Filed under: Internet

For all of the back and forth about the iPad over the last week, only a handful of people (including Stephen Colbert) have gotten to actually touch one. Fox News, of all the outlets out there, posted a pretty clean and objective hands-on with the iPad earlier this week, and you can get a pretty good idea of what it's like to actually hold the device in your hands from them. They say that it works well -- the keyboard is about the same as an iPhone keyboard (though they don't say whether they try the hunt-and-peck of the iPhone, or actually try to lay their hands down as if on a laptop), and they agree to what we've heard elsewhere: that while the iPad is a nice computer, it's much more of an iPhone extension than a full laptop or even desktop replacement.

One of the most interesting notes is that the much-discussed camera might not be the biggest omission from Apple's tablet -- Fox says that an SD slot or a USB port is a much bigger exception, meaning that if you want to actually do anything with files (view photos or print PDFs) from the iPad, you'll have to transfer them to and from another computer first. Of course Apple is introducing an SD addon with the device, and I thought that I'd heard the Bluetooth connection would print from the iPad, but then of course you've got to have a Bluetooth-enabled printer, and as you already know if you've ever depended on Bluetooth, even then it may be a crapshoot.

Still, the device sounds about like what we all predicted a tablet would be: a MacBook Air sort of satellite extension to your household web browsing and minor computing. I still can't wait to get my hands on one -- hopefully we'll get to see a unit in person at next week's Macworld.

[via MacDailyNews]

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.

Despite the huge number of companies and individuals that have Twitter accounts, our favorite Cupertino-based company has been strangely silent on the "social media" scene. While some conspiracy theorists out there might take that as proof that Apple is going to create their own Twitter-like notification service or, even worse, buy Twitter outright, we'd like to believe that it's just because they don't need to blast out 140-character screeds every few minutes to get attention.

If Apple ever decides to join the crowd and tweet news blasts to several hundred million followers, they'll be able to pick up @apple as their Twitter handle. According to 9to5Mac, a cybersquatter had taken over the twitter.com/apple username, but just recently the message you see above started appearing. Not only does this indicate that the squatter has been forcibly removed from his/her former inhabitance in Twitter-ville, but attempts to sign up as Apple on Twitter are rebuffed.

Whether this indicates that Apple will soon join the ranks of Twitterites or if it's just Twitter being nice to the coolest computer maker on the 'net, it is nice to see that we won't be seeing tweets from "Fake Apple" in the near future.

[via Cult of Mac]

A Mac version of Cerulean Studio's Trillian has been years in the making and as of this past Friday, the alpha build of the software is finally out in the wild for Mac users to try. A private alpha has been available since 2007.

Since I dropkicked PCs out of my household five years ago, I've switched between iChat and the wonderful Adium. Trillian has a lot to live up to when it comes to instant messaging on the Mac. Adium, to start with, is free. Trillian costs Windows users $25USD to get full access to all of its features (the Alpha version for Mac is free). As stated when the original alpha was released, Trillian is rebuilding its software for OSX from the ground up.

I downloaded a copy of the alpha to try, and I am not impressed. While Cerulean Studios did warn that the alpha version of Trillian is lacking features, the entire experience was just unpleasant. No buddy icons from any of my IM accounts came over and the program looks nothing like the picture included with this article (taken from Cerulean Studio's blog announcement.) Having one-button clicks to access your different accounts is nice -- when it actually works. The most glaring of the missing features is no group chat support, which will be a turnoff for many. Other missing features include a lack of voice and video support, chat logs and more. You have to sign up for an Astra account to even start using the IM client.

When I was on Windows, the free version of Trillian was my IM client of choice. The Mac version has a lot to live up to, and maybe it could hold its own against its Windows big brother one day. But for now, I'd recommend sticking with much better, and free, alternatives such as Adium and Pidgin.

[Via Lifehacker]

You probably had exactly the same response I did when you heard that AT&T would be handling the 3G data plan for the iPad: "Them again?" Sure, the deal is much better, and it's completely optional (you can get the iPad without 3G if you don't want it at all), but still: AT&T? Hasn't Apple heard enough complaining about their network without sending a bunch of tablet computers and all of that data downloading onto it?

It's cool, says AT&T, we got it. That's what they told the New York Times' Bits blog yesterday, saying that they planned to put another $2 billion into cell phone towers, connectivity upgrades, and other costs for their network. But, and this is the part that kind of scares me, they also say that they expect most iPad users to stay near Wi-Fi hot spots, since the iPad plan comes with a subscription to every AT&T hotspot out there. They say they hope that will lessen the blow.

