E-mail updates
Saving...
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSEPOCH brings third-person cover based shooting to the iPad and iPhone in a robot post-apocalypse. In-Game's Todd Kenreck reports.
EPOCH brings third-person cover based shooting to the iPad and iPhone in a robot post-apocalypse. In-Game's Todd Kenreck reports.
'Infinity Blade 2' for the iPad 2 has dropped into the iTunes app store and we take a stab at its new graphics. In-Game's Todd Kenreck reports.
Nielsen
Parents who have let their kids play with their iPad now get to reap what they've sown: a recent Nielsen study reveals that nearly half of those kids (44 percent) want an iPad within the next six months, up from 31 percent last year. And right behind it are the iPod Touch (30 percent) and iPhone (27 percent).
Among consumers 13 and older, the iPad also held the top spot, but it was a much smaller percentage of respondents expressing their desire for one (24 percent), up from 18 percent in 2010. For teens and adults, computers and e-readers followed at 18 percent.
For the kid set, computers, non-iPad tablets and Nintendo 3DS also figured heavily in their minds, with each coming in at 25 percent. Other video game consoles, smartphones and TVs also claiming spots on their wanna-have list.
(You can see the full breakdown in the illustration above.)
Other recent surveys show that the iPad 2 is the most-wanted device of the season, with 65 percent of Sodahead voters putting it at the top of their wish lists. Our own informal survey in that story showed 39 percent of the 632 who voted also wanted an iPad 2 for Christmas, followed by 10 percent for a Kindle Fire.
More stories:
Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the Google+ stream.
Mark Rober
If you happen to have two iPad 2s laying around, you've got yourself one cool costume. Here, let someone from NASA demonstrate how it's done for you.
I think we've come upon the runaway hit costume of the 2011 Halloween season. Of course, this costume is going to cost you a pretty penny to execute.
That's because you'll need two iPad 2s to pull off this creepy, disgusting but totally awesome outfit which just so happens to make it look as though someone has shot and/or stabbed a hole right through the middle of you.
The man behind the costume is Mark Rober, who works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As he explains in the below video, all you need is two iPad 2s running Facetime video chat, some fake blood and a shirt you don't mind ripping a gaping hole into.
Oh yeah, you'll also need Wi-Fi to make Facetime work. If there's none to be found as you go trick-or-treating tonight, you can fix the problem by carrying a portable hot-spot with you.
Hmmm...this gives me an idea for my own costume tonight. Zombie makeup plus two iPhones running Facetime affixed to my head. Voila. I've got a hole in my head! Just remember, you heard it here first.
(Thanks to Kotaku for the heads up.)
For more game news, check out:
Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things here on Twitter or join her in the stream here on Google+. And be sure to check out the In-Game Facebook page here.
Rosa Golijan/msnbc.com
A simple fridge magnet could allow an evildoer to partially unlock your iPad 2.
You're security conscious and always make sure that your iPad 2 is locked when you leave it alone for a moment — but what if that weren't enough to keep an evildoer from accessing your data or apps? What if someone could unlock your iPad 2 by using a simple refrigerator magnet?
Don't laugh — because they can.
As the folks at 9to5 Mac and the German Apple forum Apfeltalk discovered, it turns out that anyone with an Apple Smart Cover or other magnetic accessory — including something like a simple fridge magnet — can gain partial access to a passcode-protected iPad 2.
All this sneaky individual has to do is press down the device's power button (that's the one on the top edge) until "slide to power off" appears on the screen. After that he or she simply slides a magnet along the right edge of the device's screen until it dims briefly and then taps the on-screen "cancel" button.
Ta da!
The perp now has access to whichever app was open when your iPad 2 was locked. If that app was Mail, then he or she can browse through all your messages, and even send some on your behalf. If the open app was Photos, then he or she can now see all your silly snapshots. If the app was Contacts ... well, you get the idea. The magnet trick provides full access to whichever app was open.
If no app was open when the iPad 2 was locked, then the evildoer is able to shuffle around your app icon arrangement ... and search your entire device by swiping over to the Spotlight feature. As you can see in the image below, this means that he or she can see previews of messages or emails simply by guessing at a few random search queries. (This is of course assuming that you haven't changed Spotlight's default settings and forbidden it from searching through certain things.)
