the iPadHole

Apple Inc. sued companies it said are selling unauthorized electronic accessories such as chargers, speakers and cables for the iPod music player, iPhone and iPad tablet computer.

“Many are of inferior quality and reliability, raising significant concerns over compatibility with and damage to Apple’s products,” Apple said in the complaint, citing a user comment that a charger from one of the companies drained his iPod rather than replenishing the battery.

Apple said it has a program called “Made for iPod” under which manufacturers can get a license to sell accessories for the devices. The unauthorized products are infringing as many as 10 patents and violating Apple’s trademarks, the Cupertino, California-based companies said in the filing.

The complaint, filed July 22 in federal court in San Francisco, identifies six sellers based in California and one in Washington and said Apple could name as many as 20 additional companies. Calls or e-mails to five of the named companies weren’t immediately returned and contact information for two companies couldn’t be obtained.

Apple sold 3.27 million iPads, 8.4 million iPhones and 9.41 million iPods in the quarter ended June 26, the company said in its third-quarter earnings report on July 20.

In November, Apple sued a California company it said was selling knockoff power adapters for the MacBook laptop computer. The company agreed to a court order that it stop selling the products.

The case is Apple Inc. v. eForCity Corp., 10-3216, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (San Francisco).

Source: iPad News – Bloomberg.com

The iPhone 4 makes its debut in Canada on Friday, giving Canadians the ability to choose from three carriers and to buy the device unlocked directly from Apple. It won’t be cheap: the unlocked 16GB iPhone 4 will retail for $659 (CAD) or about $640 (USD), while the 32GB version will go for $779 (CAD) or $756 (USD). Apple is also selling an unlocked 8GB iPhone 3GS for a cool $549 (CAD) or $532 (USD), according to the CBC.

By comparison, the contract-free, but still locked, price for the iPhone 4 in the United States is $599 (16GB) and $699 (32GB). Considering Canada’s proximity to the United States, I wonder if many Americans might consider heading to Canada for future iPhone purchases instead of buying a subsidized and locked device from AT&T.

Canada is not the only country to get the unlocked iPhone 4; 16 other countries will have stores full of unlocked iPhones beginning Friday. Customers in the United Kingdom and France currently enjoy the privilege of buying unlocked Apple iPhones.

Reasons to Unlock

T-Mobile doesn’t support the iPhone 4′s new micro-SIM card at the moment, so unless you want to try cutting down a regular-sized SIM to micro-SIM size, increased carrier choice in the U.S. isn’t a reason to switch. But an unlocked iPhone can be a boon for international travelers. An unlocked iPhone means you don’t have to worry about exorbitant roaming and data fees, and you can avoid AT&T’s World Traveler service that offers international calling plans for about $6 per month and international data access for $25-200 (20MB-200MB) per month. Rather than pay the extra fees, you could pop out your iPhone 4′s micro-SIM, pick up a micro-SIM card at your destination country, and you’re ready to go.

There are other ways to get your hands on an unlocked iPhone, such as software unlocking tools. But if you’re queasy about tinkering with iPhone firmware, it doesn’t get much easier than a day trip across the border.

Source: iPhone 4 News – PCWorld.com

Apple was hit with a new lawsuit on July 23 that alleges the iPad overheats too quickly and stops working in sunlight and hot weather conditions. The case was filed in Federal Court in Oakland, California, and is seeking class action status, according to Bloomberg.

The suit claims Apple’s iPad “overheats so quickly under common weather conditions,” and fails to “live up to the reasonable consumer’s expectations created by Apple.”

Apple’s iPad is a multimedia tablet device with a 9.7-inch multi-touch display. The tablet runs the same operating system as the iPhone and iPod touch, and is capable of running most of the same apps, too. It includes built-in Wi-Fi networking support, Bluetooth support, can play videos and music, includes an ebook reader app, and more.

Along with class action status, the lawsuit is asking for unspecified damages. Apple has not commented on the pending case.

Source: iPad News – MacObserver.com

Amazon’s Kindle e-reader is a terrific device, but a lot of people, myself included, figured that once Apple’s iPad came out, the poor little Kindle would be toast. The first thing I did at the iPad introduction event was snap a few pictures of a shiny new iPad right next to my Kindle. They came out looking like those pictures where a regular person is standing next to a movie star.

But guess what? Yes, it’s true that the iPad has been a smash hit, selling 3.3 million units in just a few months. But Amazon claims its plucky little Kindle is doing pretty well, too. Amazon won’t give out sales figures, but Forrester Research, a market-analysis firm, reckons Amazon will sell 3.5 million Kindles in the United States this year, bringing its total number in U.S. readers’ hands to 6 million by the end of 2010.

