Wired Magazine and Safari on Apple iPad

Wired has been developing a digital version of their magazine called Wired Reader (video above) and demoed it at TED conference. The digital version is designed for use on tablet devices like the recently announced Apple iPad. Content for Wired Reader is created in Adobe InDesign, as is normally done for print magazine, but Wired added interactive elements like photo galleries, slideshows, animations and videos.
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ARM and Globalfoundries Develop 28nm System-on-a-Chip

ARM and Globalfoundries have released details about their upcoming system-on-a-chip (SoC) platform based on 28nm process technology. The new SoC will combine ARM’s top-of-the-line Cortex-A9 processor with Globalfoundries’ 28nm manufacturing process for improved performance and power efficiency. The new chip will target the smartphones, tablets and smartbooks.
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HTC Introduces HD Mini, Legend and Desire Smartphones

HTC has announced three new smartphones at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2010. The first phone HD Mini is based on Windows Mobile 6.5.3 and is a cheaper and smaller version of HD2. It comes with 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen, 600MHz processor, WiFi, Bluetooth and microSD card slot. The phone features HTC’s Sense user interface and focuses on Outlook, Twitter and Facebook integration. HD Mini will be available across Europe and Asia in April 2010.
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Symbian^3 Officially Announced

The Symbian Foundation today unveiled the Symbian^3 (S^3) platform, the first entirely open source Symbian release. S^3 is expected to be “feature complete” by the end of Q1 and the release will include: significant usability and interface advances, faster networking, acceleration for 2D and 3D graphics in games and applications, HDMI support (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), music store integration, an improved user interface with easier navigation and multi-touch gesture support, a feature-rich homescreen, and the ability to run even more applications simultaneously.
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Microsoft Unveils Windows Phone 7 Series with Very Positive Initial Impressions

Microsoft today unveiled the next generation Windows Phone 7 Series that offers completely new approach to smartphone software. With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has started from scratch to bring truly integrated experiences by combining Xbox Live, Zune platform, social networking and productivity applications. Microsoft calls this approach “Designed for Life in Motion”.
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Samsung launches Bada Powered Wave S8500 Handset

Samsung today officially launched the much rumored first Bada OS powered handset Wave S8500 at MWC 2010. Samsung Wave is also the first handset to feature new Super AMOLED 3.3-inch touchscreen and Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 user interface. The phone comes with 1GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera, 2GB/8GB memory, 720p video recording, quad band GSM/EDGE, dual band HSPA, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, A-GPS and microSD card slot. It measures 4.6” x 2.2” x 0.42” and packs 1,500mAh battery.
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What did Apple Miss on the iPad?

Apple’s much-touted iPad was launched on January 27th. Most of the must-have features we listed in the blog entry titled “5 Must-have Features For Upcoming Apple Tablet” are now part of the actual iPad feature list. But it’s not without limitations though. Below we compared which of the five features Apple has implemented in iPad and to what extend.

1. Operating System: We wrote in the older post “It will have elements from both the operating systems (Mac and iPhone) like App Store support from iPhone and run multiple applications like Mac OS X, but it will be very different from both operating systems.” Well now that we have seen the OS on the iPad, we can certainly say it’s more like iPhone than Mac OS X. However, even though iPad’s home screen looks exactly like the iPhone the difference in UI of the two devices is very imminent in applications that Apple showed on stage. There is no multitasking support for third party applications. It is likely Apple did this to offer longer battery life, which was the next feature we wrote about.
2. Longer Battery Life: We wrote “The tablet is a device that is designed to be used on the move, so if it could offer whole day use on a single charge it would make the device more useful.” We thought 8 hours battery life will be sufficient and iPad offers 10 hours, which is great. And from what we have seen in past, Apple devices normally offer quoted battery life in real world also.
3. iTunes Integration: Apple has not only brought iTunes integration on the iPad, but has also added new iBookstore for eBooks. The iPad also supports current iPhone applications and Apple has updated iPhone SDK to bring native support for applications designed specifically for iPad. As we wrote in last post “iTunes has played a big hand in success of the two devices (iPod and iPhone) and it will again play a very important role in success of Apple tablet.”
4. Wireless Sync: This is one area where we were very disappointed by Apple’s approach. We were hoping that Apple would use WiFi pairing that will allow wireless syncing between two devices via a router or directly whenever the two devices are near each other, which will keep the data up to date and offer hassle free syncing. To sync and backup data on iPad with iTunes, you will have to connect it via USB, which as we said before can be a problem for a device that is as big as iPad, if your primary computer is a small laptop like a MacBook.
5. Price: Like battery life and iTunes integration, price is one feature where Apple was right on the dot. There were rumors that Apple will price the iPad around $1,000, but just two days before the event we posted that our sources say, we will be surprised to see the price tag, which would be about half, around $500-$600. In the 5 must-have article also we wrote “Apple will need to price the tablet in $500-$600 range to gain traction in the market.” The starting price of the iPad is $499 and we believe it’s perfect for a product like iPad.

No one can predict how successful Apple iPad will be, but it looks like Apple is aiming in the right direction with the new iPad.

