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.

Tuesday Tech Talk #42

Hello folks and welcome to another edition of Triple T. Lets see what is happening this week.

New MacBook Pro’s

Apple this past week refreshed the pro editions of the MacBook series. Of note is the addition of the Intel Core i5 and i7 processors. No word on when the regular MacBook will get an update. But you can read the specs on them here.

Apple going AMD?

Interesting note here, per AppleInsider, Apple has not only talked about using AMD chips in future hardware but is using test ones in their labs. Course I kind of like the relationship Apple has with Intel as it is but hey whatever makes the systems faster, go for it!

Apple Country

So ever wonder how your region of the country stands in Apple ownership? Well there is a map for that. It measures not just Apple Mac hardware but also iPhone and iPod and I would imagine iPad’s too. Quite an interesting map to read and apparently I am in a mission territory for an Apple user.



Google bringing printing to the Cloud

This missing link as it were, glad Google is working to resolve it though. It will be a lot easier to print from an iPad for example than this way.



CableCo’s team up for NYC WiFI

Good news if you live in NYC, Comcast, Time Warner, and Cablevision are teaming up for city-wide WiFi. This ought to give San Francisco a run for its money in terms of city friendly WiFi access.

This Week’s iPhone/iPod touch/iPad apps

Opera Mini Browser (Free) - Yes it has finally happened! Apple approved a competing browser app to Safari. My initial reaction is it is nice but it can’t remember the pages I had opened on it after an hour or so. So it has some room for growth there.

ZYRTEC AllergyCast (Free) - Very cool app here for those prone to allergies like I am with Pollen. Perfect for the traveler away from home.

Well that is going to do it for this weeks Tuesday Tech Talk. See you all next week with more news!

Tupelo Tech Talk #40

Hello all and welcome to another edition of Triple T. If you are wondering about a review on the iPad you can find that here. Here is what’s happening this week.

iPhone OS 4.0

Apple will be holding an event on Thursday to announce the release of iPhone OS 4.0. Among the rumored features is the ability for third party app multitasking. Cool, maybe this will mean I can run Pandora or Sirius/XM in the background like I can iTunes. As a reminder, the iPad runs the same OS.

iPad Initial Sales

Apple announced it sold 300,000 iPad units on Saturday. Given the base model goes for $499 that means Apple did $150 Million in sales on Saturday not including accessories for the iPad. That is one heck of a day! What recession? On top of that, users also downloaded 250,000 e-books. I think John C. Dvorak is going to owe Leo Laporte a nice bottle of wine soon.

Netflix for iPad

Also in iPad news, Netflix came out with an app to use on the iPad as well. You can browse the Netflix site and watch streaming content as well.

HP and Dell reduce investment in 10” netbooks

No doubt a response to slow growth and the introduction of the iPad. I recently checked out some netbooks just out of curiosity and to be honest I was not impressed with them. The screen seem so small that you could only run one thing at a time, might as well get an iPad if that is the case and I think a lot of other people thought the same.

MacBook series updates?

Apple Daily, a Taiwanese newspaper is speculating that Apple will release new updates to the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air product line this month. This makes a lot of sense as Apple is due for a refresh on the laptop line and it is now between the iPad release and the no doubt new iPhone release in June or July.

Well that is going to do it for this weeks Triple T., apologies for the heavy iPad news but next week should bring more of a regular format of tech news. See you next week!

Tuesday Tech Talk #32

Hello folks and welcome to another edition of Triple T. Now that I have what I wanted to say about the iPad out of my system for a while, lets see what else is happening.

New Google social product announcement

I will have some follow up on the announcement by Google at 10am tomorrow (no it doesn’t say which time zone 10am refers to so I will assume it is ET).

New MacBook Pro’s coming soon?

Per a photo of a Best Buy internal ordering system. Showing current MBP status as deleted meaning no new orders can be submitted for that particular model. Using MacTracker January-February are generally the time a refresh line is announced so stay tuned for new faster MacBook Pro’s and hopefully a new MacBook as well.

1080p and 5.1 surround sound coming to Netflix Watch Instantly

Interesting tidbit here from Engadget about Netflix adding 1080p and 5.1 to their watch instantly service later this year. No date as of yet so stay tuned.

HDMI 1.4’s 3D spec publicly released

We might be a step closer to sitting around our TV’s wearing 3D shades in our living rooms and it looks like no format war either since it’s an open standard.

This Week’s iPhone/iPod touch apps

This week I thought I would focus on news specific apps.

The Wall Street Journal - Those who like to follow the latest in business news will like this handy app. It’s free and it will give you access to the free content on their site and if your an online subscriber you can enter your login info on the app to access paid content as well.

Drudge Report Classic - This free app gives you mobile access to the latest news on the Drudge Report.

ABC 7 - If your an Angelino or a former one like I am but still like to see the latest news in SoCal, then KABC 7 has their own app with the latest local news, weather, and traffic conditions. It also has video of news reports. If your not a ABC 7 fan then KCBS and KCAL also have their own app with similar features.

Well that will do it for this weeks edition of Triple T. See you all next week!