Amazon claims Kindle sales have actually gone up since the iPad came out, partly because Amazon slashed the price of the device from $259 to $189. That price cut caused the growth rate of Kindle sales to triple. “I think what people are seeing is that we are focused on building an uncompromised reading experience, and customers love that,” says Steven Kessel, who helps run the Kindle business at Amazon.

Kessel says people have realized that the iPad might be good for a lot of things, but isn’t really the best device for sustained reading over several hours. It’s too heavy, for one thing—about a pound and a half compared with 10 ounces for the Kindle, which can be held in one hand, like a paperback. As Kessel puts it, in a bit of an understatement, “The Kindle and the iPad are very different products.”

Another problem is that the iPad’s bright LCD screen can be tiring on your eyes compared with Kindle’s black-and-white “electronic paper.” The Kindle’s screen also works better in bright sunlight. Kindle has better battery life—it can run up to two weeks on a charge, if you keep the wireless switched off. That compares with 10 hours for an iPad. Plus, with Kindle you have no contract and no monthly fee, and you have wireless access in 100 countries—a nice feature for travelers.

Book readers have noticed. Last month Amazon sold nearly twice as many Kindle books as it did hardcover books—180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcovers. Over the past three months the ratio has been 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcovers. And for the first half of 2010, Amazon says it has sold three times as many Kindle books as in the first half of 2009.

Sure, the iPad has a book-reader application, and Apple runs its own online bookstore. But Amazon has a much bigger selection—630,000 e-books, versus “tens of thousands” at Apple. The Kindle app runs on iPads, BlackBerry, and Android devices, so you can read your books wherever you want; with Apple you’re locked into Apple devices.

The good news, according to Forrester, is that by 2015 nearly 30 million people in the United States will own e-reader devices, up from 3.7 million at the end of 2009. The bad news for Amazon is that Forrester predicts tablet computers like the iPad are going to zoom past e-readers so quickly that by 2015 twice as many people will own tablets as e-readers. Forrester analyst James McQuivey says e-reader makers like Amazon need to expand in two directions—up and down. On the low end, they need to roll out e-readers at a $99 price point. On the high end, they must push in-to the tablet PC space with iPad-like devices that also deliver video, music, games—and books. An Amazon spokesman says the company won’t make a tablet computer.

Last fall I interviewed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. This was before Apple officially announced the iPad, but everyone suspected it was coming. Bezos said Amazon wouldn’t view an Apple tablet as a threat to Kindle but rather as a companion, like the iPhone. “We’ll embrace it,” he said. “Wherever you want to read, we’re going to support you.”

I suggested to Bezos that maybe Amazon didn’t care about selling Kindle machines, that maybe the device wasn’t important. He said that wasn’t the case, but that “our goal with the Kindle device is separate from the Kindle bookstore.” Bezos insisted there is a market for “a purpose-built reading device,” as he calls it. “It’s not a Swiss Army knife. It’s not going to do a bunch of different things. We believe reading deserves a dedicated device.” So far, at least, it looks like he’s right.

Source: iPad News NewsWeek.com

Major publishers have slowly been rolling out their visions of how an analog magazine should look and work in a digital world full of iPads. Flipboard, on the other hand, is a new type of digital publication for the iPad that wants to meld your news and social worlds into a sort of personalized magazine.

Flipboard collects news, Twitter updates, and Facebook posts into a unique, animated magazine-style layout. Some preset news feeds and a Twitter “daily photo” stream introduce you to the concept, and you are prompted to add your Twitter and Facebook credentials so you stay on top of your own social networks and share interesting things you find with your friends.

You can also choose from a handful of built-in news sources like the Wall Street Journal and GigaOM’s tech blogs. Flipboard displays sources as tiles on a magazine-like table of contents page. When you tap a source, fluid animations will roll out stories, headlines, and photos across the page to remind you that this is most certainly not your grandparent’s magazine.

If you run to try out Flipboard right away Wednesday morning, you should know that quite a lot of buzz is swirling around it, so some features may stutter or hang. This is an unfortunate reality of Web services that get temporarily overwhelmed, but things should settle down soon.

Flipboard is available for free now in the App Store and requires an iPad running iOS 3.2 or later.

Source: iPad News PCWorld.com

A few weeks ago I wrote about an innovative app that lets you power your electric guitar via the iPhone or the iPod Touch. Now the AmpliTube has gone big with a version optimized for the larger iPad.

The app starts at free for limited use, or $19.99 for a full range of sounds (fuzz, distortion, wah-wah, clean) but you’ll also have to spring for an additional piece of hardware, the $39.99 iRig (which comes with the $19.99 version of the app.). It’s with the iRig that you get to plug your guitar into the headphone jack of the iPhone, to power it up. For additional sound, you plug a speaker into the iRig as well. The iRig is sold at at http://www.amplitube.com/irig or Guitar Center stores.

For the iPad version, no new effects or sounds have been added–but they’ll be easier to read, as they’re now much bigger.

