer to do with a slightly smaller and much lighter version of the iPad. I would be reluctant, however, to give up the ease of use and productivity of the current crop of  iPad applications which go way beyond what you have on the iPhone and iPod...

Google seems to be having a good deal of success in getting all the companies that don’t have a  solution of their own capable of standing toe to toe with Apple’s iOS to adopt its Android platform for their smartphones.  The number of companies that are adopting Android to bring new solutions is continuously increasing over time and might grow even more as it looks like a much more viable operating system than Windows for the new tablets intended to compete against the iPad . No single Android based smartphone has sold in any quantity that could be remotely comparable to the number of...

This is the second iPad wallpaper post, but actually the third image to be released.   This image was created from a picture I took during a visit to the beautiful city of Prague in 2005.  It shows a section of sidewalk pavement by the margin of the Vltava river, mostly covered with freshly fallen leaves. I have been using this image as the wallpaper of my own iPad for the past several days.  It provides a good background for your icons as the pastel tones of the leaves and stones don’t really conflict with the more vivid tones used in most app icons.  If you like the picture, please feel...

Apple introduced today a device called Magic Trackpad.  This device is the equivalent of a MacBook’s touchpad but  for a desktop computer.  Apple’s Magic Mouse already allows users of desktop models to use a subset of the gestures available on the touchpad of a MacBook, but with the Magic Trackpad users will now be free to use all the gestures which are supported in the latest models of Macbooks. The gestures that are implemented in the touchpad of Apple’s notebooks are already very close to what you have in an iPhone or iPad.  This makes it easy for users to use the same gestures...

Regulators in the US have just included jailbreaking the iPhone in the acceptable exceptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act that made it ilegal to circumvent security measures in electronic devices. It the seems that the regulation indicates that copyright considerations cannot be used to prevent users from installing non-approved applications on their own devices.  This regulation just begs the question if it can be extended to include the iPod Touch and the iPad.  After all, an iPod is just an iPhone without the phone and the iPad is just a big iPod. ...