Hey everybody, We’re hanging out here at the Aspen Grove Apple Store in Littleton, CO. We’re up with Steve and Erica from TUAW near the front of the line. Come say, “Hi.” if you’re here as well. We’re just posting a couple photos from the line right now… we’ll have full coverage of many iPad-2-optimized applications over the weekend. We’re starting with GarageBand, iMovie, Real Racing HD, Infinity Blade, etc. Let us know if there is anything you’d like us to cover as well. Thanks!
A large portion of Apple’s Keynote this morning was a demo of iMovie and GarageBand for iOS. On Apple’s iMovie page, it states specifically that it is only compatible with iPad 2, iPhone 4, and iPod touch 4th generation. There are no requirements listed for GarageBand, but we’d assume that it requires newer devices as well (at least iPhone 3GS). Let’s talk about iMovie first. We’ve heard many people wonder why they couldn’t manipulate photos and movies on their iOS device… for a long time now. With the introduction of iMovie, Apple has given us the ability to do some heavy-duty video editing on the iPad. We’re still waiting for iPhoto to make its way over to the platform, but many third-party apps can edit photos. Here’s a run-down of the feature of iMovie iOS: Every movie you shoot with the iPad automatically appears in iMovie so you can edit it in the MultiTouch interface. Themes (just like the desktop app) allow you to add a little polish to your day at the beach. Titles, tap-to-edit, soundtracks, pictures, voice-over, and volume adjustments… nearly everything the desktop app can do. It’s quite impressive. Publish straight to Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube, or CNN [...]
As most of you are aware, Apple introduced iPad 2 today. Many of the new enhancements were predicted ahead of time… probably because this is the iPad Apple should have shipped originally. Seriously, Apple left 1st generation owners in the dust with this update. Hardware discussion is coming up but we want to talk about pricing first. The resell value of old iPads has diminished greatly thanks to the new hardware and Apple’s deflated prices. Apple is selling refurbished 16GB Wi-Fi iPads for $350, new for $400. I had planned to sell my 32GB iPad for $500 and then update to the new generation without much trouble… but after seeing the drop in price, I had to go another route. I began shopping online and found that green.ebay.com was still offering $434 for my iPad (Apple’s selling them for $429 refurbished with a 1-year warranty). I jumped on that and will be shipping my old iPad to them tomorrow. A few other websites like Gazelle were still offering higher prices this morning, but realized their mistake and quickly changed the offers. Some were cut as much as $78. I guess eBay’s too big to care? Moving onto the new features of [...]
Updated: Apple announced the iPad 2 on March 2nd and there was no mention of Thunderbolt. One of the most popular topics right now is Thunderbolt. It’s a new input/output protocol (like USB) that will change they way we interact with our devices. Imagine transferring your entire iTunes collection to your iPad in under a minute… yeah, that would be hot. There have been rumors going around that the iPad 2 had a Mini DisplayPort connector for a couple months now. Some case manufacturers have even included MDP cutouts in their preliminary designs. Since Thunderbolt combined itself into Apple’s MDP connector, it’s safe to say that it will be included in the iPad 2. That’s assuming that the case manufacturers know something we don’t. They have repeatedly guessed other aspects of Apple’s devices properly, like cameras. It wouldn’t surprise us if they were right this time around. Granted, this is pure speculation, but the only limiting factor for iOS Thunderbolt connectors is the size of the port. Apple’s current designs wouldn’t allow it to fit. As you can see in the picture above, it’s a little bigger than the iPad and iPhone bezel. We don’t typically see Apple increase the size [...]
If you’ve missed out on the amazing game that is World of Goo, now would be the best possible time to snag it for your brand spanking new iPad that you received this holiday season. If you didn’t just get one, hopefully you’ve had one. If you don’t have one at all, we’re sorry… it really is awesome for casual gamers. We’ve been completely addicted to World of Goo on the iPad since it came out, so we figured we’d toss a quick review into the internets for your perusal. World of Goo has been available for Mac, PC and the Wii since 2008 but finally made its way over to iOS on the 16th of December 2010. We first picked it up via Steam soon after it came out, but we never played it all the way through. The click and drag mouse method didn’t feel right for the game. It’s definitely playable on the computer (it’s what it was originally designed for), but having it on the iPad has made it the game it should’ve been from the beginning. Having won numerous awards, the guys at 2D Boy have one of the best physics-based puzzle games currently on [...]
