Down Time

Apple's iPad tablet computer, one of the hottest items of the holiday shopping season got a price cut on the company's website Friday.

People who buy the iPad online Friday will save $41, making the lowest price for the device $458 for a model without a 3G connection and with 16 gigabytes of storage space.The top-end model, with a 3G connection and 64 gigabytes of storage, is also discounted $41, making it $788.

That's about an 8 percent discount on the base-level model and a 5 percent discount on the highest-end iPad.

Those one-day sale prices probably still sound expensive to many consumers, but the Black Friday sale is getting buzz from tech blogs because Apple rarely discounts the price of its high-end electronics and because the iPad is said to be one of the most sought-after gifts of the year.

The iPad was the No. 1 item on the electronics wish lists of kids ages 6 to 12, according to a survey from Nielsen. It was the fourth-most-sought-after item among kids older than 13. Computers, TVs and smartphones were higher on the list for the older kids.

"Given the continued pressure on consumer spending, it is difficult to know how robust a holiday season this will be for tech devices, but this survey suggests the electronics aisle will be heavily traveled this season," that survey said.


Apple also listed discounts for several other items on its website. All of these deals are good until the end of Friday only. Among them:

• $101 off the 13-inch MacBook Air
• $101 off the MacBook Pro
• $101 off the iMac
• $41 off the iPod Touch
• $21 off the iPod Nano

China Unicom, China's second-largest telecommunications operator, may start selling Apple Inc's iPhone 4 in the mainland market in September, state television reported on Thursday.
"China Unicom has reached an agreement with Apple, and the iPhone 4 may enter the mainland market by as early as next month," the report said, citing a company statement released to the ongoing China Internet Conference in Beijing.

China Unicom officials in Beijing and Hong Kong declined to comment. Apple could not immediately be reach for comment.

"The rumor has been out for the last couple of days. It is something positive for China Unicom but not very significant as I think most subscribers find the price of the iPhone too high," said Victor Yip, a Hong-Kong based analyst with UOB Kay Hian.

Various news media have reported this week that China Unicom may become Apple's vendor for its popular iPad and iPhone 4 products. The reports have been unconfirmed by the company.

China Unicom, the sole telecom distributor of Apple's iPhone, has seen slow sales for the popular handset because of high subscription fees and stiff competition from lower priced Android handsets.

China Mobile Ltd, the country's largest provider, has also expressed interest in bringing in Apple's iPhone and iPad products.

Apple opened its second flagship store in China last month and is on track to have 25 retail outlets in the country by the end of next year. Apple executives said in April that they saw the Chinese market as a major growth opportunity.

Now Available: Apple iPhone 4 Black Smartphone 32GB

Apple is now concentrating on its 4th coming iPhone and its technology and they are doing best to make iPhone 4 different and effective then ever. So people have to wait a little longer than expected because Apple has once again delayed the release of the White iPhone 4, which CEO Steve Jobs said just last week would be available later this month.

White models of new Apple iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year," Apple said in a brief news release Friday morning.

No particular release date of iPhone 4 was announced.

According to the report, the company is having trouble developing a shade of paint that reflects the look Apple wants. People has already seen the Leaked iPhone 4 photos.

Despite the glitch, whatever the cause, the iPhone 4 set Apple sales records after its release June 24, drawing positive reviews. This comes despite "Antennagate," the name given to the fury over the phone's reception problems, which Apple addressed in a hastily called news conference earlier this month.

The Smartphone has sold more than 3 million units and has been the most successful product launch in Apple history.

Boy Genius has revealed the screenshots of Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. The screenshots consists on major development of Microsoft Office 2011 applications of Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2011.

The appearance of Microsoft Office 2011 are much like Office 2010, Ms. Office 2011 for Mac includes the ribbon on every application and with several new functions are also integrated in it. Ms. Office 10 was lack of Outlook but this will also be the first time Outlook will be available in the Office Suite for the Mac. The appearance between Outlook for Windows and Mac appear to be similar, including a mail preview pane, calendar, contacts, tasks and notes available for use.

The screenshots also show a quick search in the toolbar for Outlook, Excel, and Word, for searching within your inbox, spreadsheet, or documents. Office 2011 is also said to include the same multi-use feature that Office 2010 includes, allowing for you and your co-worker to work on the same document at the same time.