Frankly, I doubt it -- if I'm paying $30 a month for "unlimited" on top of the $130 I paid for the option, I'm probably going to be using that 3G everywhere I can. And while AT&T says that they're getting better and better all the time, the worst case scenario is that the iPad's high data usage will knock out even longstanding iPhone customers. Hopefully this is all much ado over nothing, and that $2 billion will cover us as needed, but AT&T hasn't exactly earned the trust that Apple continues to put in them.

One of my all-time favorite movies is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. At several points during the film, we see ill-fated astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole using a flat, iPad-like device. In one of the posters for the movie, astronauts at a base on the Moon are seen using this device (see image at right).

Those who read Arthur C. Clarke's novelization of the movie will remember that he described this device as the "Newspad," something that was used by people of the future (as envisioned in 1968) to watch TV and read newspapers. You can read the full description of the device after the break -- it's described as a newsreader, with two-digit codes for each article online, and a constant stream of information from the hourly updates on "electronic papers."

Of course, we don't have two-digit references to articles; we simply need to tap on them to bring them up. We do need to know the "codes" for the world's major electronic papers; we refer to them as URLs or specific apps. But like many things Clarke foresaw in his lifetime of writing science fiction, the Newspad has finally become reality in the form of Apple's iPad.

I think Arthur would be proud.

Apple has updated their website with all kinds of fun iPad information, including an official specs page and the video that was shown at the end of today's event. The thing looks just plain beautiful, but then again this is basically their first ad for the "magical and revolutionary" device, so you'd expect that. You can find screenshots of all the different apps, and see folks like Johnny Ive and Scott Forstall chatting about how awesome it was to work on something so "unbelievable."

Interesting things to note on the official stats page: no camera at all, no Flash support, and while they did talk about a month-long standby battery life this morning, it's not actually listed on the stats page (probably because they can't be certain of which month you're talking about). Also interesting that there are a total of four buttons and controls on the entire device, and the only connector looks to be the dock. We've got to give it to Apple -- even though we haven't been able to touch it in person yet, this is a pretty amazing computer.

It's finally here. At their event in San Francisco, Apple has officially announced their tablet computer, which they're calling the iPad. Fully customizable, and better than a smartphone or a laptop at browsing, reading e-books, and a "great maps application with support from Google[...]." We're watching for more specs and software information right now, but the general idea is that the device is better than a netbook at just about everything!

Yet another Apple-driven revolution: go!

Specs Update:

• 9.7" IPS screen
• 1/2" thick (or thin)
• 10 hours of battery life
• "Shut the iPad down, come back in a month and it still has a charge"
• 16-64 Gigabytes of flash storage
• Accelerometer and compass
• Speaker, mic
• Dock connector
• It can run all iPhone apps, unmodified, out of the box

Everyone's currently engaged with the fervor over the pending announcement, but once the dust settles, there'll be lots and lots of opinions to be shared and "will you/won't you buy it" conversations to be had. That's what our talkcast is for! This evening at 5:30pm Eastern, we invite you to join us over on Talkshoe.com for a special edition of our weekly TUAW Talkcast, all about today's announcement and what it means for the Appleverse at large. A crew of TUAW regulars will be aboard with us, and you'll be invited to call up yourself and share your own opinions about what has happened today.

Please join us -- the talkcast will kick off this evening at 5:30pm Eastern on our Talkshoe page (right in the middle of the latest edition of TUAW TV Live, which starts up at 5 this evening). Bring your opinions, please!

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantange of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *-8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!

Earlier today, Google made a mobile web version of Google Voice available for the iPhone. To understand the significance of this move, here's a bit of back story.

Apple pulled all Google Voice related apps from the App Store back in July, which led to an FCC inquiry, which led Apple to claim they had not rejected but were "studying" Google Voice, which Google contradicted. The biggest surprise in the whole scenario is that AT&T said that they had no problem with Google Voice on the iPhone. Months later, there's still no official Google Voice app in the App Store. You can view the long version of the story here.

The mobile web version announced today (iPhone 3.0 required), while not the first, utilizes HTML 5 to accomplish some new and impressive tasks. For example, it lets you display your Google Voice number on outgoing calls and provides easy access to voice mail plus text messaging (send and receive). Additionally, you can dial with the virtual keypad and read transcripts of messages.

It's not all roses, of course. For instance, it won't access your iPhone's contact list or push incoming SMS.

Unless they're going to limit the capabilities of the iPhone's browser, or somehow block access, there isn't much Apple can do to prevent users from trying it out.

Note that this is limited to the US. To try it out, point Mobile Safari to http://m.google.com/voice. Pro tip: Add a bookmark to your iPhone's home screen to launch with a tap.

[Via ZDnet]

Head on over to Getfirefox.com, Firefox fans. Version 3.6 of your favorite browser is now ready. The video explains the major changes in this version, but here are the highlights.

