AppleTalk Thursday #11

Hello folks and welcome to another edition of AppleTalk Thursday. We have a ton of Apple news this week so let's get right into things.

iPad 2



Yesterday Steve Jobs returned to take the stage in San Francisco to announce the new and improved iPad 2! Among the new features in the iPad 2 are as follows

1GHz dual-core A5 chip

Front and Rear camera (Rear Camera: 5x digital zoom still picture, 720p HD video recording up to 30fps) (Front camera: VGA still frame photo, and VGA 30fps video)

In addition it is also 1/3 less the depth of the original iPad at 0.34” (the iPhone 4 is 0.37” by comparison)

Storage capacity is still the same at 16, 32, and 64GB as well as pricing. Also iPad models for both GSM (AT&T) and CDMA (Verizon).

The iPad 2 goes on sale here in the US next Friday and then 26 countries on March 25th.

Bottom line, it just checkmated the Motorola Xoom IMHO as a contact free 32GB Xoom will set you back $800 for a 32GB model. By contrast the 32GB WiFi model of the iPad 2 is $599 and the WiFi+3G model is $729 (no contract required). So I just have to say to Motorola...how do you like them Apples? Yes I know the Xoom has Flash, but who the hell cares about a dying technology!

MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt



Last week I mentioned that Apple would be adopting Intel’s Light Peak and rebrand it as Thunderbolt. Well little did I know that just hours later Apple would roll out new MacBook Pro’s that would sport that very port.

Also in the new MacBook Pro’s are updated Intel i5 and i7 processors (Sandy Bridge architecture). For more information about the specs on the new MacBook Pro’s you can read here.

iOS 4.3

Also announced yesterday is iOS 4.3 which will become available next Friday as well. Among the goodies in the update are as follows.

AirPlay enhancements - AirPlay enabled apps and websites can now be played on the AppleTV. I wonder if we will see an updated Hulu Plus with AirPlay now?

Faster Safari with Nitro JavaScript - Will now run JavaScript twice as fast as Safari 4.2.

iTunes Home Sharing - My favorite feature, whatever content you have in iTunes on your Mac or PC, will now be able to be streamed right to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad

iPad side switch customization - Choose either mute or screen lock within the settings for the slider switch..hello screen lock!

Personal HotSpot for iPhone 4 - Yes you will finally be able to turn your iPhone 4 into an instant 3G hotspot with up to 5 devices at a time including iPad. Careful on this one if you are grandfathered in with AT&T on a unlimited data plan they may make you switch to one of their new data plans to gain this feature.

iAds surging against Android based ads

In a new study iOS-based devices are beating out Android based devices when it comes to ads, specifically iAds is eating Android’s lunch.

Amazon not sweating iTunes app Store Policies

Perhaps there may be a reason Amazon is not too concerned about Apple’s new in-app purchasing policy for subscription content. They have been working on a web-based Kindle reading application that could take the place if its Kindle app were ever thrown out of the App Store. Personally I don’t see the Kindle app ever getting thrown out of the store, but it is an interesting read though.

OS X 10.7 Lion

Apple has put its next version of its operating system into the hands of developers. AppleInsider has had some great write ups about it which can be found here, here, here, and here! Oh yeah, and also here and here from MacRumors.

DirecTV remote for the iPad

At last DirecTV has joined the party on making an iPad app that can interact with your TV services. The app is free but you have to have an eligible receiver for it to work and it needs to be wired into your WiFi network. I’m going to have to finally make that call to Comcast to get that modem and router moved by the TV I think. Considering they were late to the game, their app has some pretty awesome features.

FAA Approves iPad for Pilots’ Charts

Good news if you are an iPad owning pilot, the FAA is starting to give the thumbs up on digital maps stored on the iPad. I know several people personally that are very happy about this new policy.

Well, I think we covered quite a bit of ground. A lot of Apple news in the past week from MacBook Pro’s to new iPad’s to a soon to be released iOS update. Oh but there is one more thing...Random House is now part of the iBookstore! That’s right 17,000 new titles available for your reading consumption. Ok so we will be back next week for another edition of AppleTalk Thursday and I promise to have some app reviews as well.