The new iPad has 10-hour battery life, is 0.6mm thicker and 0.07lbs heavier- by aby benedict

Apple just finished its iPad 3 presentation at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and now we have full tech specs, among which the new Retina Display is its defining feature. But what about the little things? Per pre-event rumors and whispers, the new iPad is a tad heavier and thicker than its predecessor.

The new iPad is 9.4mm thin and weighs in at 1.4lbs. As for the iPad 2, it is 8.8mm deep and weighs in at 1.33lbs (WiFi model). This makes the new one full 0.6mm thicker nad 0.07lbs heavier, but we somehow doubt anyone but the most eagle-eyed fans will notice the difference.

As for its battery, iPad 3 maintains the same ten-hour battery life as both the original iPad and iPad 2. Steve Jobs highlighted the fact at the iPad 2 unveiling, underscoring how iPad 2 features the same “legendary” battery performance as the original model. “We don’t want to give that up”, he said, adding that “this has been tried and tested by many reviewers”.

Apple launches gestures-heavy iPhoto for iPad, can tell you weather in images. Available today for $4.99 - by aby benedict

In what many might call a long overdue move, Apple has ported the iPhoto photo management application to iPad. The release of the software completes a trio of most important iLife apps that are now available on the iPad: iMovie, GarageBand and now iPhoto. The app supports images up to 19-megapixels and sports the familiar and popular features, including the auto-enhance tool, social sharing via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, email and more.

The iPhoto app is aimed at people who “want to do more with your photos”. One thing immediately becomes clear: iPhoto for iPad is gestures-heavy, per an extensive live demo Apple’s chief architect for photo and video Randy Ubillos gave on stage.

You can use the new bezel gesture – a first for an Apple-made iPad app – to swipe from the left side of the screen in order to look at other images in the album. from there, just tap on an image to bring the editing interface up. When you want to bring in the thumbnail view, just swipe from the side again.

Another cool feature: Double-tapping a single image tells iPhoto to scan your entire library and compare all the images to find the ones that look similar. You can also beam photos between devices over-the-air, tap a specific area to adjust it, touch and drag to brighten or tweak saturation and more.

But when it comes down to heavy image editing, the iPhoto app doesn’t disappoint. For example, brush palettes include tools like such as red eye, saturation and lighten. Other notables include sharpen, soften, darken and a general repair tools, while the effects gallery includes black and white, vignette, tilt-shift and watercolor.

And really neat stuff here is…

Journals… Put simply, it is a page showing all the highlighted pictures. The layout, as we’ve come to expect from Apple, is very efficient, fun to use and just gorgeous. Photos with captions or favorites are slotted into larger spots while others are smaller. In case you want to quickly edit a photos, just drag them around or change their displayed size. This view also allows you to add notes and texts, there’s a calendar to show when your photos were taken. Geotags are supported as well and there’s even a weather icon that can tell you the weather in the image.

The new iPhoto app costs $4.99 a pop and will be available later today from the App Store. Apple also updated the iMovie for iOS app with slight refinements, including storyboards and new editing chops.

New iPad Third-Gen Announced – Price, Features, Availability – Everything You Need to Know - by aby benedict

The day has finally come. Apple has finally pulled the curtain on what they are calling as the “new iPad”, and we finally know for certain what the device has in store. Some of the more sensible rumors about the iPad 2′s successor – most of which were outlined in an earlier post – have come to fruition, and we have a roundup of everything new in the third-gen iPad as announced at this morning’s San Francisco press event right here.

Price and Features
Price
As many have anticipated, the storage tiers – and their respective cost – remains the same as the previous-generation iPad, even factoring in the new 4G LTE support; basically, there are WiFi models, and there are WiFi + 4G + 3G models. Coming in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB flavors, the new ipad starts at $499 at the base model and goes up to $829 for the 64GB WiFi + 4G + 3G model.
4G LTE
As rumored, the new iPad now has support for 4G LTE. 4G-enabled devices will be available through both AT&T and Verizon in the US. Advantage of LTE? Blazing fast download and upload speeds, therefore you can rest assured that your webpages, tweets, emails etc. will fly off in a snap! It supports HSPA+ for up to 21Mbps, and dual-carrier HSDPA for up to 42Mbps. LTE for max up to 72Mbps.
Form Factor
Third-gen iPad “remains amazingly thin at 9.4mm and light at 1.5 pounds”. The design remains unchanged, and looks exactly like its predecessor which is the iPad 2. Battery life also remains same at 10 hours, and 4G is at 9 hours.
Retina Display

Retina Display – a feature that, to some criticism, was not implemented in the ipad 2 – has made its way into the new iPad. While the screen is still 9.7 inches in size, it certainly packs more pixels than that of its predecessors with a notorious screen resolution of 2048×1536. As everything on the screen will be far more crisp, things such as browsing the web and reading an iBook will be far more pleasant. This will also appease those of us who were spoiled by the Retina Display on the iPhone 4 and 4S; it will be nice to no longer notice the pixels starting at me. We’re guessing that the Retina Display will be an instant hit in high defers who crave for 1080p movies on a tablet.