Microsoft has released the Microsoft Messenger for Mac 8 platform. The latest Microsoft Messenger provides several new features and update. The latest Microsoft Messenger beta, Build 08.00.00.100305 for Mac 8 Beta offers a audio/video feature for Windows Live users. Mac users will be able to share webcam and audio conversations with each other and their Windows counterparts through latest Microsoft Messenger.

The latest messenger software is still in beta process and has several known issues such as emoticons visibility, some video/audio calls do not work on certain configurations and display pictures do not display in the conversation window. Microsoft has not confirmed when a final version will be available. But you can try this latest version by your self to check more features and upgrade functions.

Download: Messenger for Mac Beta

According to Critix, Users will be able to run Windows 7 on the new Apple iPad when it released in March, at least virtually. The Citrix Receiver software currently works with the iPhone and iPod, allowing users to virtually connect to Windows from your device.

The Citrix Receiver software works with unmodified Windows 7 applications. The company mentioned in their blog that the iPad will be perfectly suitable to support a Windows 7 virtually:

“It turns out the 9.7 inch display on the iPad with a 1024×768 screen resolution works great for a full VDI XenDesktop. Windows applications run unmodified and securely in the data center, and even multiple applications at once.“

Vice President Chris Fleck said, “If your company has XenDesktop or XenApp you will be happy to know you will be able to use your iPad for real work as well.” The virtualization software already works great on the iPad SDK kit, and the company promises the application will be ready when the iPad launches.

Apple said it clear that iPad and iPhone will not support Adobe Flash so now company has just started work on how flash works on iPhone and iPad devices to entertain their flash users and customers. So now Company found a solution to bringing Flash onto any iOS device, and yes, it was approved by Apple.

The startup company called Skyfire, has been working hard with Apple to bring a brand new browser to the mobile phone that supports Flash video. Skyfire will use a revolutionary technology that they have been developing for the past few months that downloads video onto their servers and converts the flash video into HTML5, which will then be streamed to your iOS device.

There wasn’t any mention on CNN if there is any delay between the conversion, but nevertheless, it is Flash video on your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. There are some setbacks to the application however; Skyfire won’t be able to convert flash-based games or non-video content and of course you’ll have to use the Skyfire browser.

Skyfire’s CEO Jeffery Glueck said two or three websites have opted out of the technology, including Hulu, because of their business model to charge customers on mobile devices to play video.

Skyfire will be available for the App Store this Thursday at 9am and will sell for $2.99.

Mac websites exploded in a frenzy of excitement recently when it became clear development machines running Mac OS X 10.7 were online.

The thing is, you'd have been crazy to think that Apple was somehow done with its desktop operating system after Snow Leopard.

In fact, if Apple's track record's anything to go by, a road-map will be announced in the not-too-distant future, and we'll perhaps see a preview at WWDC, with a release date in early 2011.

But the fact that Apple's working on Mac OS X 10.7 - codenamed Lion, Ocelot, Lynx, or, er, Lolcat, depending on which rumour you subscribe to - isn't interesting in itself. What we'd love to know is what new features it'll bring to the party.

We've listed what we'd like to see below; post a comment if we've missed something from your wish list.

• A Unified Interface
• System-wide tagging and smart collections
• Superior Spotlight
• Better Stacks
• More multitouch
• Configurable Spaces
• Cloud services
• Finder tabs and enhancements
• Embrace third-party services
• Availabilty of more Mac App Store

Will Apple's new iPad support Adobe Flash when it ships in March? Not if you trust Steve Jobs' much-picked-over presentation in San Francisco on Wednesday - or the current EULA attached to the device's beta SDK. But for some reason, the marketing materials on the Apple website tell a different story.

If you watch Apple's promo video - available either here (Apple) or here (YouTube), depending on whether you want to register your precious click in Cupertino or Mountain View - you'll notice that the iPad is displaying Flash content in a New York Times story.
We highly doubt the Apple video is displaying some sort of top-secret HTML5-enabled NYT page that was unavailable for Jobs to use during his demo. Either Apple has Flash running on its tablet or someone in Apple marketing didn't want to display NYT pages without colorful slideshows and had the video mocked up to look like a Flash browser.

In a blog post earlier this week Adobe's Adrian Ludwig barked that if you want to view one of the millions of web sites that use Flash on your iPad, you'll be "out of luck," citing images from Apple's iPad launch event.

