iNews Review

20 Million iPads to Ship in Holiday Quarter, iPad Care and Backup, 500 GB Wireless Storage, and More

This Week's iPad, iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV News

Compiled by Charles Moore and edited by Dan Knight - 2011.09.09

Mac notebook and other portable computing is covered in The 'Book Review, and general Mac news is in Mac News Review.

All prices are in US dollars unless otherwise noted.

News, Reviews, & Opinion

Apps & Services

Accessories

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News, Reviews, & Opinion

Foxconn to Ship 20 Million iPad 2s in Holiday Quarter

DigiTimes' Aaron Lee and Joseph Tsai report that Apple subcontractor Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) has announced net profits of NT$27.38 billion (US$945.93 million), and that for the third quarter of 2011, the company expects to ship 20 million iPad 2 units to Apple, representing 60% growth sequentially, with iPad 2 orders being Foxconn's major growth driver in the second half.

Basic Care and Maintenance of Your iPad: An End User's Guide

AppleTell's Katie Gatto says:

"So, you've had an iPad for a while and you want to protect your investment. The best way to do that is by practicing the basics of system maintenance and troubleshooting. Lets take a look at some of the skills you'll need. We will cover a wide variety of simple tasks in this tutorial."

How to Back Up the Data on Your iPad

AppleTell's Katie Gatto says:

"Keeping the data on your iPad stored in a safe location is a good idea. After all, it is a mobile device that can be lost, stolen or just plain broken, and when that happens you can lose all of your work, and your other data. It is also just an important step for any who does not want to have to reset everything in the case of a device failure. Luckily, performing backups is incredibly easy to do, and you can have it done quite quickly. So let's get you backed up."

All you need is iTunes on your Mac or PC.

iPad 3 to Feature Thinner, Lighter Batteries

China Economic News Service's Steve Chuang reports that with the upcoming iPad 3 to feature a thinner, lighter battery module that is widely believed to be priced 20-30% higher than iPad 2's, Simplo Technology Co. and Dynapack International Technology Corp., both Apple Inc.'s contract suppliers of iPad and MacBook battery packs, are anticipating a surefire profit drive for the near future.

Chuang says that institutional investors point out that the iPad 3 battery pack, scheduled for mass production in the first quarter of 2012, has been redesigned to be thinner and lighter with a longer service life than the iPad 2 battery, and also to meet the CTIA IEEE 1625 standard for better quality and safety reliability, and that Taiwanese battery suppliers Simplo and Dynapack have had their battery packs pass the IEEE 1625 test, expecting their sales revenues for the third quarter of this year to surge 10-15% from Q3 metrics, and with iPad 3 battery packs slated for delivery starting in the fourth quarter, the two companies are likely to record new highs in revenues for the quarter.

Microsoft's Dream: Windows Phone Overtakes iOS

Motley Fool's Evan Niu reports that Windows Phone marketing head Achim Berg expects Windows Phone to claim more than 20% of the smartphone market by 2015, noting that with Apple's most recent market share - pegged at 18.2% by Gartner Group last month* - scoring a 20% share would be a Redmond victory over Cupertino. However, Niu observes that the same Gartner report showed Windows Phone logging a mere 1.6% share last quarter.

Mobile/Teblet Operating System Trend
Windows Mobile + Windows Phone totals just 0.56% of the installed base and is lumped into "other".

The disparity is even more dire than that if you factor in the iOS sector as a whole. NetMarketShare's August 2011 market metrics for the Mobile/Tablet OS category show Apple's iOS with a commanding combined 53.03% market share, and Windows CE, Windows Phone 7, and Windows Mobile with a princely combined 0.56% share.

* Publisher's note: Gartner and NetMarketShare obviously measure things very differently. Where Gartner give iOS 18.2% of the smartphone market, NetMarketShare counts iOS at 53.04% of the mobile and tablet market. Either way, iOS is a dominant player. dk

BlackBerry PlayBook Gets the TouchPad Deep Discount Treatment

Network World's Brad Reed observes that the only way to beat Apple in the tablet market these days is to knock down your prices to the point of unprofitability, noting that Best Buy over the long weekend hoped to replicate the recent sales spike generated from selling $100 HP TouchPads by slashing the price of RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook by $50 for the 16 GB and 32 GB models, and by $150 for the 64 GB model. Staples is rumored to be planning an even deeper PlayBook discount later this month that would knock 50% off the original price for all models.