A5X: Dual-Core CPU, Quad-Core GPU

We’re also seeing improvements being made to the device on the hardware front. As rumors suggested, the device is packed with a new A5X processor. This new CPU will provide greatly-improved performance over the already-phenomenal A5 chip. The iPad third-gen also offers 4 times the graphical performance of the iPad 2, thanks to the new Quad-Core GPU, while still maintaining the same battery life that the iPad is known for. On top of these improvements, the new iPad also likely sports 1GB of RAM, which is double the amount currently inside the iPad 2.

Improved Optics

One flaw with the iPad 2 has been its sub-par camera. The new third-gen iPad now sports a 5MP rear-facing camera, allowing it to take far better pictures than its predecessor, and it also supports 1080p video recording, while the front-facing cam is likely same as the iPad 2. The iPad 2′s lack of a proper camera is something that I didn’t mind as I never use my iPad for photography purposes – holding one up to take a photo in public has been the source of quite a few funny pictures on the Internet – but improvements are welcome nevertheless. The front-facing camera improvement is surely great for users who frequently use Face Time on their device.
iOS 5.1
An incremental update to iOS, iOS 5.1 will be bringing Siri dictation to the third-gen iPad, among various other improvements. There have been quite a lot of people that have wanted Siri on the iPad, but at the moment, it look like they will have to settle with dictation feature only.
Availability
Pre-Ordering
If you’re itching to get your hands on the new iPad, you better act fast; it’s sure to be extremely difficult to purchase physically, so your best bet is to pre-order. You’ll still have to act fast though; pre-orders are available starting today. If you don’t put in your order early, it’s likely that you’ll have to wait longer for your ipad to ship. However, if you plan to pick your iPad from a physical Apple Store, then the official date given by Apple is March 16th, be sure to be early otherwise you’ll be facing an ultra long wait in line.

Hello Google Play, RIP Android Market - by aby benedict

Today Google has rebranded its massive set of markets into one: Google Play, “Pure Entertainment, Anywhere You want it to be.” This new market is taking the place of the Android Market, the Music store, Books, and Video stores as well. Google has taken this evolution of their market structure and put it at the forefront of not only their digital sales for each of these different medias, but for their cloud storage services as well. What you’ve got here is not just a store, but a place you can access your purchases at any time from whatever device you’ve got that can hook in.

We’ve got Google Play Books, Google Play Movies, Google Play Music, and more. This store is set to work on both the mobile platform and in-browser for all devices able to run a web browser. This new market will be sent out to Android devices running Android 2.2 FroYo over the next few days and will be replacing the Android Market name in the Google sandbar soon as well. The biggest difference for most people here seems to be the logo and the name, with the actual store and stores looking and feeling essentially the same.

You’ll be syncing like a madman with your music, your videos, and books, your ability to stop working with one of these bits of media in one place and start again on a different device now yours to wield. Your Apps will of course work the same way they have before, with you able to purchase them online and sent them automatically to the devices of your choice.

With Google Play you can:
• Store up to 20,000 songs for free and buy millions of new tracks
• Download more than 450,000 Android apps and games
• Browse the world’s largest selection of eBooks
• Rent thousands of your favorite movies, including new releases and HD titles

Beyond the cloud capabilities of this re-imagined portal then, The only thing that’s really changed therefor, truly, is the branding scheme. The lovely new Google Play logo with the multicolored arrow akin to a Play symbol is up, the store is rolling out now, and Google is once again getting stronger with a simplification of terms. Tighten it up, Google!

iPad 3/HD To Hit Shelves On March 16 [REPORT] - by aby benedict

We are nearly at that point where all of the speculation over the last few months will eventually come to an end and we will eventually see just what the guys from Apple have in store for the public with the eagerly anticipated next-generation ipad. The actual announcement of the product will finally bring an end to the wild rumors that we have seen cropping up on an almost daily basis, meaning the sources who have predicted an array of features will either sink or swim by the predictions.

