First Look , iPad A few weeks ago, when we first looked at the hybrid iPhone/iPad game Ping Pong Battle , it wasn’t quite ready for prime time; one of the marquee features, video-out from the ‘table’ iPad, wasn’t finalized. With an update to the apps due to hit the App Store sometime today, PPB achieves that milestone and adds some key table tennis industry branding. PPB delivers a ping pong experience by making the iPhones into motion-sensitive ‘paddles’ and putting the table onto the iPad screen.
Think giant active-shutter glasses are a roadblock to 3D adoption? Wait until you get a load of this, the N-3D from Aircord Labs, a glass pyramid with semi-reflective sides that allows you to peer through while reflecting the image of a screen above. In this case the screen is provided by an iPad which, as you can see in the video below, separately renders three sides of an object.
It takes longer to read books on a Kindle 2 or an iPad versus a printed book, Jakob Nielsen of product development consultancy Nielsen Norman Group discovered in a recent usability survey. The study found that reading speeds declined by 6.2% on the iPad and 10.7% on the Kindle compared to print. However, Nielsen conceded that the differences in reading speed between the two devices were not “statistically significant because of the data’s fairly high variability” — in other words, the study did not prove that the iPad allowed for faster reading than the Kindle. A total of 24 participants (10 is about average for a usability survey) were given short stories by Ernest Hemingway to read in print and on iPads, Kindles and desktop PCs.
The Predators movie is set to be released on July 7th, and what would the release of a big budget summer film be without an official video game. That’s where Predators for the iPhone comes in. Chillingo & Angry Mob Games, who if you recall was the team behind Guerrilla Bob , have worked together to bring Predators to the iPhone, but does the game live up to the awesomeness that is a Predator? Predators has you playing a Predator hunting down a number of hunters across twenty-four stages, each stage increasing in difficulty
iPad I can’t think of another iPad app that looks quite as striking as Emerald Observatory . This US $0.99 app is the kind of thing you’d be proud to display if it was a physical object; even when it’s running on the iPad, I’m tempted to leave it on as a conversation piece. The single display gives you your local time, the position of the sun, the rise and set times of the sun and moon (and the 5 brightest planets), twilight start and end times, the current moon phase, a display of day and night on a world map, the current day and date (with a leap year indicator), and the ability to move forward or backward in time in order to see different planetary alignments and sun positions.
iPhone , App Store I’ve just recently started making the transition to ebook reading with my iPhone’s Kindle app — after a little hesitance about reading a screen rather than ink on paper, I’ve gotten used to the form, and really appreciate the convenience of always having my reading with me (and the free ebooks help too — I definitely recommend His Majesty’s Dragon ). The Kindle app is seeing some good support from Amazon, too — the most recent update not only enables the Retina Display on the iPhone 4 , but adds both video and audio to the offerings in certain titles. If the books are created for a “Kindle Edition with Audio/Video,” you’ll be able to play other media right next to the text in the app. Of course, the actual Kindle can’t play this media, which probably means a few things
iPad Since I brought home my 3G + Wi-Fi iPad a little over a week ago, I’ve been running in Airplane Mode with Wi-Fi enabled to avoid using cellular data. Otherwise I kept getting a prompt (shown here) asking me if I wanted to setup an account, which I didn’t want to do. Fortunately, there is another way.
iPad Apple has posted a new web page highlighting some third-party apps made for the iPad, complete with their own Apple-produced demo videos. Each highlighted app gets a description, App Store link and demo clip. The clips are short and to the point while showing off an app’s main features. Among ‘The Chosen Apps’ are Things for iPad , Popular Science+ and Epicurious (a favorite of yours truly)
App Review Geo Walk is a clever little iPhone app from Vito Technology , the developers who produced the breathtaking Star Walk astronomy app for the iPad and iPhone. Geo Walk doesn’t explore deep space; it explores our own varied planet. You start with a 3D globe and spin it to any part of the world you want to explore. Little bubbles appear, and you can click on them to get interesting info on places, historical figures, flora, and fauna.
App Store I’m actually writing this post very, very, very late on Sunday night. I was up far too late working and playing video games, so a game like Leap Sheep! HD turns out to be perfect for this time of day. Leap Sheep is the first iPhone game from Turtle Rock Studios , a company that’s worked with Valve in the past on titles like Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead, and their past experience shows up here; this one is polished and dripping with charm and atmosphere. The actual gameplay is very simple — you have a set of sheep leaping over a fence, and you tap once to help them jump and tap again to make them do tricks.
iPad After our post that iBooks 1.1 doesn’t deliver what Apple promises , Apple has quietly updated the language on its iBooks page to accurately reflect what iBooks 1.1 can do as far as PDF handling goes. Two days ago we pointed out that the copy on Apple’s iBooks page read: Tap a PDF to read it and it fills the screen just like an ebook. You can flip through pages, add bookmarks and highlights, or zoom in for a closer look. The problem with this was that you couldn’t actually flip through PDF pages or highlight them — those were features of books purchased from the iBooks store, not PDFs
Accessories , iPad I blame Steve Sande for my newest iPad-related purchase. Well, there’s a lot of things to blame Steve for, but it was his reviews of the Tom Bihn Western Flyer and Checkpoint Flyer that had me checking out the company he bought the bags from last year. Tom Bihn is based in Seattle and has the distinction of being among those rare companies that still makes its products in the U.S. using mostly U.S.-produced materials
iPad Apple touted iBooks 1.1 as a major upgrade which allows users to sync and view PDFs from their computer to the iPad. While Apple has delivered the ability to sync and view PDFs in iBooks 1.1, there are some major limitations, including some features that iBooks 1.1 is advertised as being able to do, but actually cannot. The image above is a screen shot from Apple’s iBooks page . It states: Tap a PDF to read it and it fills the screen just like an ebook.
Mophie ’s juice pack air external case added some much-needed longevity to our iPhone when we tried it out last year , but most of us on staff aren’t particularly fond of making our gadgets even more chubby. If you are also not looking for a little more to love, mophie is introducing a line of external juice packs that pop into your device (courtesy of a retractable dock connector) to add a little extra life. Smallest will be the $40, 1,000mAh juice pack reserve, followed by the $60, 1,500mAh boost, both of which are compatible with the iPod and iPhone — and also offer “super-bright” LED flashlights. Last but not least is the juice pack power station, which hasn’t been given a price or specific mAh rating but is said to add in compatibility with the iPad
It’s all the rage these days. You fire off an email to Apple ’s Steve Jobs , the CEO of one of the world’s biggest and most secretive technology companies, and to your astonishment, the great man himself replies. You then publish said email, sit back and watch as the tech press dissect each and every word.
