Posts tagged Apple iPad
Facebook Video Player for iPad
Apr 14th
CTA RATING: 
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 are throwing Flash out for other options. Every day, more people begin using their mobiles instead of their computers… every day people drive themselves insane by grumbling at websites that use Flash. So why is the transition so slow? Ask the website you’re reading, we don’t really know.
Facebook is one of the worst offenders in the anti-Flash campaign. Many websites are using the excuse that it would be difficult to offer the features of their Flash video players with HTML5. Facebook can’t use that excuse: it’s video player is probably the worst looking, least feature-rich video player on the web. Play, pause, volume and fullscreen. Wow. There is no reason for Facebook to still be using Flash for their videos when one developer could code the same player in HTML5 with very little effort. Boo!
Thanks to the new Facebook Video Player for iPad… I can watch videos on my favorite web browsing device. There really is nothing else like browsing the web on your iPad and my Facebook addiction is a little more than healthy. The app helps out by bringing up the regular Facebook website and allows you to browse like you would normally. Whenever you run across a video of your college roommate passing out while he’s walking down the street, just tap the video TITLE and the video will play. You cannot actually tap the video as that will just bring up a Flash error. Once the video opens, you can add it as a favorite for later viewing. The interface is a little awkward and not very intuitive, but it works and that’s what we really care about. The developer will be including a help video in the next version. In general, it’s really quite slick and definitely a sanity saver for the people (like me) who are obsessed with Facebook.
We did ask the developer about upcoming features and improvements for the app… this is what will be coming in the near-future releases:
- French, Italian and Turkish language support.
- Video Thumbnail Support: you’ll actually be able to click the thumbnail instead of the title.
- Help Video
- Video Download Manager: will allow you to save movies for offline viewing.
- Advanced Search
With those features, this app will be the easier way to watch Flash Facebook videos on your iPad. If you’re an avid Facebook junkie, this app is a must-have and definitely worth the $2.99 for the iPad version. You can also hop down the road a bit and grab the iPhone version for $1.99
- Facebook Video Player
- Facebook Video 2
- FBVideo Click for iTunes
Sorry for the default pictures, my iPad crashed and dumped the ones I captured. :/
Guess what? The iPad is pretty cheap to build
Feb 5th
According to recent analysis of the parts Apple’s using in the iPad… it could cost them as little as $270 to build the base model of the iPad. There are also manufacturing costs and warranty costs estimated at $10 and $20 respectively. That’s still pretty darn good. They’ll make a lot of profit off of me when I buy the 64GB version. 
In fact, each level you go up, Apple’s making exponentially more profit. There’s a cost difference of $75 between the 16GB and 64GB Flash chips, but Apple’s making an additional $125 from us making that jump. They make even more money if I opt for the 3G version: the 3G addition costs Apple $16, but we’re passed a heavy markup in the company’s extra charge of $130. Apple typically sets the price increments as $100 each level, but this is just asking us to question the price of the device itself.
Think of it this way… if I buy the default 16GB iPad WiFi, Apple’s profit is $200. If I go for the fully-loaded 64GB iPad 3G, Apple actually profits $440.
Wall street will love this device. Apple’s stock price has been slowly but surely increasing since this information was released. If this device takes off, we expect to see ridiculous amounts of profit from Apple. Ridiculous.
iPad Analysis Part Three: The Conclusion
Feb 1st
We hope that you’ve read both part one and part two so you understand the current software and hardware that will be available in the iPad. In this final installment of the iPad trilogy, we’ll take everything we’ve learned from those articles and define how revolutionary the iPad will truly be.
We learned about some pretty incredible revisions of software for the iPad as Steve made the announcement. The fact that Apple finally put iWork (Keynote, Pages and Numbers) on the Cocoa Touch platform is great for people looking to use the device for business. The iBooks application will definitely begin to dominate the eReader market. Mobile Safari will truly take over as iPad users’ browser of choice. The Calendar and Address Book apps are beautiful: it looks like Apple invested a lot of time into their development. We also can’t forget that we’ll have the advantage of the App Store with the iPad, while other devices have little to no software expandability.
Even though the iPad software is somewhat expandable (it’s still limited by the app approval process), it doesn’t have a whole lot to offer in hardware features. We’re seeing too many accessories to even take them seriously: the fact that Apple has more than 5 accessories tells you that something is a little off. Using the dock connector as the sole connection is very limiting… I would have loved to use video out and plug in an external device like a camera or USB jump drive at the same time. Currently, it appears that — even with the USB port accessory — we won’t be able to use external USB devices, with the exception of cameras. The video out only converts to component, composite or VGA: aren’t we living in the digital age? Couldn’t we have DVI, HDMI or even MiniDisplay Port? Okay fine, the port situation is bad; what about the rest of the hardware? We don’t know as much information as we’d like because there aren’t many iPads in the wild just yet… but we know that it has “custom-built” SOC that uses a Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and a Mali GPU. We also know that it will only have 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities: will still find this strange due to the new chip capabilities Toshiba announced in early December.