What would have been one of our primary “real-life” applications for the iPad has been thrown out with the trash. If you head over to Apple’s iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter, you’ll see a product that is getting bashed with every new review posted. In fact, all of the reviews give it a grand total of 1.5 out of 5 stars. That’s just sad. Apple literally removed one of the most productive features of the iPad by limiting the video out to a select few functions. Most movies will play from the iTunes app, but you’ll never be able to play HD movies downloaded from the iTunes store with the VGA adapter. You can watch your photo slideshows with the photos app. You cannot watch the ABC player or Netflix through the VGA adapter. There have also been countless complaints about the way it handles Keynote Presentations. It’s not revolutionary, it’s not slick… it just sucks. Anyone who gives presentations frequently will be running back to their laptops and their slide clickers. The real problem is this: Apple offered us a video out solution via VGA for the iPad. With that capability we expect to be able to send [...]
The name really says it all. Facebook Video Player for iPad is a new app from Kemal Taskin & Elma DIGIT@L. This app is — I mean this seriously — one of my favorite apps on the iPad. I guess I would consider myself a Facebook junkie but my wife is a lot worse so I don’t feel that bad. Love you, babe. One of the biggest complaints about the iPad, iPhone and/or iPod touch is its lack of Flash. I’ve been brainwashed into thinking that Flash sucks by Apple (in truth, it really does… at least on the Mac) but so much of our lives are spent viewing Flash. This is not by choice. This is by some stupid necessity because of dumb industry standards. We’re really happy that the industry is responding well to the iPad and other Apple products. Countless websites are going flash free for HTML5 alternatives that are just as powerful and completely compatible with the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch… and in return, they’re compatible with many other mobile devices. Contrary to popular belief, Flash has not become a standard for the mobile industry: very few phones have it. It’s no wonder that websites [...]
Nothing too fancy here, just a quick little unboxing movie we shot last weekend. We were surprised with a couple things: Apple went with the old bulky power adapter because of the higher wattage — and — they’re shipping desktop size stickers with the iPad… interesting. Pardon the quality, we shot it on our 3GS. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/cocoatouchapps. Please comment and rate!
A support article turned up yesterday on Apple’s website that documents the issues that many users have been reporting with the iPad Wi-Fi connection. Honestly, we’d chalk most of this up to user error — and that’s exactly what Apple’s doing. At least for now, Apple suggests that it’s an issue with your wireless network. If you read through the notes below, it appears to be more common on non-Apple routers that utilize dual-band technology. If you have a network running wireless-g and a network running wireless-n with the same name, it could create a problem. You might also have problems if your networks are using different security protocols. Don’t ask us why that’s an issue, it doesn’t make sense to us… but if you’re experiencing problems, give Apple’s resolution a try. Symptoms: Under certain conditions, iPad may not automatically rejoin a known Wi-Fi network after restart or waking from sleep. This can occur with some third-party Wi-Fi routers that are dual-band capable when: Using the same network name for each network Using different security settings for each network Resolution: If you encounter this issue, try the following: Create separate Wi-Fi network names to identify each band. This can be [...]
We already have a YouTube app that makes our lack of Flash a little less painful, but many of us are getting a lot of video content from Hulu lately. We don’t rely on it to serve up all of our videos — we find ourselves navigating the TV networks’ websites on a semi-frequent basis — but having the option to play shows directly from Hulu would definitely be nice. The fine folks over at TechCrunch have supposedly spoken with people deep in the business who claim that Hulu is already working on a non-Flash version of their website for the iPad€¦ but it should easily work with the iPhone and iPod touch too. We see no reason to believe that this compatibility upgrade would be limited to a large screen. In fact, we’re seriously doubting the fact that this is an iPad-inspired move at all. Hulu’s CEO specifically said that they’re “big believers” in the mobile industry and they’re not pushing out updates for a single device. It’s a smart move, especially since all of their video is already encoded in H.264. The only Flash on the site is the actual player and ads€¦ but we’re not really worried [...]
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