ipad

It turns out Apple isn't the only company readying a touch-screen tablet computer.

We say that half-jokingly, of course. In the last few months, quite a few companies have signaled their intentions to go head-to-head (or at least offer an alternative) to Apple's much-ballyhooed iPad, which should hit stores in March. Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer, and Sony have or are in the process of readying gadgets they say will compete with the iPad. We've seen some demonstrations at the Consumer Electronics Show and other trade shows, but several gadget makers admitted to waiting to see what Apple was going to do before setting the specifications and price of their competing touch-screen tablets.

Now that they know, what are they going to do about it? That might sound a bit silly considering companies like HP, Dell, and Acer have larger market share than Apple--when it comes to computers. But in other, faster-growing areas--smartphones and music players--Apple's popularity far outstrips theirs. And in a new device category (it's reasonable to consider this a new category) they're all essentially starting from scratch.

So how will every company not named Apple try to compete for your touch-screen tablet computing dollar, assuming such a dollar exists? They will try to emphasize something about theirs being better, of course, be it in terms of price, style, speeds and feeds, or the movies, books, games, or TV shows available via their gadget. Dell, for example, providing evidence that an old dog can at least attempt new tricks, tends to emphasize style these days. HP's commercials try to sell you on how easily their product fit into your lifestyle.

More than anything, they should try to avoid selling it as a computer, in the classic laptop computer sense. If Dell and HP and Acer and their compatriots do that, they'll end up trying to convince people to spend money on basically yet another Netbook; something that's sort of like a PC, but not quite. It's just smaller, cheaper, and with less functionality than a traditional PC. And after sophisticated smartphones and cheaper Netbooks, do consumers really need yet another device that's not quite a laptop?… Read more

Consumers will be able to buy the iPad at a variety of locations besides Apple's retail store, Apple's chief operating officer said Tuesday.

The comments came during Tim Cook's speech at the Goldman Sachs annual tech conference in San Francisco. In addition to the obvious Apple retail stores, consumers will be able to purchase the iPad from Apple directly and from "partners like Best Buy," according to AppleInsider.

Cook didn't mention whether AT&T would be selling the device in its retail locations, even though it did sell the iPhone models. One reason … Read more

As consumers await Apple's iPad, a new study from market analyst RBC and ChangeWave Research has revealed that the demand for Apple's tablet currently outpaces the original demand for its iPhone. MacRumors first reported on the story.

According to the survey, which was mentioned in a research note to clients by RBC analyst Mike Abramsky, 13 percent of the 3,200 folks surveyed said they were likely to buy an iPad when it's released. According to ChangeWave, initial iPhone demand was at 9 percent prior to the launch of the original iPhone.

Perhaps more importantly, the survey … Read more

If you've ever been immersed in a book and felt that some of its literary references were sailing over your head, a proposed software standard unveiled on Tuesday could make you a whole lot more erudite.

Known as Smartwords, the would-be standard is spearheaded by a start-up called Wordnik, and supported by media big shots like The New York Times, Forbes, the Huffington Post, O'Reilly Media, Vook, Ibis, Scribd, and the Internet Archive. The goal? To build a map of the English language, said Wordnik CEO Erin McKean.

Officially, the company refers to Smartwords as "a lightweight, … Read more

Will Hulu come to the iPad? Probably. One day. But you had better get ready to pay for it.

Hulu and its owners, three of the big broadcast TV networks, want to bring some version of the Web video service to Apple's device.

But the most likely scenario is one in which access to Hulu on the iPad comes as part of a subscription package, multiple people familiar with the company tell me.

Hulu has been free for Web users since it launched in 2008. But its broadcast owners--GE's NBC Universal, News Corp.'s Fox and Disney's … Read more

Apple has raised the maximum size of app downloads over a 3G connection to 20MB, in what developer site Appadvice says is preparation for the iPad launch.

In the past, iPhone app downloads were limited to less than 10MB over a 3G connection. If you wanted to download larger apps, you had to use Wi-Fi. This limitation may have been placed on the iPhone at the request of wireless carriers in an effort to preserve bandwidth.

iPad apps will be larger downloads, mainly because they will have to support higher-resolution graphics. New apps such as the iLife suite for the … Read more

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has reportedly continued his campaign against Adobe's Flash video technology, this time at a meeting with The Wall Street Journal, according to a report in Valleywag.

People who were at a recent meeting Jobs had with some of the paper's executives told the Gawker-owned site that Jobs dismissed Flash as "a CPU hog," full of "security holes," and "old technology" and would therefore not be including the technology on the iPad, or presumably, the iPhone. (Adobe did recently promise to make the Mac version of its browser plug-in … Read more

The HP Slate will use Windows 7, but what isn't known is which chip will power the Apple iPad rival from Hewlett-Packard.

This is an important question, as there's a world of difference between an Intel Atom processor and, let's say, a low-power Core 2 or Intel's latest-and-greatest chips based on the "Nehalem" design, referred to commercially as the Core i3, i5, and i7. Atom chips (with one exception) use a single-core processor--which can struggle under moderate to heavy workloads--while the more powerful Core 2 and i series chips use two processing cores.

HP … Read more

When Apple unveiled the iPad, it announced deals with five major book publishers to bring content to the device. Missing was any mention of magazines or newspapers, which is something many people expected to hear about.

An article posted Monday on the Financial Times Web site may hint at the problems between periodicals publishers and Apple.

Essentially, what it comes down to is control. The Financial Times says that "ownership of subscriber information and pricing have emerged as key issues."

Apple's pricing model for book, magazine, and newspaper publishers is quite similar to what it uses for … Read more