Source: iPad News USAToday.com

LG Display’s CEO, Kwon Young-soo has indicated that while demand for its LCD TV screens is somewhat soft, it is having trouble with the smaller LEDs for the iPad.

“Demand (from Apple) keeps growing and we can’t meet it all,” he said. “Apple may have to delay launches of the iPad for some countries due to tight component supplies and strong demand. We are considering increasing production lines for iPad products, but overall supply is likely to remain tight until early next year.”

The iPad has a 9.7-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen multitouch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology. It has 1024-by-768-pixel resolution, at 132 pixels per inch (ppi).

Apple has sold 3.47 million iPads since the device first launched in the U.S. in April. Apple has slowly been making the iPad available in more countries around the world, most recently in Hong Kong, Singapore, and New Zealand. Demand in Hong Kong has been hi

The iPad has been only available via gray market channels in Hong Kong so far. Independent vendors, such as Kurt Lo, have been importing them from the U.S. and other countries through friends and then re-selling them at a mark-up.

Now that it is officially available in Hong Kong, vendors like Lo will purchase them legitimately and then sell them via gray market channels to mainland China, where the iPad is not yet available. “Crazy — the iPad is crazy,” Lo said. “Makes me very crazy and very busy today.”

With today’s launches, the iPad is now available in a total of 19 countries.

Source: iPad News InformationWeek.com

OtterBox just announced that their first iPhone 4 case is now available, which will offer a ton of protection against impact as well as ward off the vile Death Grip. The Defender Series case is comprised of three layers: a scratch- and water-resistant screen, a hard plastic case, and a rubber skin on the outside. Access to all of the necessary keys are there, like volume and lock, as well as a hole for the camera and LED flash. There’s even space to show off the Apple logo, for those times when you feel the need to caress it lovingly.

The Defender Series is quite the set-up, just be prepared to lose a lot of slimness. On the one hand, it makes your iPhone 4 no longer the skinniest smartphone in the world, but on the other, you’ve got plenty of space to spare. I actually found when using the Defender with the BlackBerry Pearl, the added size made it feel better in the hand. For those wanting to keep their iPhone 4 slim, OtterBox will be offering their Impact Series (a simple silicone skin with extra protection around the corners) sometime soon. For something a little in between, the Commuter series includes a removable hard case, so you can swap between slim and pocketable or large and in charge modes as needed.

The OtterBox iPhone 4 Defender case runs a relatively steep $49.95, but it’s likely not on the list of free cases Apple is giving out, and I’d be hard-pressed to imagine any other case protecting a phone better.

Source: InToMobile.com

Apple will sell 12.9 million iPads before the end of this year, according to the market watchers at iSuppli, upping their earlier estimate of 7.1 million “magical and revolutionary” devices.

“The iPad is shaping up to be the ‘Tickle Me Elmo’ of the 2010 holiday season,” said iSuppli’s Rhoda Alexander in a statement, meaning that “product demand [is] expected to vastly exceed available supply.”

“iSuppli believes that the only limitation on iPad sales now is production — and not demand,” Alexander said. “Apple has taken a very controlled approach introducing this product to new markets, with manufacturing limitations likely being the major inhibitor on how quickly iPad sales expand.”

If Apple can continue to increase the output of it Asian production partners, according to Alexander, the iPad’s future looks bright indeed: shipments of the device will soar to 36.5 million in 2011 and 50.4 million in 2012.

Alexander also states that Apple will “undoubtedly” update the iPad in April 2011, with likely changes including a camera and the expansion of the line into different screen sizes.

Although Alexander sees some competition from Asus and Acer near the end of this year, Apple will pretty much own the field until HP and others join the market, most likely in 2011.

And competition won’t be hardware-based, she avers, but rather will center on the application ecosystem that each vendor can encourage. “Just like the iPhone,” says Alexander, “the rest of the market is feverishly playing catch-up to the iPad at this point.”

Source: iPad News TheRegister

Apple has pulled its iPhone 4 bumper cases from its online store. The colorful rubber and molded plastic cases have been priced at zero on Apple’s site and now carry the note, “iPhone 4 Bumpers are currently unavailable for sale.”

The bumper cases played a large role in Steve Jobs’s iPhone 4 press conference last week. Addressing the mounting concerns over the handset’s “death grip” reception problem, Apple’s CEO offered free bumpers or cases to iPhone 4 owners who have had issues with the phone’s antenna. The bumper, along with other cases, has been shown in lab tests to alleviate the antenna issues.

While Apple has yet to state why the bumpers are no longer unavailable on the site, Apple is most likely bracing for an inevitable in-flux of demand in the wake of last week’s announcement. At the press conference, Jobs said the company did not have enough bumpers for the 3 million customers who have purchased the iPhone 4 and would partner with third-party case makers to give users a choice between bumpers or cases.

Source: PCMag.com