It wouldn’t be a normal day before the announcement if we didn’t top it off with a yet more speculative chatter that is emanating from previously reliable sources. Our friends over at 9to5Mac are citing a source who is involved with apple retail Stores, claiming that the new ipad will see the official public launch on Friday, 16th March, which is nine days after the San Francisco based announcement. This doesn’t go down as earth shattering news, considering the launch generally is on a Friday, but it also coincides with the a couple of high-profile Apple Retail Stores opening in Houston, Texas and a new store popping up in the plush Harrod’s store in London.

he source has also stated that the Apple Retail Outlets are preparing for a big store based event which will come to an end of the purported launch date. The same report is informing us that during March of last year, Apple opened up a temporary store in Austin, Texas which had stock of the ipad2 and related accessories. It would seem that this is not a trend which is set to continue, and although the SXSW event is being held in March, it is happening during the 9-13 of this month.

So, with Apple all set to take over the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco tomorrow, and looking likely to hand the latest iPad over to the public just nine days later, what is it that you are most looking forward to from the device? We have been seeing increased speculation in the last few days which points to the inclusion of 4G-LTE connectivity in the device, something which has been built upon today with Verizon applying a small teaser to their official website saying that "Something Is Coming" and inviting users to register for updates. We have also seen reports that Apple could introduce the world to the iPad HD tomorrow, and not the iPad 3 as many believed would be the case.

Regardless of what Apple pull from their sleeves, we are sure to be in for a treat.

Official Android 4.0 ICS Update For Galaxy S II Coming March 15 - by aby benedict

With Android 4.0 being publicly available since November 2011, users might be forgiven for wondering why their device can’t benefit from the features that Ice Cream Sandwich brings. After all, when Apple releases an update to iOS, users can generally grab the latest version immediately as long as the hardware supports the update. Users of several premium handsets, such as the Samsung Galaxy S II have been waiting for a number of weeks for Samsung to finally announce when they will be allowing users to update to Android 4.0 ICS.

The official Facebook page of Samsung Israel seems to be giving users the long awaited good news that Ice Cream Sandwich is at last coming to their Galaxy S II devices. The guys over atAndroidCentral have provided a rough translation of the post from Samsung Israel:

We promised we were working on it. You waited patiently. And on 15 March it’ll arrive: Android version 4, ICS, to tens of thousands of GALAXY S II devices purchased from cellular companies in the country or directly from us. We are very excited for the launch, hope you are too 

The news coming from Samsung Israel is obviously promising and should be taken in a positive light. But the fact remains that it is well overdue and only specifically applies to Galaxy S II handsets which were purchased in Israel, with no word about owners in other worldwide markets set to receive the update. The update process has to start somewhere however, and the fact that samsung have officially announced that it will begin in ten days time in Israel is definitely a positive move.

Owners who are located in the United States, and other territories may find themselves having to wait a little bit longer due to fact that the hardware varies from carrier to carrier, but we will stay alleagle eyes for further announcements coming out of Samsung’s official channels. Certain tech reporters are also suggesting that Samsung actually had the Ice Cream Sandwich update ready since the middle of February, but has been unable to push it out until they get the green light from Google to do so. If this is the case, it certainly doesn’t represent a positive experience for users of these devices.

iOS iPad 2 Vs Windows 8 Tablet (Video) - by aby benedict

Windows 8 is coming soon. Microsoft knows too well the iPad should be given much of the credit for the shooting up in Apple’s Market share. The previously released Microsoft tablets did not come as a success in the market. So with the release of Windows 8, which is just designed around tablets, we found it interesting to compare it with iPad 2 which of course runs with iOS 5.

iPad 2 Vs Windows 8 Video:

Windows 8:

Windows 8 however appears to have quite a number of gestures such as pinching on the home screen where all the tiles are to give you an overview of your apps, swiping up to get your app menu which is different for each app, swiping down from the top to close an app and many more. This might seem to be too many gestures and many would find it quite confusing at first. However, it might turn out to be quite handy once you get used to it! With Windows 8, you can do many tasks at once easier than ever before with its new type of multitasking with side-by-side apps!

Moreover, Windows 8 having live tiles on the home screen enables you to easily launch apps that are pre-loaded with the device and downloaded from the Windows Marketplace. As clear in the video, there appears to be minimal lag while using the device and the browser loads almost immediately! However, we have to mention that you will find a few things missing like for instance the ability to save images.

Do you think that Microsoft has got it right this time? Will Microsoft’s new tablet operating system pass the Apple iPad in the market share? Tell us what you think in the comments section.