David F. Gallagher reports or The New York Times, “For the uninitiated, an ‘unboxing’ video documents the act of unboxing a new gadget, for the benefit of those who fetishize gadgets and their packaging. A wave of iPad unboxing videos is hitting YouTube, including one from a new iPad owner who shot it in his car.”

Direct link via YouTube here.

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

Yesterday, “in Palo Alto, shortly past noon, shoppers got more than a new shiny object – Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed up and his presence gave everyone a giddy brush with Silicon Valley high tech fame,” John Boudreau reports for The San Jose Mercury News.

“Wearing a black hoodie and jeans, Jobs , who came with his wife and daughter, scanned the displays of tech goodies and watched Apple employees give ipad how-to demonstrations. And of course he drew amazed gazes from shoppers already expressing excitement overload – the equivalent of a sugar high for Apple fans,” Boudreau reports.
Continue reading “Analyst: 700K iPads sold on day one; Steve Jobs makes surprise appearance at Apple Store Palo Alto” »

“PayPal documents from the JooJoo/Techcrunch lawsuit show that only 90 preorders for the $500 device, roughly $44k worth, were made,” Brian Lam reports for Gizmodo.

“This is what happens when you launch a tablet the same month as Apple, at the same price,” Lam reports. “And 15 of those turned into cancellations (which were hard to do, we hear.)”

Lam reports, “That doesn’t seem like it’s enough money to cover legal fees or kick production into high gear. I’m going to reiterate our stance: It seems like a great device, but you should wait for things to shake out before putting down more money.”

Full article, with the court docs, here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“When the Apple iPad goes on sale on Saturday, most of the major questions surrounding the device will have been answered, save for one: can it live up to the hype?” Brad Stone wonders for The New York Times.

“Apple fans have breathlessly awaited Apple’s entry into the tablet computer market. Since the company unveiled the iPad in late January, investors have jumped on the bandwagon, too, running up Apple’s stock more than 10 percent,” Stone reports. “Part of that rise can be attributed to the steady rise in sales of the iPhone and the company’s Mac computers. But much of it clearly has to do with tablet fever. On the day this month when Apple made the completely unsurprising announcement that the iPad would go on sale on April 3, the stock jumped nearly 4 percent.”

“Expectations are clearly high. Now the iPad has to meet them,” Stone reports. “Apple has given no public indication of what kinds of sales it expects, or what may constitute success. But at the iPad introduction in January, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, implicitly set a lofty standard. He said the iPad would offer an experience that was superior to that of netbooks, a rapidly growing category of inexpensive and lightweight laptops that accounted for $11 billion in global sales last year.”

Stone reports, “But analysts and investors are searching for their own ways to judge the iPad over the short and long term. Their projections vary, but many Apple analysts seem to think the company will sell around a million iPads by the end of its quarter in June, and around 5 million by the end of 2010.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“The more we learn about the Apple iPad, the more excited everyone seems to be about some of its flashier talents: killer accessories, brilliant games and the like,” Chris Dannen writes for BNET. “But what’s most disruptive about the iPad and its competitors is that they will goad us into reading more.”

“When it happens, this uptick in reading will be about as salient a behavioral change as we’ve ever ascribed to a technological device — especially if you remember back to the 1980s and 1990s, when common knowledge held the opposite: that we were all quite slowly becoming soporific, TV-guzzling stooges,” Dannen writes. “And it will happen because, for the first time in 600 years, reading will have finally gotten easier.”

Here is why e-book readers will increase reading:
• Tons of choices
• Beauty
• Faster and more fluid
• More comprehensive
• No spam
• They read to you
Continue reading “Why Apple iPad users will read more, and faster” »

“I speak with a number of folks in Taipei who build parts for leading PC companies, including Dell, HP, and Acer. Many of them have asked me the same question: could the iPad kill netbooks? The reason for their concern is clear—at present, about 40 million netbooks are sold a year. A major decline in that number could have a huge effect on their business,” Tim Bajarin writes for PC Magazine.

“The iPad and other tablets may become a major disruptor in mobile computing. If manufacturers get things right, the world of mobile computing may change rapidly,” Bajarin writes. “Sure we have had commercially available tablets for more than 20 years now, and all have failed to catch on in a major way. Still, we have never seen a tablet quite like the iPad before. Apple’s device has an elegant ecosystem of hardware and software and an easy-to-use multi-touch interface.”

Bajarin writes, “If Apple and the competition strike the proper balance of ease of use, simple multi-touch interfacing, and an ecosystem of apps and services, these devices just might succeed in killing off the netbook space.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Apple has begun promoting 10-pack iPad bundles for educational institutions, offering minor discounts while also reducing packaging by eliminating separate retail boxing for the devices. Each package contains ten iPads with USB-to-Dock Connector cables and power adapters along with a single set of documentation,” Eric Slivka reports for MacRumors. “Only Wi-Fi iPad models are currently available for order through the program, with bundle pricing offering a discount of $20 per iPad for hardware-only purchases and $40 per iPad if purchased with AppleCare.”

• iPad Wi-Fi (16GB) $4,790 (with AppleCare Protection Plan for iPad – Auto Enroll $5,580)
• iPad Wi-Fi (32GB) $5,790 (with AppleCare Protection Plan for iPad – Auto Enroll $6,580)
• iPad Wi-Fi (64GB) $6,790 (with AppleCare Protection Plan for iPad – Auto Enroll $7,580)

Full article, with links, here.