“Since the iPad became available for pre-order last Friday, Apple has sold hundreds of thousands of the device, say people familiar with the matter,” Yukari Iwatani Kane and Sam Schechner report for The Wall Street Journal. “One of these people said Apple could sell more iPads in its first three months than it sold iPhones in the three months after the smart phone’s debut.”

“The company is still negotiating with media companies for a price cut on TV shows that people can download onto the device, said people familiar with the matter,” Kane and Schechner report.

Kane and Schechner report that “nailing down the content has proven difficult as some potential collaborators weigh the advantages of working with Apple against the potential threats to their current sources of revenue, these people add… The last-minute discussions show the complexities that Apple and Chief Executive Steve Jobs are facing in creating a networked multimedia device, which has pushed the company to pare back some of its initial intentions for the iPad’s release.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

Nearly 40% of Blackberry users continue to prefer Apple’s iPhone as their next smartphone purchase, but a third of them would also switch to the Android operating system, according to the second smartphone brand loyalty survey conducted semi-annually via Crowd Science’s advanced research platform for online audience measurement. The Crowd Scientists also found Android users rivaling iPhone users in loyalty, with about 90% of each user group planning to stick with their current brand when buying their next phone.

Asked specifically if they’d swap their present phone for Google’s new Android-based Nexus One, 32% of Blackberry users said “yes,” compared with just 9% of iPhone users. This figure zoomed to 60% for users of smartphones not made by Blackberry or Apple.

“These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science, in the press release. “Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.”

Crowd Science’s methodology applies rigorous sampling and research techniques to online populations, allowing for real-time results. Indeed, a significant event affecting the research – the debut of Nexus One on January 5 – occurred midway through the Dec. 24. 2009 to Jan. 21, 2010 study period. Rather than being a disruptive factor, however, the Crowd Scientists were able to measure how the launch affected the attitudes of respondents. For example, awareness of the Android operating system jumped six points – to 66% from 60%. Moving from awareness to familiarity, however, results were stable throughout the research period – at about 10% for all smartphone users excluding Android owners.
Continue reading “40% of Blackberry users willing to trade in their devices for Apple iPhones” »

“Some interesting information has come to light… that may indicate a future direction of Apple’s iPhone OS products,” Chauncey Dupree reports for 9 to 5 Mac.

Dupree points to “some pretty definitive evidence that future iPhones and iPads will have video chatting capability… Icons were found in the 3.2 SDK which seem to indicate that there will be video calling on a future iPxxx device.”

Also, Dupress reports, “Hidden in some of the underlying iPad telephony apps are some VideoChat strings that are equally, if not more, telling evidence of future VideoChatting capabilities… Also, we’ve found some references to ‘iChat.’”

Full article, with screenshots, here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Apple’s new iPad is being criticized for lacking the capacity to render interactive content built using Adobe’s Flash platform, but the company shows no sign of reversing course,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider.

“Since the iPhone debuted in 2007 without any support for Flash, Adobe has begun a revitalized campaign to breathe interest in Flash,” Dilger reports. “This includes the announcement of a new series of Flash 10.1 runtimes for Windows Mobile, Nokia S60/Symbian, Palm WebOS, and Android phones (but not RIM’s Blackberry). This suggests not having Flash will be a problem for the iPad.”

Dilger reports, “[However], Adobe’s arguments for Flash are difficult to support in the mobile realm. The iPhone has been wildly popular since its debut despite its lack of support for Flash. Apple’s smartphone dramatically raised the bar for what customers expected in a mobile web browser. By doing this without Flash, Apple essentially redefined what the web should look like, at least on a mobile device.”
Continue reading “Apple shows no sign of reversing course on Adobe Flash for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad” »

“I can type fairly quickly on my iPhone, at least in landscape mode — I average about 30 – 35 words per minute compared to around 77 WPM on a standard keyboard — but the guy in the video [below] has gone to plaid with his typing speed,” Chris Rawson reports for TUAW. “Using an app called iTextSpeed, this anonymous texting speed demon reaches an incredible 56 words per minute on his iPhone in portrait mode.”

Full article here.

In its offices from Baltimore to Shanghai, international architecture firm RTKL uses iPhone to stay in touch, access apps that enable creative collaboration, and travel with ease.

Most of the iPad reactions I’ve read have been negative, but I have been completely satisfied with what Apple announced. iPad is exactly the product I’ve been wishing for ever since I wrapped my mind around the iPhone and its constraints. While the rumor mill was churning with all kinds of crazy possibilities for the Apple tablet, I mostly rolled my eyes, because I felt strongly that all Apple needed to do to revolutionize computing was simply to make an iPhone with a large screen. Anyone who feels underwhelmed by that doesn’t understand how much of the iPhone OS’s potential is still untapped,” Joe Hewitt blogs.

“I spent a year and a half attempting to reduce a massive, complex social networking website into a handheld, touch-screen form factor. My goal was initially just to make a mobile companion for the facebook.com mothership, but once I got comfortable with the platform I became convinced it was possible to create a version of Facebook that was actually better than the website! Of all the platforms I’ve developed on in my career, from the desktop to the web, iPhone OS gave me the greatest sense of empowerment, and had the highest ceiling for raising the art of UI design,” Hewitt writes. “Except there was one thing keeping me from reaching that ceiling: the screen was too small.”

“At some point I came to the conclusion that Facebook on iPhone OS could not truly exceed the website until I could adapt it to a screen size closer to a laptop,” Hewitt explains. “It needed to support more than one column of information at a time. I couldn’t fit enough tools on the screen to support any kind of advanced creative work. Photos were too small to show off to my far-sighted parents. The web required too much panning and zooming to enjoy reading. Beyond just Facebook, most of the apps I used most on my iPhone also suffered from these limitations, like Google Reader, Instapaper, and all image, video, and text editing tools. The bottom line is, many apps which were cute toys on iPhone can become full-featured power tools on the iPad, making you forget about their desktop/laptop predecessors. We just have to invent them.”

Continue reading “Facebook app developer who quit iPhone: Apple’s iPad is an incredible opportunity” »