Hoffa Calls Apple Unpatriotic for Not Hiring More Workers in US

Free Republic's Meghashyam Mali cites International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James P. Hoffa criticizing the patriotism of US corporations that are sitting on assets and holding back from employing more American workers.

Hoffa called American businesses "unpatriotic" for opening factories and stores overseas instead of helping boost employment at home on CNN's State of the Union Sunday. Hoffa singled out Apple Inc., commenting "every time they do something, they do it in China, they do it somewhere else."

Publisher's note: Apple has 30,000 employees in 325 stores around the world, with the bulk of them in the US. That sounds like 20,000 US jobs, give or take a few, not to mention additional hiring in Cupertino and in Apple's new North Carolina data canter. The UAW, on the other hand, has lost about 55,000 members in the past two years in an industry where most "domestic" cars have more non-US content than most of the "foreign" cars assembled in the US. dk

Apps & Services

TextGrabber OCR for iPhone

TextGrabber OCR for iPhonePR: TextGrabber allows you to capture any part of printed text from a magazine, book, document, etc. in more than 60 supported languages, directly on smartphone. The recognized text can be immediately edited, forwarded by e-mail or saved onto your iPhone. The application is compatible with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS.

TextGrabber OCR for iPhoneTextGrabber is easy to use application just take a picture of the text you are interested in from any printed source and select the desired option. No Internet connection is required for application performance.

Also you can look for additional information about any unfamiliar word or term by searching the Internet directly from the application.

Useful information will never be lost with the save history function. To restore your data just open a history folder or open and recognize a picture of a previously captured text.

Thanks to ABBYYs Mobile OCR Technology, TextGrabber provides high quality results and recognizes any plain text in more than 60 languages in a few seconds.

Main features:

  • TextGrabber OCR for iPhoneRecognizing text in more than 60 languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and others: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Catalan, Chechen, CrimeanTatar, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Fijian, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Kabardian, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maori, Moldavian, Mongol, Norwegian (both Bokmal, and Nynorsk), Ossetic, Polish, Provencal, Rhaeto Romanic, Romanian, Samoan, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tatar, Turkish, Ukrainian, Welsh, Yiddish and Breton.
  • No Internet connection required for application performance
  • Editing captured text or copying it to the clipboard to paste it into other apps
  • Searching for additional information about the recognized text or its parts in the Internet
  • Sending recognized texts by e-mail or SMS.
  • Storing photos of texts on your iPhone
  • All captured texts are saved in a history folder as a back-up and available for reopening and editing

System requirements:

  • The application is compatible with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS
  • Requires iOS 3.1 or later

$1.99

More Than 150 Years of British Journal of Photography's Excellence Available on the iPad

British Journal of PhotographyPR: The world's longest-running photography magazine is now available free as a quarterly app, created bespoke for the iPad.

Tailor-made for the iPad's unique digital environment, making full use of its tactile navigational tools and spectacular, backlit display, the app transforms BJP's acclaimed mix of arresting imagery, elegant design and 
thought-provoking articles, truly bringing the magazine to life on a digital screen for the first time.

Created by in-house designers using the Mag+ platform, the BJP app gives readers the highlight features of the magazine's print editions together with extra features, photos and a raft of new multimedia and video content, 
including a moving image cover created by New York-based artists Reed+Rader.

Available quarterly, exclusively through iTunes, the first issue is available free to download from today.

For download details, video previews and more, visit http://www.bjpapp.com.

ChronGlobal Tidal Chronoscope for iPhone: Star of Navigation Category

ChronGlobal Tidal Chronoscope for iPhonePR: ChronGlobal Corp. has announced their ChronGlobal Tidal Chronoscope 1.01 for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users. Featuring a Swiss watch display, the application offers tidal conditions and forecasting, lunar and solar positions, along with luxurious looks and accurate, flexible features. Users are able to view current tide levels based on their GPS location, or view automatically retrieved tidal information for any of the app's more than 9400 worldwide tidal stations.

ChronGlobal Tidal Chronoscope for iPhoneThe newly launched application shot to the Number One position in the App Store's Navigation category in less than one week's time. The fledgling app already has the highest consumer rating of all Tide Apps, thanks to its luxurious looks and accurate, flexible features.