Now before you panic too much, it's worth noting that the magnet trick doesn't allow someone complete access to your iPad 2. Attempts to open up any app other than the one which was running when the iPad was locked — or to open any app while on the home screen — will fail.
The flaw was discovered after the iOS 5 roll-out, but it's possible that it's been around as long as the iPad 2 has. The first-generation iPad is not affected, as it doesn't have a magnetic sensor for shutting off the screen.
Thankfully, until there's an official fix from Apple, you can protect yourself, though the measure comes with a minor inconvenience. All you have to do is toggle off the "iPad Cover Lock/Unlock" feature. (You can do this under the "General" tab in the "Settings" app.) You'll have to turn off your screen manually when you close the cover, but at least you'll be safe from snooping.
Related stories:
Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
If you thought the iPad 2 looks good, then Apple again plans to blow your socks off with the hi-res retina display of its next gen iPad 3, if what the Wall Street Journal reports comes to pass.
It wouldn't be surprising if that happens, given Apple's history of wowing its followers, then giving them something else to lust over soon after, an inexhaustible schedule of want that rivals any vampire-like hunger.
Using sources "familiar with" component suppliers and its assembler in Asia, the Journal's Lorraine Lukreports from Taipei that "the company has ordered key components such as display panels and chips for a new iPad it is aiming to launch in early 2012."
This iPad would pack an even bigger visual wallop than its predecessor, the current iPad 2, with a 2048 by 1536 hi-res display (compared with the iPad 2's 1024 by 768).
While none of the official spokespeople from the companies that produce the parts that make the new iPad were willing to comment on the record, Luk's sources told her Apple had already placed orders for about 1.5 million iPad 3s in the fourth quarter. Taipei is the place to be when it comes to iPad rumors, as it's the hub of manufacturers tied to Apple, which also has iPad manufacturing through the controversial Foxconnin China (though that too is an extension of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision, as well as being China's largest contract manufacturer). Foxconn's plant suffered a blow this spring with an explosion in May that killed three workers.
As of early August, an estimated 29 million iPads have been soldsince the tablet went on sale in April 2010, which will give the tab a robust 61 percent of the market by the end of the year. Despite Android tabs popping out like Tribbles, Apple's signature device still commands this particular segment of the wireless world, and with a next gen in the works, will try to continue that reign.
More stories:
Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the Google+ stream.
Lootiful
No, this is not a giant Game Boy. It just looks like one.
Surely this is some kind of violation of all things Nintendo holds sacred. And yet, it's also pretty dang sweet.
Lootiful, designer of "gear for geeks," has created an iPad 2 case that transforms your Apple tablet into an over-sized, old-school Game Boy. Or at the very least, it makes it look as if your iPad has been transformed into a Game Boy model circa 1989.
Lootfiul says pre-orders are coming soon. Until then, you can disguise your iPhone 4 as a Game Boy with Lootiful's similar-looking wrap called the iPWN! case.
But surely, Super Mario himself is not going to be happy about these Apple products daring to pass themselves off as a renowned member of the Nintendo clan.
As everyone knows, Nintendo's mascot is sick and tired of those cheap App Store games stealing his business (just look at what's happened to Nintendo's new handheld game machine, the Nintendo 3DS). And Mario will have his revenge.
(Thanks to Wired for the heads up.)
For more game news, check out:
Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things here on Twitter or join her in the stream here on Google+. And be sure to check out the In-Game Facebook page here.
.
A Chinese teenager recently broke his mother's heart when he revealed that he'd undergone a risky surgery to remove and sell his kidney — in order to purchase an iPad 2.
The Telegraph reports that the 17-year-old decided to partake in the cash-for-kidney exchange after seeing an online advertisement:
I wanted to buy an iPad 2, but I didn't have the money. [...] When I surfed the internet I found an advert posted online by agent saying they were able to pay RMB20,000 [$3,085] to buy a kidney.
The boy proceeded to follow the instructions in the ad, negotiated a fee with the agent and his partners, and traveled to the city of Chenzhou in the Hunan Province. His kidney was removed at a local hospital, and he was discharged after three days. He was paid about $3,400 for the procedure.
