Hasta La Gadget!

Excited about the iPad 2? Get over it. The iPad 3 is where it’s really at. An anonymous-type Apple staff told Cult of Mac, “For the iPad 2 don’t get your hopes up too high. That’s all I’m going to say. They’ve had a number of problems along the way, and the third-generation iPad is the one to make a song and a dance about.”

Verizon’s “darling” status with iPhone users may quickly be coming to an end as a new report from Bloomberg cites Verizon’s Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo saying unlimited data plans will no longer be available from the new iPhone carrier.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Well, it looks like the last major holdout from Apple’s iBookstore could soon be joining its rivals on iOS devices — Random House announced today that it’s abandoning its current pricing model for e-books in favor of the so-called “agency pricing” that Apple insists on. That model requires publishers to set the retail prices of their books with the bookseller getting a 30 percent cut of each sale — as opposed to the traditional wholesale model that lets retailers set the price of books and even sell them at a loss (as Amazon has done in the past). As the Wall Street Journal notes, the agency model has been criticized by some (including Random House previously) for effectively eliminating discounting and guaranteeing retailers a profit on each book they sell. Of course, Random House hasn’t yet officially announced that it will be joining the iBookstore ranks, but this news does certainly line up nicely with a little event tomorrow.

Random House switches e-book pricing models, clears way for entrance into iBookstore originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not rare to hear talk of other operating systems employing webOS-like elements — we’ve been asking to see its elegant notification system in iOS for years — but RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook borrows so heavily from the UI concepts of the software built by Palm and now owned by HP that it could easily be confused for a webOS tablet. It handles multiple concurrent applications using a card view and allows you to shut down unwanted apps by swiping them off the screen, a multitasking implementation that exhibits “uncanny similarities” in HP’s eyes to its own TouchPad tablet. Still, the Hewlett Packard team insist that they’re focused on their own products and will “keep innovating, we’ll keep honing and those guys hopefully will continue to see the value in it and keep following us by about a year.” Ouch.

RIM’s response, as espoused by Jeff McDowell, has been to say that “when you’re trying to optimize user experience that juggles multitasking, multiple apps open at once and on a small screen, you’re going to get people landing on similar kinds of designs.” This essentially sidesteps the issue by throwing a subtle compliment HP’s way, but it brings up an interesting question — shouldn’t companies aim to make the best software possible, in spite of it potentially looking like a ripoff of someone else’s work?

HP derides BlackBerry PlayBook OS as a ‘fast imitation’ of webOS, RIM says it’s just good UI design originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alfa Romeo unveils the 4C concept at the 2011 Geneva auto show.

Originally posted at Geneva Auto Show 2011