Apple removes fake Flash ads from the iPad promotional video
Jan 31st
Remember the speculative post we wrote about the fact that the iPad is showing Flash content in Apple’s promotional video? Well, it’s been replaced with a non-Flash version that shows the infamous blue lego. It appears as though we’re never going to see Flash on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch… especially with Steve’s comments from the Apple town hall meeting.
We’re not terribly disappointed with Apple’s decision to avoid Flash… we’re more disappointed with the fact that most sites are using it to display their content. Flash is notoriously buggy and a resource hog. Why watch low-quality hosted content instead of high-quality local content? The mere fact that we have instant access to thousands of TV episodes and movies will create a demand for hosted content: no one has a collection as large as the internet. We really hope to see services like Hulu, the TV networks, and even YouTube move away from Flash sooner rather than later. From a technical standpoint, Apple is completely correct: Flash sucks. But they also shouldn’t ignore the fact that it’s the current standard… they should be aggressively moving a different direction, working with companies to support different media playback: we all know they have the money to do it.
Before and after shots of the iPad promotional video:
iPad may have Flash after all… Updated: nope.
Jan 29th
That or Apple is doctoring their device videos. During the keynote presentation on Wednesday, the iPad ran into several infamous blue legos of death. That means the device they were using for the presentation was not running Flash… this is not debatable. However, several sites have come to report that the promotional video of the iPad shows Flash content.
The picture to the right is from the iPad video on Apple’s website. In it, the iPad is browsing a website that displays a food ad on the left. That ad is actually Flash and could not play on a iPhone or an iPod touch.
- What does this mean? There are many different possibilities, so let’s break them down bullet style:
- The iPad in the presentation could be an older prototype than that used in the iPad promotional video.
- Apple may have decided that the device should not run Flash in earlier testing due to instability.
- Apple is doctoring the iPad promotional video to make it a little less obvious that it doesn’t run Flash.
- Apple shot the promotional video with a 4.0 alpha release that includes Flash.
The last bullet is our favorite because we all expected iPhone OS 4.0 to be released along with the announcement of the iPad on Wednesday. We expect the iPad software in the presentation was left at 3.2 and we may see Flash when it’s upgraded to 4.0 sometime in the near future. We may not see iPhone OS 4.0 until the WWDC event in June, but we don’t expect that Apple’s announcement really covers everything that this device can do. We’re also still unsure about the power of the processor: it’s 1GHz according to Apple but that doesn’t mean much. The iBook G4 had a 1GHz processor in an early revision. Could it play flash? Sort of. But one thing we can say is that the graphics power appeared to be very good and responsive during the keynote. That makes us think this device is perfectly capable of running Flash, but we won’t know until someone from the press gets to play with one and run some benchmarks.
Update:
Mac Rumors is now reporting that the New York Times actually doctored the website for Apple’s promotional video. This information comes from and undisclosed source. Take it as you will, but we tend to believe it.
Apple introduces: iPad 3G and a Wifi-only version
Jan 27th
In hopes to make the new device more accessible for the masses, Apple announced the iPad at multiple price points during the keynote this morning. It’s a new device (we’re unsure if it’s revolutionary) that’s built specifically upon the iPhone OS. It’s a very handy, cool device, but we still feel it’s for a niche market instead of every house in the nation like the iPod. While we can see some very practical applications to it, there are still a lot of questions left to be asked before I’m willing to drop $500 to $900 on this device. In this post, we’ll address the good and the bad as we see it.
- So, what can it do? To put it simply, it’s a glorified iPhone with a better processor and more capabilities. Here are the specs worth noting:
- 9.7 inch display with a 1024-by-768 screen resolution.
- 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB capacities.
- 1GHz Apple A4 processor (Built by Apple’s PA Semi).
- Built-in Accelerometer.
- Ambient light sensor for better battery life.
- Wireless N and 3G capabilities (3G only in the higher-end models).
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology.
- Digital Compass, assisted GPS (cell tower and wifi location).
- TV and Video outputs (requires adapters).
- 10 hours of heavy usage. 30 days standby.
So what makes this machine worth the price tag? It uses the same apps as the iPhone and sits directly between a smartphone and a laptop on the portability scale. More portable than a laptop (probably — more on this later) and more powerful than an iPhone. Could it be a complete laptop replacement? Yes, if you have a desktop to do your real work on.