[Via TechzTalk]

Asus Introduces First Laptops with ATI Mobility Radeon 5870 GPU

Asus has introduced two laptops G73JH-X1 and G73JH-A2 featuring ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 graphics card. Both laptops are world’s first laptops to offer the new high-end card from AMD. According to AMD, Mobility Radeon HD 5870 out performs NVIDIA’s top-of-the-line GTX 280M by a margin of over 25 percent. The HD 5870 graphics card on both the laptop comes with 1GB GDDR5 RAM, 700MHz core clock speed with 800 GPU pipelines, and 1000MHz memory clock speed.
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Marvell Launches ARMADA 618 1GHz Application Processor and $99 Pantheon Smartphone Platform

Marvell has announced the newest addition to the ARMADA family of application processors – the Marvell ARMADA 618 that offers a 1GHz CPU core with PC class performance, integrated 1080p full HD encode and decode and exceptional 3D graphics. Along with the new application processor, Marvel also introduced $99 Pantheon smartphone platform that includes powerful application processors, cellular modems, radio frequency device, intelligent power management and power-efficient WiFi/Bluetooth/FM connectivity.
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Microsoft Unveils Office 2011 for Mac

Microsoft today unveiled its Office 2011 for Mac at Macworld 2010 in San Francisco. Microsoft says that the new productivity suite will focus on anywhere, anytime and across platform sharing.
“Together with your team - officemates, family and classmates – you are part of the community that helps shape each version of Office for Mac,” said Eric Wilfrid, MacBU general manager at Microsoft Corp.
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Nokia’s Symbian^3 Strategy Revealed

A French site Tom’s Guide has posted details about Nokia’s plans for their upcoming handset lineup and Symbian^3 smartphone OS. Nokia plans to drop their Classic and XpressMusic differentiators and instead use five letter-prefix for upcoming handset lineup in 2010. Nokia will divide their handsets in C, X, E, N and S series. Where letters identifying the series will stand for:
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Google to Experiment with 1Gbps Fiber-to-the-Home Internet Connection

Google is planning to experiment with ultra high speed Internet access by building and testing ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the US. Google is aiming for Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. The company will offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.
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iPad News: Component Costs, Safari Spell Checker and Flash-less Hulu

iSuppli has posted preliminary estimate for component costs of upcoming Apple iPad. The 16GB model costs as little as $219.35 and the three biggest contributors to the cost are $80 for touchscreen, $29.50 for 16GB flash memory and $17 for A4 processor. The 32GB and 64GB models have same component cost except 32GB memory is $59 and 64GB is $188. According to iSuppli, the most profitable of the six iPads is the 32GB version with 3G-network access as combined materials and manufacturing cost of $287.15 amount to 39.4% of the retail price.
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Google Introduces Buzz Bringing Live Social Networking to Gmail, iPhone and Android

Yesterday, Google launched their new service called Buzz that aggregates live updates from Twitter, Google Reader, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube for a user. The service is available as web app for iPhone and Android handsets, and is also integrated with Gmail offering all the information in a single window.
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NVIDIA’s New Optimus Technology Brings Automatic Switching Between Integrated and Discrete Graphics

Since 2007 computer industry has been very excited about Hybrid Graphics that combines integrated graphics and discrete GPU to offer both performance and better battery life. However, this technology hasn’t seen large-scale adoption, as you have to manually switch graphics settings and have to either restart the laptop or wait sometime for changes to take effect. But that might change as NVIDIA today launched their new Optimus technology, which automatically chooses the best graphics processor for running a given application and automatically routes the workload to either an NVIDIA discrete GPU or Intel integrated graphics.
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Apple Releases Aperture 3

Apple today introduced Aperture 3, the next major release of its powerful photo editing and management software, with over 200 new features including Faces, Places and Brushes. Building on the innovative Faces and Places features introduced in iPhoto ’09, Aperture 3 makes it even easier and faster to organize large photo libraries. Aperture 3 introduces new tools to refine your photos including Brushes for painting image adjustments onto parts of your photo, and Adjustment Presets for applying professional photo effects with just one click. Stunning new slideshows let you share your work by weaving together photos, audio, text and HD video.
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Canon Introduces Four New PowerShot Cameras

Canon today announced addition of four new PowerShot digital cameras, the PowerShot SX210 IS, PowerShot SD3500 IS, PowerShot SD1400 IS and PowerShot SD1300IS. The new cameras offer Smart Auto mode along with new Scene Modes and Image effects.
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Rumor: MacBook Pro Update Coming Tomorrow

A French website Nowhere Else claims Apple will release new MacBook Pro models tomorrow. This information was given to the website by an anonymous source close to Apple. It has been rumored for past few weeks that Apple is planning to update their MacBook Pro lineup. It was previously believed that the company would announce the update at the Apple media event, which took place on 27th January.
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Canon Officially Unveils Rebel T2i Digital SLR

Canon today officially announced new Rebel T2i DSLR with 18-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor and Full HD video recording. The new features on T2i include 3.7 fps continuous shooting, ISO range of 100-6400 (expandable to 12,800), a 63-zone Dual Layer Metering System and DIGIC 4 image processor.
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Windows Mobile 7 Details Leaked

It is rumored that Microsoft will showcase Windows Mobile 7 at Mobile World Congress later this month. Many website have now posted details about the upcoming smartphone OS from Microsoft. And it looks like Microsoft has taken a page out of Apple iPhone playbook for development of their new OS, which can be a good thing for the company.
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