After both new iPads were unveiled late last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company was on track for “an iPad Christmas.” Apple’s new tablets were expected to perform very well, and it appears that they just might have done so. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, a market research firm, has conducted a new survey and found that the iPad Air was most popular among U.S. customers last month, beating out the iPad mini with Retina display by quite a margin. (more…)
Apple aired a new iPad advertisement during the NFL playoff game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Carolina Panthers today, and it’s all about creativity. It’s no secret that Apple wants to push the creative aspect of its mobile devices, which are still seen largely as consumption gadgets, and this new ad embraces a grand vision of iOS as fertile ground for inspiration and creation.
“What will your verse be?” is the tagline for the ad, and the idea is that each person gets to contribute one verse to the overall poem of human experience (which is a terrible poem by the way). The iPad in the commercial is used in a number of different creative capacities, including as a filming accessory, as a prototyping tool, as a means for writing, and as a way to 3D prototype and work in the depths of the ocean.
It’s telling that many early iPad commercials depicted users in familiar settings using the gadget on their laps, on their couches or in other similarly mundane situations, while this one takes the tablet to the far corners of the earth. Apple also lists the uses depicted in the commercial in greater detail on its ‘Your Verse’ microsite to give more context.
The message is not only that the iPad is capable of true creativity, but also that it’s an aspirational device: This is a lifestyle ad akin to the kind of thing you see from Lexus and other high-end car manufacturers, and that’s a good marketing strategy for the iPad in terms of capitalizing on Apple’s brand cachet. The perceived superiority of Apple tablets in terms of quality is a key weapon the company retains in its ongoing battle with Android slates, after all.
It has only been a couple of months since Apple launched its two new tablets, the iPad Air and the Retina display touting iPad mini. Customers have a variety of options on their hands when it comes to purchasing these products. They can either go with Apple’s own retail stores, its online store or through various carriers and retailers. Staples also carries Apple’s products, and while it previously only sold the new tablets through its online store, the retailers brick-and-mortar stores will now carrying the iPad Air as well as the Retina iPad mini.
Customers who wish to trade in their old iPads can get up to $300 from Staples for it as well as 5 percent back in rewards credits. Retailers also run different promotions from time to time, so its possible that Staples might offer a sweet deal on the new tablets sometime in the future. You can call up for local Staples and see if the tablets are in stock, apparently some stores only have one out of the two tablets in stock right now. Inventory may vary, but if you find yourself in a Staples someday and feel the immediate urge to pick up a new iPad, they’ll have you covered. The retailer isn’t carrying the iPhones in its stores, it says that it first wants to see how the iPads perform.
Gold is something that everyone looks out for and would not mind owning lots of in their lifetime, and for the Pharaohs of old, even in the afterlife. The thing about gold is, it is extremely rare and limited in quantity, which is what makes it all the more valuable. We have seen blinged out iPads in the past before, but none of them will be like the 24kt Gold iPad Air.
After all, this particular one will have been engraved, laser cut, polished, plated, clear coated, and comes with a CNC’ed black acrylic inlay. In a nutshell, it happens to be the most intricate iPad that has been ever created by the folks over at Computer Choppers. The asking price for the 24kt Gold iPad Air stands at $5,000 a pop, and they will be available in extremely limited quantities since only a handful of these puppies will be sold each year. Basically, the folks behind the 24kt Gold iPad Air claim that the amount of time and labor spent on making just one of these puppies are just plain ridiculous, being more of a test of skills and new equipment than anything else. Oh yeah, bragging rights also come in handy, that is for sure.
Amazon has cut the price of a Kindle HDX into four equal pieces for easier chewing. The company is looking to push its flagship tablet as hard as possible this holiday shopping season, and it believes the installment plan will help things along rather nicely. If you’re on the fence for one of these fine […]
We have heard not only does the iPhone account for 76% of all smartphones in Japan, but they are leading the US in terms of app revenue as well. Now it turns out that not only are Apple’s iPhones popular in Japan, but it turns out that Apple’s tablets are just as popular too. According to Japan’s BCN, they have revealed that out of the top 10 tablets in Japan, Apple’s iPads are taking six of those slots, with the iPad Air taking four slots, and the iPad mini taking the remaining two. Interestingly enough the streak was broken at third place by none other than the Nexus 7 tablet, making it Japan’s most popular non-iOS tablet.
