Despite boasting several hundred thousand apps, there are still a few areas within Apple's App Store that one could point to as lacking somewhat in really groundbreaking apps.
Apple makes a number of premium products, but it is mainly the iPhone and iPad that have stolen the limelight in recent years. Their smartphone and tablet range are clearly their most successful products in recent years, but one of their other media devices is starting to gain some traction now, thanks to recent hardware and software updates.
Phil Schiller made sure to mention the A5X processor found in the new iPad performed 4x better than NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chip. With a quad-core GPU, the new chip was also said to boast twice the graphics output compared with the iPad 2.
It seems like only yesterday that the jailbreak dream team dropped the good news by announcing the release of an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 that would bring liberation and freedom to those who were using an iPhone 4S or iPad 2 powered by Apple's A5 chip. It was in fact over eight weeks ago and although it was a huge accomplishment by all involved to release the Absinthe jailbreak, the community is once again focusing all eyes on the development teams hoping for a jailbreak which covers iOS 5.1.
I am pretty sure that if you search hard enough, the Cydia store will be able to produce an extension or tweak for pretty much any kind of situation that you can image. It is literally packed to the rafters with packages, with revblaze's HTML Editor being one of the latest commercial apps to land on the ModMyi repository.
While Windows 8 has received plenty of mixed criticism regarding its user interface and the desktop, there's a more unanimous agreement that it is a pretty damn good tablet OS. But, is Microsoft's unique approach to tablets going to be enough to even get a foot in the door of the tablet market? After all, it isn't even so much a tablet market as an iPad market; Apple created this market, and are doing a great job at maintaining a firm grip on it. But, while nothing will kill the iPad anytime soon, it is possible for a product to gain decent share in an Apple-dominated market. Just look at Android.
What started out as a Kickstarter project aiming to raise $10,000 has now made it out of the nearly-a-reality pile and into the iPad App Store. The team behind the creation of the Taposé app were inspired by Microsoft's 2008/2009 Courier journal concept and wanted to recreate the discussed features for the iPad and possibly other tablets through the creation of a dedicated app. After four months, three Apple rejections, a successful appeal, a revoked appeal, a UI review and then a final App Store review, Apple approved the Taposé app for general sale.
Revisiting a story we covered a couple of days ago, an Apple rep has come out and said the way the new iPad handles battery charge does not in any way deviate from the manner in which older iOS devices do so.
If you are the type of person who repeatedly purchase Apple products, specifically the iPad 2 and the new iPad, then the chances are you recognize quality when you see it. Regardless of what public opinion may be about Apple, it is extremely difficult to argue against the quality of their products, with each one offering the build you would expect from a premium priced consumer gadget. Products such as the iPad and iPhone are built to offer extensive functionality, but also stand the test of time which is highly evident when you consider the fact that the iPhone 3GS and original iPad still perform better than a lot of newly released competing devices.
Although the first ten days of the new iPad have been relatively successful - particularly regarding initial sales - it hasn't passed without its usual dose of hitches and gripes.