If you were one of the few who attended the iPad's roll-out on Wednesday in San Francisco, you would have witnessed Flash content in an NYT demo not appearing when Steve Jobs scrolled through a Flash-enabled page.

Apple does not allow Flash on the iPhone, and iPad apps will share the same SDK. On Wednesday, Apple released a beta incarnation of the iPhone SDK - version 3.2 - that adds certain support for the iPad. As of Friday morning, Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (PDF) still says the platform can't run interpreted code, which includes Flash.

Image creadit: the register

Microsoft is planning on opening up a mega-sized store in Mall of America later this year, and not only will this be their biggest store yet, they plan on opening it directly across from an Apple store. For Microsoft to compete against Apple’s 300+ stores across the world, they need to pull out the big guns for this head-to-head battle.

This will be the fifth Microsoft Store to launch in America, with two already in California, one in Colorado and another in Arizona. Apple already has five stores in Minnesota alone, so this surreal showdown directly across from one another at Mall of America will be interesting.

Twincities.com managed to get some images from within Mall of America, showing where the new Microsoft Store locations will be, and just the scale of how large it will be. Just the sheer size of the
Microsoft Store in Mall of America dwarfs the competition.
It looks as if Microsoft plans on putting their best foot forward with this new store location, showing off their new electronics like the Xbox 360 slim, Kinect and Windows Phone 7. The Microsoft Stores carry all their electronics and hardware, including the Zune HD, Windows 7, Office 2010, and many, more products.

One user has posted a video of the new Microsoft Store location on YouTube:

Rumor has been started that new iPhone OS 4 will get multitasking support like a Mac Expose. The next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iPhone OS 4.0, is all set to allow third party applications to run in the background while working on apps via an Expose-like interface. Users will now able to work and used many applications at one time and can also switch between different applications running in the background.

According to Apple Insider’s report, iPhone OS 4.0 will employ a multitasking system similar to the Mac OS' Expose:

Those familiar with the design of iPhone 4.0 said that the user interface will resemble Apple's desktop Expose feature, in that a key combination--reportedly hitting the Home button twice--will trigger an Expose-like interface that brings up a series of icons representing the currently running apps, allowing users to quickly select the one they want to switch to directly. When a selection is made, the iPhone OS zooms out of the Expose task manager and transitions to that app.

ThumZ uP:-

1) High Specs
Nobody likes a slow laggy device and the good news for Apple, and all who sail with her, is that this is usually something the company gets right. The combination of software and hardware design means that Jobs and Co. know just what level of components are required to make their machines run properly. The word is that the iSlate won't have an Intel Atom chip at its heart which leads us to wonder whether it's going to be something similar or the kind you'd find in a full size latop; maybe something with more than one core? Combine that with a good chunk of RAM and GPU at least as powerful as the graphics device inside the iPhone and there's all the foundations of a really interesting unit.

2) Multitasking
With a multi-core CPU and enough number crunching memory too, there's every reason a tablet could multitask. Let's face it, plenty of other smartphones offer this already. Until now, Apple has kept this out of its mobile offerings but with a home tablet, you're going to need a little more flexibility at your fingertips. Someone's on a call with you, video or otherwise, and maybe you want to send them a link or browse some pertinent information on the internet and you'll need to be running more than one application at a time. The very fact that a tablet is for such a fluid environment means that it's going to need to be a bit of a Swiss Army Knife - often with two of those blades out at any one time.

3) You can watch your TV on it
One classic hope for a home tablet would be to be able to take the TV show you're watching on your main set to another room as you need. Whether by a TV adaptor or otherwise, catching transmissions direct from your main panel and display them on the small portable screen anywhere about the house would be a real bonus. Perfect for keeping up with domestic life while bringing the entertainment with you. Take this one step further and perhaps you could even tap into the source over the internet and 3G network while out and about but with mobile data speeds and prices, that might be pushing it.

4) An HD or OLED screen
Doubtless viewing videos is going to be a big part of life on the Apple tablet. So as good a screen as possible would be a real winner. An OLED or AMOLED would be the obvious choice here to provide glorious crisp contrast, wonderful deep colours and all at a low power outage to keep the battery lasting as long as possible. The downside, of course, is that such a display would probably send the price of thing through the roof. So, an equally good shout would be an HD resolution LCD. Pixel density makes watching films on the iPhone a great experience, so factor that up to a tablet size device and we really have to be talking about a 1080p display.