While one could argue that the Nexus 7’s price could have played a part, it should be noted that Apple’s iPad lineup is more expensive compared to the Nexus 7. Of course this does not paint a complete picture as the numbers originate from BCN alone, and BCN only counts sales from about 2,400 stores in Japan, which reportedly only accounts for 16% of the sales channel. This also does not take into account sales from the Apple Store. Will Apple be able to maintain their dominance? We guess only time will tell, but so far so good.
Apple had a somewhat strong year in 2013. The company showed off the iPad Air, unveiled a new iPad mini with a Retina display, and its upcoming Mac Pro might just be the most impressive desktop the company has ever launched. And as its revenue showed during the period, customers seemed to like what the […]
The holiday shopping weekend, which comprised of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the first working day of the next week, Cyber Monday has finally ended. Customers spent almost $2 billion online on Thanksgiving and Black Friday alone. The latest data from analytics firm Localytics reveals that new iPad Air activations led all other tablets during the entire period. The firm recorded a 51 percent increase in activations of new iPads as opposed to the weekend prior to the holiday shopping weekend.
According to Localytics, the reasons why iPad Air activations surged this past weekend include the fact that the tablet is relatively new, having only been released on November 1st. Apple also gave away $75 gift card with each purchase, which was an incentive in its own right. The Retina iPad mini came in second place with a 26 percent surge in new activations. Third place in tablets was taken by Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7, a 23 percent surge in its new activations was recorded. Amazon’s Cyber Monday deal would definitely have helped, the company shaved $50 off the tablet’s price. The deal attracted quite a lot of customers, stock was sold out even before Cyber Monday ended. In smartphones, the iPhone 5c activations jumped 26 percent, Galaxy S4 saw a 20 percent surge and the iPhone 5s came in at third with 15 percent of new activations.
Over the holiday weekend a lot of retailers were running special deals and offering discount pricing on a wide variety of products, including latest gadgets such as the iPad Air. A woman based in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada researched for Black Friday deals and found Target’s deal the most compelling. So she bought her “new” iPad Air from Target but when she opened up the sealed box and powered up the tablet, it didn’t display a setup screen like a new iOS device normally does. Instead she ended up with a tablet that was already past the setup stage and was full of personal information, presumably of the previous owner.
Robin Crowley, who bought the iPad Air from Target, told CTV that the tablet had “hundreds” of pictures, the calendar was full of events and that there were three pages of apps that were already installed on the tablet. She also said that contact information of more than 207 people was present on the device. Robin believes that the tablet might have been used by a woman in California, it wouldn’t have been that hard to figure out given the personal information about the previous owner that was on the tablet. It could have been pretty dangerous if the information ended up in the wrong hands, it is unclear why the tablet was repacked and sold as new even though it had obviously been used before. Target Canada is yet to issue a statement on how exactly this happened. [Image via CTV]
The iPad can be used to do many things, such as take notes, play games, watch videos, surf the web, read up on recipes, and etc., but for the more artistic, the tablet is also a great tool for drawing, and that’s exactly what artist Kyle Lambert did with his finger, an iPad Air, and the Procreate app, all which when combined with Lambert’s artistic skills, produced an extremely realistic drawing of actor Morgan Freeman. In fact if you were to just look at the end result, you would not have guessed that it was a drawing, but rather a photograph, but if you have a few minutes to spare, watch the video above in which it shows Lambert’s process from start to end.
According to the video, it claims that it took about 285,000 brush strokes and 200+ hours for Lambert to complete the entire drawing. While we’ve seen some pretty impressive work done on tablets, we can only imagine that it has to be pretty tricky when it comes to using a finger, especially since fingers are bigger than styluses and don’t necessarily provide the same amount of accuracy and precision when it comes to fine details. In any case it’s pretty amazing; what do you guys think?
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After both new iPads were unveiled late last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company was on track for “an iPad Christmas.” Apple’s new tablets were expected to perform very well, and it appears that they just might have done so. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, a market research firm, has conducted a new survey and found that the iPad Air was most popular among U.S. customers last month, beating out the iPad mini with Retina display by quite a margin. (more…)
