It’s now been a couple of days since the iPad 2 started selling and it has essentially sold out.  In fact it sold out in about 72 hours from the initial launch.  While Apple has not published any hard numbers on initial sales I guess we can safely say that the iPad 2 is a huge hit. A number of reviews by major tech sites have point in the same direction: the iPad 2 raises the standard that has to be met by other tablets.  While most people who’ve reviewed the iPad 2 have not found  it to be in any way revolutionary, it is a substantial improvement over the initial model in weight,...

As most people seemed to already be expecting the iPad 2 met with strong demand todays as Apple made it available to the general public.  During the day the lines in front of the company’s flagship stores all over the US grew into impressive crowds. It seems that as lines grew in front of the stores the analysts started to review their initial positions with initial weekend sales predictions moving from 600.000 to over 1 million...

Apple has released the iOS 4.3 update this morning.  The new iOS version arrives a couple of days ahead of the new iPad 2 which is expected to ship with this version of the OS. The update is over 590MBs in size and may take a while to download, if your are planning on being one of the first to update your device.  On my 10 Mbit cable connection the estimated time for the download to complete is almost up to an hour and a half. The documentation displayed by iTunes when offering to download the update confirms that the iPhone 4 will get a wireless hotspot feature with support for up to 5 simultaneous...

It seems that Flipboard has a new competitor. The social magazine which got the awarded the App of the Year title by Apple has a direct challenger in an app called Zite. The interesting thing is that Zite seems to be having exactly the same kind of capacity problems that plagued Flipboard in it’s first weeks. After watching the demo video on Mashable I downloaded the App to check it out but was unable to create my personalized magazine as it kept giving me connection error messages. In the end, I could not get past the welcome screens and just got a screenshot of it. I’ll continue to...

Lately I have read a growing number of articles on how Android has been growing it’s market share very rapidly and how it has beaten Apple’s iOS in the US. When I read this for the first time it seemed a bit odd as it considers all phones from all manufacturers summed up as one competitor to Apple’s iPhone. Now that isn’t just silly, it’s dumb. Apple manufactures pretty much a single model of smartphone, storage capacity differences notwithstanding. They do continue to sell at a low price the previous year’s model as an entry level unit but, all focus is on the...

The iPad 2 has been announced, demoed and spoken off by just about anyone with access to an Internet connection over the past few days. Now that we generally know what the new version of the iPad looks like and what are its features it will be easier to consider Apple’s competitors’ strengths and weaknesses Motorola has recently introduced the Xoom, a competing product which has a configuration which matches most closely the second generation 32 GB iPad 3G, however it is significantly more expensive than most iPad versions.  In fact, as Steve jobs pointed out during his introduction of the...

Today Steve Jobs introduced the iPad 2 personally during Apple’s special media event in San Francisco. There were few surprises in the device itself, but some very interesting twists in the accessory and software arenas. The iPad 2 will be available in the US on march 11th and it will come in two colors: black and white.  In a reference to the troubles Apple seems to have thad to ship the white iPhone, Jobs emphasized that the white iPad will be shipping from day one.  The new iPad will have a faster processor (up to 2x) and much a faster graphics processor (up to 9x the current model) in...

In just a few more hours Apple will be introducing the next generation of the iPad at a media event in San Francisco. A lot of speculation has been going on about what changes to expect in this new device, as was to be expected considering how fast and widely the iPad has spread. I don’t expect to see earthshaking features appearing on the iPad 2. Apple will probably consolidate it’s position as the absolute leader in the market the iPad created by improving both the CPU and GPU and providing additional memory along with a pair of cameras. These changes will put the iPad 2 in the same...

Apple has sent out invitations for a media event to be held on March 2nd, at 10 AM Pacific time.  The image included in the invitation could not have made it any more clear what the event is about as you can see in the image bellow. (As if anyone was expecting something different…) The event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the same venue that was used for the introduction of the original iPad and several other products. For the past three months everyone has speculated on what will be the feature set of the next generation of the iPad.  With a large number of tablets...

The latest rumor floating around about the iPad 2 is that it will be announced on March 2nd. This rumor comes right on the heels of another about the general refresh of the MacBook line which is expected for tomorrow, February 24th. According to this rumor all MacBooks will have at least some SSD storage for fast startup and sleep, much like the iPad.

Two UK carriers are offering the current generation iPad with large discounts over their regular selling prices.  Techradar reported that both Orange and T-Mobile are offering discounts in what can only be interpreted as a move to clear stocks of the current model before the release of the iPad 2. Whether the carriers have already been warned to expect the new release of the iPad or they are acting on the general expectation of a March release, it’s impossible to tell.  Both carriers now have offers of basic wifi+3G models at £99 when associated with 24 month contracts, down from £199 which...

Apple has finally introduced the in-app subscription service that has been long rumored. Subscriptions created through this service will incur the same 30% fee that Apple charges for other in-app purchases or sales of apps in the App Store. While the 30% fee makes a lot of sense for the app sales made through the App Store as Apple is effectively acting as both distributor and reseller, such a charge just for handling the order processing for content providers seems a bit too steep.  When Apple makes a sale through the App Store, it handles the hosting and bandwidth for the downloads in addition to...

Over the past couple of weeks lots of baseless and sometimes conflicting rumors seem to have floated around regarding Apple’s plans for the iPad and the iPhone.  A lot of this is probably related to the total lack of official information about the next iPad generation in a moment in time in which everyone is expecting it to come next week. Everyone expects Apple to announce a second generation iPad either in February or in March and the large number of announcements from all the companies trying to get a piece of the pie is just making everyone everyone even more anxious for some information. ...

While other companies are releasing smaller 7 inch tablets, Apple is taking the iPad to a larger form factor.  Sources with knowledge on the subject revealed that Apple is testing iPad prototypes with displays that go from 13 all the way up to 17 inches in size. These larger size iPads will be focused in the education market (13 to 14 inches in size) and the home entertainment market (the larger 17 inch display).  In the education market the larger screens would help make the reading experience better when the iPad is positioned on a desktop, as when its used with the cover that Apple provides. In...

Update: The original title of this post might have been interpreted as if the publication was being discontinued.  This is not the case.  I’m sorry for the possible confusion. Since the ipad-only newspaper “The Daily” came out, I have done my best to check out every issue.  Sometimes I wasn’t able to because the app just wasn’t working and other times I simply missed the window of opportunity as there seems to be no way for you to get an issue that came out during the interval between your activation of the app. When I was able to get an issue, I went through it and...