With that kind of money in his pocket, the boy went on a shopping spree. He purchased the iPad 2 he coveted, along with other electronics and headed home:
"When he came back, he had a laptop and a new Apple handset," his mother, identified as Miss Liu, told [a local news station], showing off the livid red scar where her son's kidney was removed, "I wanted to know how he had got so much money and he finally confessed that he had sold one of his kidneys."
But everything didn't go so smoothly: The boy suffered medical complications as a result of the surgery. He and his mother reached out to local authorities and attempted to contact the agents who'd arranged the procedure, but they had little luck:
The mother took the son back to Chenzhou to report the crime to the police, however, the mobiles of the three agents that Zheng had contacted were all switched off.
The hospital, which admitted contracting out its urology department to a private businessman, denied any knowledge of the surgery.
Related stories:
Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's obsessed with Twitter and loves to be liked on Facebook. While she wouldn't sell a kidney for an iPad 2, she would offer her soul for a time-travel machine.
www.electricpig.co.uk
Since the iPad 2's release in February, its dual-facing cameras quickly gained notoriety for their poor picture quality. Thanks to Flickr, we now have numbers to show just how neglected the iPad cameras really are.
According to a recent Flickr count reported on the UK tech blog Electricpig, out of 40 million daily Flickr users, only 22 used the iPad to click and and post their pics. The iPhone cameras saw better use, but only marginally so, considering that there are more iPhones out than iPads. Compared with 22 users who used iPads, 4391 used the iPhone 4, 3316 used the 3G, and 1949 used the 3GS.
Flickr can detect the source of a video or photo correctly about two-thirds of the time (though they're less accurate detecting camera phones), and you can see today's numbers here.
Further evidence of the iPad 2 camera's disuse: only 12,570 images in total on Flickr come from the iPad, compared to 51,331,761 images taken with versions of the iPhone. Electricpig made no mention of how other tablets fared.
They come with trimmings like a backside illumination sensor, but with a megapixel figure of 0.92, iPad 2 cameras are more comparable to the cameras on the iPod touch than they are to the iPhone cameras, making them better adapted to capture video than stills. While reviewers pointed this out at the iPad 2 launch, Flickr users apparently have also figured this out.
More stories from msnbc.com:
Nidhi is a tech news intern at msnbc.com and uses an iPhone and Twitter for her photo posts.
Apple
Apple iPad 2
Fanboys are about to get even more smug than they already are. A research firm predicts that the success of the iPad and iPad 2 and its successors will keep Apple on top of the tablet computer market through at least 2015.
In explaining the dominance Apple has in this field, Gartner analysts said, "Apple iPad did to the tablet PC market what the iPhone did to the smartphone market: re-invented it."
The recently released Gartner report states that Apple's iOS will account for 69 percent of media tablet operating systems in 2011, and 47 percent of the media tablet market in 2015.
Copy cats trying to ride on the wake of the iPad success will face an uphill battle, analysts added.
"Seeing the response from both consumers and enterprises to the iPad, many vendors are trying to compete by first delivering on hardware and then trying to leverage the platform ecosystem," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. "Many, however, are making the same mistake that was made in the first response wave to the iPhone, as they are prioritizing hardware features over applications, services and overall user experience. Tablets will be much more dependent on the latter than smartphones have been, and the sooner vendors realize that the better chance they have to compete head-to-head with Apple."
And what about Android, which has already topped the smartphone OSs?
Gartner forecasts the tablet-based Android OS will carry over some of that smartphone clout, with the 20 percent share it has in worldwide shares of the media tablet market this year to a peak of 39 percent in 2015, still almost 10 percentage points behind Apple. The Gartner analysts said that with Google's recent decision to not immediately release its tablet-only Honeycomb — in efforts to control the fragmentation in its smartphones and other devices — this will "slow the price decline and ultimately cap market share."
The Research in Motion tablet OS, QNX, also makes a dent with the introduction of the BlackBerry PlayBook, but it's still going to take awhile for it to catch up with Apple or Android. Same goes for tablets running the MeeGo and WebOS platforms.