Set in the noted very luxurious Swiss watch display, the app's easy to use interface provides a host of features and options. Users are able to view current tide levels based on their GPS location, or view automatically retrieved tidal information for any of the app's more than 9400 worldwide tidal stations. Users are able to save their favorite stations for fast retrieval and also have the option of manually selecting stations.

Sun and moon phases and relative positions have their own, dedicated watch faces but a compilation of all desired information can be viewed on one convenient screen. All of these offerings, combined with the gorgeous display and data accuracy, has shot ChronGlobal Tidal Chronoscope to the Number One position in the App Store's Navigation category in less than a week.

ChronGlobal Tidal Chronoscope for iPhoneA timeline of ChronGlobal Tidal Chronoscope's rise to top position:

  • August 22, 2011 - App is released
  • August 25, 2011 - App rises to 28th in the Top Charts for Paid Navigation Apps
  • August 25, 2011 - App hits the 51st spot in Top 200 Grossing Apps in Navigation
  • August 29, 2011 - App is featured as Number 1 on default Navigation page
  • August 29, 2011 - App has 25 five star ratings plus 22 written and glowing reviews
  • August 29, 2011 - App has the highest consumer rating of all Tide Apps

ChronGlobal Tidal says this application has been twenty-seven years in the making, which is likely why it is achieving such accolades, along with the highest consumer rating of all Tide Apps in the App Store. All the bugs have been long ago worked out in this tide watch.

Device Requirements:

  • iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
  • Requires iOS 4.0 or later
  • 7.0 MB

ChronGlobal Tidal Chronoscope 1.01 sells for $2.99 and is available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Navigation category.

Accessories

Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless Storage for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac

Seagate GoFlex SatelliteI knew my instincts were correct when I opted for a 16 GB iPad 2 instead of a pricier model with higher storage capacity. Sure, Seagate's new GoFlex Satellite external hard drive for iOS and other devices costs more than an upgrade to 32 GB of Flash storage in the iPad would have cost, but it holds 500 GB that will still be available when I upgrade to a newer iPad.

Seagate GoFlex SatellitePR: The Seagate GoFlex Satellite device goes wherever your iPad or Android tablet goes and lets you access all your movies, photos, music and documents wirelessly. No more worrying about running out of space on your mobile device.

GoFlex Satellite features:

  • 500 GB of storage capacity
  • Up to 5 hours of battery life
  • Up to 25 hours of standby time

Stream Media Wirelessly

Seagate GoFlex SatelliteWith a GoFlex Satellite device in your backpack, you can stream all your HD movies to your iPad without tangled cords or cables. 802.11 b/g/n WiFi delivers reliable skip-free streaming WiFi range of more than 30 feet.

Three Different HD movies. Three Different Devices All At The Same Time

Everyone in the family can have wireless access to the hundreds of movies you load on to the GoFlex Satellite device. Stream to almost any WiFi enabled device using a Web browser or the free app optimized for iPad and Android devices

Easy Access To Your Media

Seagate GoFlex SatelliteUse the free app or Web browser on your device to access and stream your media library easily wherever you are.

Works With Laptops And Smartphones Too

Stream to almost any device that has WiFi connectivity and a Web browser including laptops, most smartphones and tablets.

Simple 1-2-3 Setup

Start by loading your media library on to your GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage device. Next, charge the device with the included portable wall charger or car charger. Now you are ready to start streaming media wirelessly to your WiFi enabled device.

Flexibility Built In

The GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage device is part of the Seagate GoFlex Storage System, which makes it easy to upgrade or change the interface on your GoFlex Satellite device, so that you can always have optimal transfer speeds when loading and synchronizing your media.

  • Includes USB 3.0 connectivity for fast data transfers (fully compatible with USB 2.0)
  • Other available interfaces include FireWire 800 and powered eSATA (sold separately)

Load Media From Both PCs And Mac Computers

  • Simply plug the GoFlex Satellite device into your PC or Mac to sync your media library quickly.

System Requirements:

  • iPad, smartphone, tablet or computer with a Web browser and WiFi connectivity (802.11 b/g/n)
  • PC or Mac computer running Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP or Mac OS 10.5.8 or later operating system for loading media on to the GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage device via USB
  • SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port (required for USB 3.0 transfer speeds) or USB 2.0 port

List Price: $199.99

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