Who's got low expectations for the iPad? Not the Norwegians, as one local store can't keep up with pre-orders.

Late last week, retailer Eplehuset (Apple House) suspended pre-orders all together when they sold out. A message posted to their site states that those who have already placed orders will have their spot in line reserved, while others are out of luck. "We have chosen not to receive more pre-orders for now," the site says via Google Translate, "we will contact you as soon as we know anything more."

Additionally, iPod1 reports that retailer Humac has suspended iPad pre-orders. We don't have any stats on which model is being ordered most often, but Electronista suggests that it's the 64GB iPad with 3G model. It's also notable that most countries aren't offering pre-orders yet (including Apple itself in the US), so there's no way to gauge if the Norwegian customers' enthusiasm is typical.

While e-readers like the Nook and Kindle generated a lot of pre-release buzz, tablet computers historically haven't sparked a blaze of enthusiasm in the wider market. If these retailers' experiences turn out to be typical, Apple will have a real hit on their hands (and in ours) with the iPad.

Apple doesn't have a huge social media presence. There's an iTunes Facebook page and what can arguably be called a MobileMe blog, but that's about it. However, they do monitor the likes of Twitter, like any self-respecting company would, and a recent tweet reportedly ticked off Steve Jobs but good.

Recently, Steve set up meetings with tech writers and executives from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to promote the iPad. He gathered the group from the Times at Pranna, where he ordered off the menu, wore "... a very funny hat" and reportedly tried to sell them on distribution via the iPad. Having taken place in a public restaurant, the gathering was called "Intimate" and "family-style" by observers.

By contrast, representatives from the Wall Street Journal met Steve and his new device behind closed doors. According to sources, the Journal group was confined to the 5th floor of their building and several staffers who wanted to meet Jobs could not. One of the lucky few was editor Alan Murray, who sent the following Tweet, supposedly after playing with an iPad:

"This tweet sent from an iPad. Does it look cool?"

According to Valleywag, the tweet infuriated Steve Jobs and was soon deleted. When Valleywag followed up with Alan to ask about the incident, he replied by simply saying that he can't discuss it. Later in the day, he wrote via email, "I will say that Apple's general paranoia about news coverage is truly extraordinary- but that's not telling you anything you didn't already know."

Apple is notorious for great design, extreme secrecy and yes, what many have called paranoia. Teams working on unreleased products are kept under a so-called "cone of silence" with Steve's notorious temper -- he has reportedly gone off on high-profile members of the press who had written disagreeable reviews of Apple products -- keeping things in check.

Lest you think Steve is just a big meanie, he gets it as much as he dishes it out. In rather not-safe-for-work terms, Steve shared with the panel of journalists the flavor of some of the angry emails he's received from disgruntled fans after product announcements. We'll let you read that on your own.

[Via MacRumors page 2]

Film fans everywhere will be sitting before their TVs on March 7th to catch the Academy Awards. Now, as with so many other things, there's an app for that.

Vanity Fair Magazine has produced the free Oscars app called Vanity Fair Hollywood. Users can submit their predictions for winners, browse photo galleries, share comments and prediction results via Facebook and more. Of course, you can chat in real time during the show itself from within the app and watch trailers of the nominated films. I'm not an Oscars fan, but I often fire up Twitter when watching my beloved Red Sox because the accompanying chat makes the experience more fun.

For more iPhone fun on Oscar night, check out these apps:

• The Envelope (Free) Try and predict the winners and share results with your friends.
• Awards: Oscar Edition ($0.99) Search for winners and nominees in all categories quickly, search award histories and get up-to-date information and results.
• The Adademy Awards Bible ($2.99) lists all 850 Academy Award winners, organized by name, title, category, etc. It's quite the mobile tome for Oscar bufffs.
• Oscar Pool 2010 ($0.99) Invite your friends to bet on who will win. Create a profile, add photos and more.

[Via TechCrunch]

Soon the iPad will be upon us, and the US government is worried about the congestion it will cause.

Phil Bellaria is a staffer in the Obama administration. Specifically, he's the director of scenario planning for the federal government's Omnibus Broadband Initiative. He published a blog post earlier this week describing his initial concerns about the future demands on our networks.

"With the iPad pointing to even greater demand for mobile broadband on the horizon, we must ensure that network congestion doesn't choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing or frustrate mobile broadband's ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy. "

He refers to the network-crippling outages that occurred when Aol* first introduced unlimited Internet access in 1996. For months customers could scarcely connect, and even when they finally did those connections were fragile due to the huge numbers of people trying to get on at once.

Just as Aol remedied the situation in the 90's with network upgrades, Mr. Bellaria explains, current Wi-Fi and 3G providers must prepare for the onslaught that iPad mania will bring. In the recent iPad press event, Scott Forstall mentioned the network upgrades that AT&T is currently working on. Hurry up, AT&T! The clock is ticking!

[Via International Business Times]


*Full disclosure: Aol is our parent company.

Back when the iPad was a rumor, many contended that a successful Apple tablet would provide an easy and cheap way to distribute textbooks. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that several publishers have come on board.

Specifically, publishers are in talks with ScrollMotion, the company behind, among other things, the very well-done Iceburg Reader for iPhone, to develop text-prep and other study guides for the iPad. McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, Pearson Education and the Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan Inc. are named in the article.