"Smartphone users will want to buy a tablet that runs the same operating system as their smartphone. This is so that they can share applications across devices as well as for the sense of familiarity the user interfaces will bring," Ms. Milanesi said. "Vendors developing on Android should be prepared to see more cross brand ownership as some users might put OS over brand when it comes to the purchasing decision. Improvements on usability and brand recognition are the strongest differentiators they can focus on."
More tablet stories:
Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is still without a tablet.
Samsung
Prices of the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab have been dropped for a second time, with wireless carriers Verizon and Sprint reducing the price of the tablet to $199.99 with a two-year contract.
The Tab, one of the first major competitors to Apple's iPad, was released last fall, and started life out on the high end — more than $500 by the two carriers. Early this year, Verizon cut the price to $499.99, and Sprint to $299.99. AT&T, which also sells the tablet, for now continues to offer it at $549.99 with a two-year contract.
The price-cutting comes as word is that Motorola's Xoom, the first Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet, is "not zooming off shelves," as InformationWeek noted, with an estimated 100,000 tablets sold in the first month or so since it went on sale.
There still aren't many Android tablet-based apps available for the tablet, compared to those for Apple's iPad, and pricing also may be a factor. The Xoom carries a hefty $800 price tag (although you can find it for less online).
Meanwhile, sales of the iPad 2, which starts at $499, are estimated to be between 2.4 million and 2.6 million in March, when it went on sale, a source told DigiTimes, a Taiwanese tech business publication.
"Based on a conservative estimate, Apple is likely to take delivery of 4-4.3 million units a month, or a total of over 12 million units, of iPad 2 tablets in the second quarter, said the sources."
Related articles:
Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.
Consumer Reports
In Consumer Reports' tablet roundup, a check mark is placed next to "recommended" products. Here that includes the iPad 2, the out-of-production first iPad and the Motorola Xoom.
Consumer Reports has given a stamp of approval to the iPad 2. But before the fanboys can rejoice, they need to know two things: CR gave the same stamp to several key competitors, too. And the publication has yet to emblazon the coveted "best buy" mark on any tablet, despite declaring iPad 2 a leader in "both quality and price."
You may recall that Consumer Reports garnered a lot of attention last summer by refusing to "recommend" the iPhone 4, despite giving it the absolute highest score in the smartphone category. Their argument was that the so-called "death grip" caused calls to drop, and that it was solved when Apple issued free "bumpers" to shield the antenna.
Months later, the whole "Antennagate" seems like a fallacy. Fewer dropped calls on Verizon's iPhones suggest that AT&T's network is likely to be the culprit for call drops. Even still, AT&T's iPhone owners report reasonably high satisfaction, so the problem clearly wasn't an epidemic. Meanwhile, the "death grip" itself has been proven in lab testing to apply to all phones.
Consumer Reports' backhanded iPhone 4 rating turned out to be a public-relations coup — I can't remember the last time they got this much publicity — so much so that their recommendation of Apple's iPad 2 qualifies as news.
But there's a catch. Even though iPad 2 has little competition in the tablet field at this current moment, CR has also given a "recommended" stamp to the worthy but overpriced Motorola Xoom; to the immediately obsolete original iPad; and to the played-out-before-anyone-knew-about-it 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab. Their only rejects were tablets nobody is paying attention to anyway, products from Viewsonic, Archos and Dell.
And CR is apparently not going to brand anything "best buy" until more tablets hit the marketplace, despite their acknowledgment of iPad 2's value:
“So far Apple is leading the tablet market in both quality and price, which is unusual for a company whose products are usually premium priced,” said CR electronics editor Paul Reynolds, in the press release. “However, it’s likely we’ll see more competitive pricing in tablets as other models begin to hit the market.”
Pressed for additional explanation, Reynolds wrote us, via his publicist: "There's at least one other recommended tablet that's comparably priced to the iPad 2 — the Xoom, at least in its 32GB, Wi-Fi version. While that version wasn't out when we posted the Ratings, we knew it was coming. So while the iPad 2 is a fine value, it doesn't quite fair enough above the competition in both price and quality to be a CR Best Buy."
I respect Consumer Reports and the methods of the Consumers Union a lot, and definitely rely on them when trying to decide on the best microwave or washer/dryer combo, even phones and computers in general. But let's face it, their stamp of approval on the newest Apple product has a rather rubber feel to it, doesn't it?
More related reading from msnbc.com: