NewsFactor - No watered-down Internet. No sacrifices. That's the promise Hewlett-Packard Vice President and CTO Phil McKinney offered consumers in a blog post about the PC giant's upcoming tablet computer. HP's iPad competitor, he promised, will offer a full web browsing experience in the palm of your hand.

There’s been a tremendous amount of peek-a-boo over racy apps in the iTunes store lately. Following a purge of apps with names like Epic Boobs — which once squeezed their way past censors — some of them were re-instated. Most of the offending apps, however, were produced by small shops. The hotties available on the iTunes [...]

Will Wright, best known for his creation of The Sims franchise, calls the Wii console a "toy" during this week's Game Developers Conference.

roundupThis week's Game Developers Conference brings together designers, programmers, publishers, and others for the latest from the world of video play.

Apple has told its Taiwan suppliers to produce around 5 million iPads by mid-year, one analyst said Tuesday, citing unnamed sources. FBR Capital Markets analyst Craig Berger called talk of production delays “just false alarms” after Apple recently announced an April 3 U.S. availability date for the first iPads. If correct, Berger’s projection would be a [...]

Across all of 2009, Dell managed to stay ahead of Acer by a hair's-breadth, but the year-end trend wasn't going Dell's way.

Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, iPad

Ever since the iPad's introduction a month and a half ago, the internet has been awash in criticism of the as-yet-unreleased device. "It's just a big iPod touch," many have said. "No Flash, no multitasking, no sale," others bemoaned. And a few have gone so far as to say, "It doesn't do a lot of things that a netbook that costs half as much will do." For these reasons and many more, many of the pundits and forum dwellers have but one prediction: the iPad is going to crash and burn. Don't you believe it, because the critics have been wrong before. Several times, actually, according to The Week, which provides a list of five Apple products the critics thought would fail. Out of those five, only one, the Newton, failed to find mainstream success. The other four were industry-defining products which went on to sell millions of units each. What did the critics have to say about these four "failed" Apple products when they first debuted, and which products were they? Click "Read More" to find out. 1. The Mac It seems absurd now, but there was a time when some critics thought the Mac would be a complete failure. They considered the mouse-driven interface "Useless." Ponder that one for a bit. "Awkward," "Not easy to learn," and of course, "Costs too much" were other 1984-era complaints leveled at Apple's latest creation. These critics were used to the keyboard-driven interface of DOS-running PCs, and from the sounds of things, they considered the Mac, with its graphic user interface and "awkward" mouse, to be nothing more than an overpriced novelty, doomed to fail. I hardly need to tell you what happened next. The original Macintosh completely revolutionized the computer industry. Within only a short time, companies like Microsoft scrambled to duplicate the GUI/mouse combo the Mac brought to the market. Today, nearly every desktop, notebook, and netbook out there runs a GUI/mouse interface. And 26 years after the first Macintosh debuted, Apple still sells Macs by the millions every year. I wish I could fail half as hard as that. 2. The iMac "No floppy drive?!?" was the echoing cry among the tech world in 1998. Add to that the iMac's hermetically-sealed case and not particularly upgrade-friendly components, and once again, tech critics and build-it-yourself users who had been used to beige towers predicted the iMac would never catch on. Instead, the iMac sold like crazy and almost instantaneously doubled Apple's PC marketshare. Twelve years later, the iMac is still Apple's best-selling desktop, and it shows no signs of going anywhere anytime soon... unlike those floppy disks everyone once thought were so crucial. 3. The iPod One of the greatest things about the internet is that in a way, it's the closest any of us will get to time travel. Let's go back to October 23, 2001, and get Slashdot's now-famous opinion of the just-announced iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." The comments that follow are even better. "I don't see many sales in the future of iPod." "All I can say is, as an Apple 'fan', I'm sad." But don't just take Slashdot's word for it. The forum folks at MacRumors had some true gems too: "Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player." "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player?" "'I'd call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time...and it's not really functional." "The Reality Distiortion Field[TM] is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off." "Not exactly 'revolutionary'. " "The real money is in DRM and distribution (ala Real Musicnet). If Apple were smart they would be focusing on high gross revenue from services rather than a playback device." "It is by no means revolutionary or groundbreaking. It is an MP3 player. BFD. It is just a step in the evolution of an MP3 player [...] Think different is dead." It goes on like that, for pages and pages. And this is at a site full of Apple fans, the majority of whom were unimpressed with the iPod at best and thought it was Apple's death knell at worst. People who weren't great fans of Apple at the time, like the guys behind Penny Arcade, had even harsher things to say about the iPod, even two years after its release (not safe for work language -- it is Penny Arcade, after all). Over nine years later, where are we? Over a quarter of a billion iPods have been sold since then, and it's largely due to the iPod's momentum that Apple has become the phenomenal success it is today. 4. The iPhone For the first half of 2007, before the iPhone actually hit stores, people either thought it was the greatest innovation of the past ten years (at least) or an overpriced, overhyped device that lacked features common to many other phones. Of course, there was no lack of punditry from those who thought the iPhone was doomed, and Apple right along with it. Tech critic John Dvorak said of the iPhone, "I'd advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you'll see." A former CEO of Palm said, "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." And who could forget Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, perhaps the best-remembered critic of the iPhone: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." Ballmer claimed Apple would be lucky to get 2-3% cellphone marketshare. Over 42 million iPhones later, Apple has become the largest mobile device company in the world. And whether you agree that HTC and other phone manufacturers have violated Apple's patents or not, the influence the iPhone has had on the smartphone industry is undeniable. Before June of 2007, almost all smartphones looked like clones of the Blackberry. Less than three years later, an awful lot of smartphones now look like clones of the iPhone instead. With these four products, Apple drove the evolution of three industries: PCs, portable media players, and smartphones. All four products were smashing successes despite all the doom and gloom from both professional and armchair tech critics. Now, with the introduction of the iPad, Apple is aiming at a new industry: ultraportable computers. For the past month and a half, at least half of everyone paying attention to the iPad has laughed at it, pointed out its shortcomings, and predicted its failure. My prediction? A year from now, we're going to have a very long list of misguided iPad quotes to point and laugh at.

TUAWDon't trust the critics: Four Apple products they thought would fail originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Apple - iPod - IPod Touch - Microsoft

As HP attempts to push its own Flash-playing slate PC over the Apple iPad, one ARM executive said he expects more than 50 tablet-style devices to be introduced this year alone.

The HDGuru has published the first early review of the Panasonic TC-P50VT20 3D-compatible TV.

Verizon sees a way to cash-in on the iPad, despite AT&T having the exclusive data contract for the Apple tablet device. In a memo, the rival wireless carrier sees the new Apple gadget as “an opportunity for VZW” and urges employees to promote its MiFi wireless router as a stop-gap connection method until a 3G [...]

It's a refurb, and shipping will run you about $23, but this model includes two games and a hard drive--making it one of the best Xbox 360 deals I've seen.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Freeware, App Store, iPad

We got to sit down with Australian developer Firemint here at the Game Developers Conference 2010 in San Francisco -- it's a mobile game developer who hit it big last year with the very popular iPhone game Flight Control, and while it used to make mobile games for just a handful of larger game publishers like EA, the company is now trying to cement a reputation for making a smaller stable of high quality App Store games. "We like to joke that we went from ten customers to ten million," community manager Alexandra Peters told us. She also showed us their second game, Real Racing, which has been winning all kinds of awards even in the crowded accelerometer racing game genre, and talked with us both about Flight Control HD (their upcoming "soon after launch" title for the iPad) as well as what's next for the company. Real Racing was impressive for an iPhone racing game. While the accelerometer-as-steering is basically a cliche in iPhone games at this point, Real Racing pulls it off pretty well by focusing on that -- depending on the settings, you can simply let the car accelerate and even break on its own, and just focus on hitting the curves while driving 48 different cars around the game's 12 tracks, or actually jump in and control the car yourself. We only got to drive a few laps, but the game's crystal-clear presentation got us interested enough to want to play more. The game is currently $4.99 in the App Store, but there is an interesting lite version to try as well -- Volkswagen actually approached Firemint after the success of the game and commissioned an "adverware" version to release on the App Store. It's there to try -- unfortunately, the content is a little light for a game with so many ads, but it's one of the better integration models for in-game ads I've ever seen, and the extra commission for Firemint certainly help offset the costs of development for a free game. Firemint also told us about the version of Flight Control they're working on for the iPad. It will be called Flight Control HD, and of course it'll make use of the bigger touchscreen, but like most developers, Firemint hasn't had an actual iPad dev device to work with -- they've only got the game running in the iPad SDK simulation. Peters said the iPad makes for a "very personal and very immersive experience," so they're hoping to take advantage of that with Flight Control HD -- they've even set up a Wacom tablet to test the larger control scheme out. And they're hoping the game comes out soon after the iPad's launch on April 3rd, so look for it then. Other than that, Firemint also has two other games in development, still under wraps. The first will be coming out later this year, and the other one is definitely the biggest iPhone project they've ever done (we got the impression that it would be a larger, 3D action project) that will be out sometime in 2011. We asked them if those games were planned for the iPhone or the iPad, and they told us while they were currently working on both of them for the iPhone, "we'll have to wait and see" on the iPad. All in all, Firemint seems to be a company that has really taken advantage of the opportunities in the App Store, and grown both their reputation and their repetoire thanks to Apple's platform. Flight Control and Real Racing have both been excellent examples of their "just a few good games" philosophy, and we can't wait to see what they do with other titles and the iPad.

TUAWGDC 2010: Real Racing and Flight Control on the iPad with Firemint originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - App Store - Flight Control - Real Racing - Firemint

Water-saving device uses the length of your first shower as a benchmark, indicating via a series of gently flashing "traffic lights" when you need toget out of the shower already!

PC World - With the iPad presale beginning in just a few days, and the clock ticking down to the much-anticipated Apple tablet finally hitting the streets, HP launched a renewed campaign for its Slate tablet PC debuted at the 2010 CES by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Each platform has pros and cons, but so far the debate seems to center entirely around support for Adobe Flash.

PC World - The Electronic Frontier Foundation got its hands on a version of the iPhone Application Developer Program License Agreement, and the public advocacy group did not like what it saw.

The announcement that the Steam gaming service and Valve's line of games -- including Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 -- are being ported to the Mac has convinced major developers like DICE and Gas Powered Games to consider the jump as well.

Over six months after it was first unveiled, iTunes LP is a total bust. Apple launched its interactive album format with a library of six iTunes LPs: since, only 23 more have been added to iTunes. What the heck happened? According to Paul Bonanos writing over at GigaOm, it all comes down to two things: [...]

Forget Plants vs. Zombies… how about Tweets vs. Zombies? Tweet Defense is a cute little tower defense game for the iPhone and iPod Touch that boosts your units power based on your Twitter activity, including status updates and number of followers, as you fight off wave after wave of the undead. A Twitter account is not [...]

Actually, it's better than Scrabulous, because you can play it anytime, anywhere, without being tied to Facebook. There's even a free version. Goodbye, productivity!

Automotive news reports on how Honda developed the hybrid CR-Z sports car.