1. One-click themes. Using the Personas Gallery, you can assign a new look and theme to Firefox with a click. The way it works couldn't be simpler. Roll over any theme to preview it and click to commit. I found most of them annoying, but I'm old and crotchety.
2. Out-of-date plugin warnings. This super-handy feature lets you know when you've got an out-of-date and potentially virus-friendly plugin installed and provides an update link.
3. Speed! This version promises improved speed with javascript, rendering and startup.

There's more, of course, so watch the video above. Or better yet, grab a copy and start playing. In my extremely limited testing, content heavy pages did seem to load quicker (I typically visit StarWars.com), and all of my plugins continued to work. If you experience any issues or have a plugin that refuses to work, please let us (and your fellow Firefox users) know.

The Mac beta became available last year on Halloween (spooky) and the final release candidate dropped on January 11, 2009.

Mozilla has dropped a Firefox 3.6 release candidate which you can download and install it now if you want to try the browser's latest and greatest. It's a big, significant update, including many bug fixes, built-in Persona support, fullscreen for open native video, and an improved automatic form fill. For developers, there's even more updates, including support for the HTML5 File API, and new features in CSS and DOM as well.

Despite the recent emergence of Chrome and the continuing popularity of Safari, Firefox remains my browser of choice. It's good to see that the latest release pushes the envelope. Of course, it's fine to wait for the official version, but if you want to get your hands on the new features right away, here's your chance. Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate is a free download as always.

Apple dropped the hammer on a domain squatter the other day, reclaiming sixteen different domain names in one fell swoop. The company filed a complaint a while back against a guy named Daniel Bijan, who didn't bother to fight his case at all (not that he has one), and the result earlier this week gives them the rights to all of them. They run the gamut from iphonecheap.com to macbookpro.com (how did Apple not own that one?), and as of this writing, we couldn't find any that were actually being used by Apple yet -- they all seem to point to either a blank Apache page or a simple domain placeholder.

And as you may have noticed, there are no secrets here -- macfriend.com is probably just a stab in the dark on the part of the domain squatter, and ipodsbaratos.com means "iPods cheap" in Spanish. Just Apple reclaiming some of their rightful web space.

Last November, Apple launched browser-based iTunes previews, which gave customers information on a song or artist before pushing them out to the iTunes Store. It's a handy, welcome change. And now this week, they've added 30-second song samples to those preview pages (check it out). Just as you do in the store, you can hear any track's sample by clicking the small "Play" button that appears when you mouse over its name.

There has been speculation about the future of a streaming-based version of iTunes since Apple bought Lala in November. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that LaLa executives have been given key roles at Apple, and that members of the existing iTunes team will report to them. While playing with the new previews today, we explored the page's source for any hints of Lala, but found nothing. However, we did come across something interesting. Turns out you can easily turn any 30-second preview into an iPhone-compatible ringtone, and you don't even need GarageBand.

First, find a snippet you're interested in. Then view the page's source. Scroll down until you see something that starts:

audio-preview-url="http://a1.phobos.apple.com/us/r1000/016/Music/3a/7b/83/mzm.ekrigiqi.aac.p.m4a"

Copy the URL (minus the quotes) and paste it into Safari's Downloads window. You'll get a file with a name similar to:

"/mzm.ekrigiqi.aac.p.m4a"

Now, replace ".aac.p.m4a" with ".m4r," drop it into iTunes and sync. You've got a new ringtone! Of course, you can't choose the 30 seconds you hear, and that use probably isn't intended by Apple. But if the preview happens to be what you want, there you go.

[Via Mac Rumors]

This is a pretty wandering post over at the NZ Herald (it starts out with a screening of Avatar, and drops a few local actor names before getting down to business), but it eventually gets to an interesting premise: what will Apple's hardware look like not in 2010, when we're all breathlessly awaiting the tablet, but in 2020, ten years from now? Of course we're talking about complete speculation here -- not even Apple knows what they'll be doing in ten years. But it's not like we haven't done it before: Apple's devices are smaller, faster, and more powerful than ever. What will they be like ten years down the line?

More gesturing and intuitive human interfaces seem like a good guess -- with the iPhone, the accelerometer has been used in all sorts of interesting ways, and it's probably not far until Apple figures out a way to track movement in 3D space, either by moving an iPhone or a controller around, or as the piece suggests, by tracking our body in some way. Slimmer display screens and extra battery life will be in the future as well. And the article mentions solid state storage, but if our predictions for this year are any indication, Apple will try to move off the hard drive as much as possible, and start placing data for multimedia and other files in a cloud server, accessible via Internet whenever they're needed.

Like I said, interesting thought experiment. What do you think Apple will be like ten years from now?