John Lema, chief executive of ScrollMotion, called the iPad's introduction "...the beginning of handheld education."

Of course, the iPad's reception and performance in the education market is unknown, and the device faces competition from inexpensive netbooks, systems fully entrenched in an existing system, or networks and budgets that don't allow for new purchases.

Still, we imagine the average college student being able to purchase textbooks with an iPad, and carry only that device across campus. Plus, publishers would be able to dodge the resale of used books by campus bookstores -- which doesn't generate any money for them. Finally, we can imagine an app that allows professors to push notations or assignments to students' iPads or even individual books.

Keep your eye on the iPad in the education market. It could push the device over the edge.

[Via Macsimum News]

The folks at Mission:Repair have received iPad replacement parts from Apple. While checking them out, they noticed a slot that seems like it could accommodate an iSight. So they pulled an iSight camera from a MacBook pro and guess what happened. It fit perfectly inside the slot in the iPad's frame. In the picture at right, you see the iPad's frame (above and below) and the MacBook Pro's iSight (center).

And to add a little more fuel to the fire, some eagle-eyed event watchers claim that the iPad Jobs held on stage at last Wednesday's event actually did have what looks like a camera along the top bezel.

What does this mean? Will future iPads sport an iSight? Probably. But that doesn't explain why the 1st generation's case has the slot. It must have been pulled at the last minute for reasons of cost, function ... who knows.

If you're not going to buy one until it's got a camera, it looks like your prayers will eventually be answered.

[Via MacNN]

Apple's top-of-the-line Mac Pro hasn't been updated since the Quad-Core model received support for 16GB RAM in September of '09. The last major revision introduced the Nehalem Xeon 3500 Processor last March. Today, HardMac is reporting that the Core i7-980X and Core i7-970 processors could arrive this month.

HardMac notes that the chips are due to become available in March. If, they suggest, Apple still has a tight partnership with Intel, they could have exclusivity in the days or weeks before the official March release. Note that Apple was the first to use the Nehalem Xeon thanks to just such an arrangement.

Details of Intel's Core i7-980X Processor leaked in December. Code-named "Gulftown" the 32nm, six-core i7-980X will be labeled as the i7x ("Extreme Edition"), not the i9 as many expected. It will be the first dual-socket, six-core processor from Intel. With 6 cores and 12 threads, a dual-configured, i7-980X Mac Pro will sport 12 physical cores and 24 logical cores. Expect a top frequency of 3.33GHz.

In other words, don't replace your old Mac Pro just yet.

[Via AppleInsider]

It's Monday, let's sue Apple!

Chinese manufacturer Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Industrial is reportedly considering suing Apple over the design of the iPad, claiming that it bears too close a resemblance to their P88.

in an interview with El Mundo, Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Industrial's president Xiaolong Wu said that the two devices are "completely identical." In fact, the P88 features that are "completely identical" to the iPad include:

1. Windows XP
2. A webcam
3. A 250GB internal hard drive
4. A thicker and heavier body
5. A resistive touch display (the iPad uses multi-touch)
6. 1.5 hours of battery life

Plus they're both rectangles. With black borders.

Ed Sutherland summed it up best at Cult of Mac: "How do you get more attention for a largely unknown netbook at a time when the tech press has the vapors for Apple's iPad? You sue Apple and claim its new device is just a clone of your netbook."

Update: MacNN reports that a "reliable source" (read: rumor) has told them that Apple has ceased production of Core i5- and i7-based iMacs until they've fixed this issue for good.

At the end of last year, customers who bought 27" iMacs reported screen flickering. Apple acknowledged the problem and released a firmware update intended to fix it back in December. Unfortunately, the problem persists.

According to Ars Technica, Apple's internal support system is aware of the continuing problem and working on a fix. Customers who complain about the issue are to be told that their faulty display can be replaced "...in about three weeks." Note that the units currently for sale have a 3-week shipping time, so you might want to wait a month before making a purchase Ars suggests, and we agree.

The shipping delays began in December when Apple declined to comment on why, but discussion threads pointed to the display. The delay was pushed ahead even further in January, which is how we got to the present 3-week wait.

Here's hoping this gets fixed soon and all you owners can enjoy your 27" iMacs in all their non-flickering glory.

Some people hate it, some people love it and some people attempt to predict its future.* Members of the last group include Shaw Wu of Kaufman Brothers and Needham's Charlie Wolf, both of whom are cautions about the iPad's performance.

Wu brandishes the obvious like broadsword, noting that the Wi-Fi iPad will probably sell better than those with a data plan because it will cost less and that 3G users can expect slower speeds that those with Wi-Fi. He feels that Apple's prediction of 10 million units sold in 2010 won't be realized. Instead, Wu surmises, they'll sell about 5 million.

Kaufman holds that the iPad is "...not a revolutionary product" that won't take off without certain 3rd-party solutions, like books and customized iPad apps. His sales prediction is even more conservative than Wu's at 4 million units sold.

They both like the entry price however, and we agree with them there. When the pundits were saying $1,000 before the announcement, we knew that wouldn't jibe with Steve's ambition to get one in as many homes as possible. Wu notes that the displays alone may be costing Apple $100 each, yet they've been very aggressive with the pricing.

Here's my prediction: Apple will sell a mountain of these things and by this time next year, the nay-sayers will be downloading Humble Pie 1.0.

*But none have USED it, so let's keep that in mind.