5) E-ink mode
It seems that the New York Times and others are brokering deals with Apple to supply newspaper and magazine content for the tablet and there's even word of book publishers like Harper Collins getting in on the action too. As much as we're getting used to reading on LCD screens for longer periods of time, if the iSlate could switch the display to e-ink or e-paper mode, then not only would it be the first to be able to do so but it would mean it could grab a massive chunk of the eReader market too. That alone could offer financial success. For the consumer, of course, it would mean one less device to carry around a break for dry-balls everywhere.

ThumZ DowN:-

1) It runs OS X
We're not slating the Mac OS. Everyone knows it's good but to really get it to work, you need a keyboard. Touchscreens are all fun and games but the minute you need to do a fair bit of typing, it'll start to lose it's edge. OS X is a desktop operating system. iPhone OS is for touchscreens. The functionality of the full Apple software would certainly be appealing, and perhaps very tempting seeing as there's a good chance that the hardware in the iTablet would allow people to run it, but it's really too fiddly for finger operation alone - finger and thumb too.

The way to get round that might be to add a slideout QWERTY but there's all sorts of cascading problems out of that decision too. First, it makes it bigger, heavier and more clunky and, second, there's something of admitting defeat about it. It would almost be saying that Apple couldn't engineer something simple and intuitive enough to work without having to drop a big old piece of kit on top of such a lovely svelte device. That's not what the Cupertino creed is about.

2) Connectivity Issues
As a portable tablet for home and on the go, it's going to need the holy trinity of connection - 3G, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. What's more, if it can't stream content over your home network, then it's a dead loss too. Naturally, 3G is a must to do anything with it internet based and away from home, and Wi-Fi it will most certainly have. If there's no media streaming option, then the user is stuck with side-loading or synching over the internet at best. The first would be a terrible ball and chain and the second both laborious and costly once you've factored in the MobileMe subscription.

Bluetooth might seem like an odd one but there's one important use and that's for making hands free phone calls. It could be circumvented partially by a really good speakerphone system but then everyone's going to hear both sides of your conversation which you might not necessarily want.

3) Poor battery life
For any mobile device these days, functionality versus battery life is the million dollar trade off. Get this one wrong and you cripple your product. With so much expected and so much possible from the iTablet , it's going to need one hell of an efficient and powerful battery. It has to keep up with the demands of being left on the sofa for a couple of hours before being needed again. Some efficient power management from the software would be a big help as would a low-voltage processors. It's also another reason why we might not see multitasking. How the company organises docking will also be an interesting one to watch for.

4) No stand and no speakers
Obvious ones really but this tablet is going to need to be totally hands free from time to time. A 10-inch, or thereabouts, device is going to get tiring to hold for the length of an entire film, so some kind of clever kick stand or perhaps dock is going to be needed. Its omission might not be a total disaster and naturally would spring dollar signs onto the eyeballs of Belkin and Griffin and pals but having no built-in speakers might be harder to stomach. If this thing is to be taken about the house and used in different settings, then chaining it to you ears via headphones cable would be both taxing and rather impractical, particularly if you're trying to do the washing up while listening to Spotify at the same time, say.

5) It's thick and heavy
Make this thing too big and there's going to be little point in choosing a tablet over a laptop. Apple, of course, is unlikely to make this kind of mistake. One of the pillars on which the company has rebuilt its comeback is that of design and with Jonathan Ive at the helm, it'd be a shocker to say the least if the iTablet wasn't as carefully created as the iPhone, iPod and all the iMacs before it. That said, anyone can make a mistake.

We all know that everybody seems to be waiting for all new Apple White iPhone 4 and wants to know that exact release date of White iPhone 4. It has been observed that that new release date of Apple White iPhone 4 is delay till "Spring 2011" (or Autumn 2011 for those of us under the equatorial line). Exciting for some, we are sure it will certainly match the rest of Apple’s white products.

Apple confirmed this new release date of White iPhone 4 in back of the following Apple Product banner.

Click to Enlarge Image!

Now you can get beautiful and colorful iPhone Cases and Covers at discounted and cheap price of $10 each. Make your iPhone more attractive by these colorful and theme decorated iPhone cases and covers and make your iPhone look unique and attractive.

Get your iPhone Cases from these following beautiful collection as low as $10 each.
            
More iPhone 4 Cases and Covers  Click and Grab It! (Limited Time Offer)