Rumors abound that the new iPad 3 will be released sometime next week—and that the little tablet that could will be called the “iPad HD.”

iPad 3 in “Glorious HD”

MacRumors, whose logo is “news and rumors you care about,” claims to have a display in their possession that appears to be for the new iPad 3. It is said to look like the iPad 2 display to the naked eye. However, when looked under the microscope, the purported iPad 3 display has pixels that are a quarter the size of the pixels in the iPad 2.

What this means is that a cluster of 16 pixels (4 x 4) on this ‘iPad 3’ is exactly double the resolution of a cluster of 4 pixels (2 x 2) that occupies the same amount of real estate on the iPad 2. Therefore, it is safe to bet that the new iPad 3—if MacRumors did in fact get a hold of an actual iPad 3 display—will have a remarkable resolution of 2048 x 1536, twice that of the iPad 2, which is 1024 x 768.

Read More

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a 191-page file on Apple’s iconic visionary, Steve Jobs. The file contains information that was compiled as part of a background check to determine if Jobs was an appropriate candidate for a presidential appointment in 1991. Jobs eventually held the position from May 1990 until May 1993.

The file basically consists of interviews with ex-employees and colleagues, documents on specific FBI investigations (including a bomb threat in 1985 that was used in an extortion plot), and also a “questionnaire for sensitive positions” filled out by Jobs himself.

In the FBI file, Jobs is described as a “driven” man, as being “stubborn,” “deceptive,” and able “to twist the truth and distort reality”. Would anyone really expect anything different from an individual that helped build the largest computer manufacturing company in the world?

Despite what at first seems like damning testimonials, what emerges is the image of a truly complex individual. Indeed, referring to his position as Apple director, one of the interviewees states that “honesty and integrity are not required qualities to hold such a position.” Would this also apply to the government position?

Read More

Apple for the Teacher

Thursday, January 19^th, Apple hit “The Big Apple” with a Guggenheim Museum presentation of revolutionary new educational apps.  It wasn’t that many years ago that electronics were forbidden in the classroom.  Now – if Apple has anything to say about it – they’ll be a requirement and a way to enhance the average student’s educational experience.

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Phil Schiller, unveiled three, new, free apps:  the iTunes U, iBooks Author, and iBooks 2.  Each one of these applications promises to take a big step toward revolutionizing education – a vision that was important to Apple’s late co-founder and chairman, Steve Jobs.

The iTunes U platform could be the best “apple” ever given to a teacher, allowing educators the ability to share course materials, resources, and other information with ease never before known.  Change the date of a test, share a link to a website that ties into course material, add an assignment – it’s all handled instantly and easily, with students receiving all the information on their iPads.  iTunes U even allows teachers to upload books from iBooks Author – the next app on Schiller’s educational agenda.

Read More

If you’re ever looking for an example of competition resulting in innovation and, ultimately, improved consumer products — you need look no further than the technology marketplace, and a little story about two rivals by the names of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  There’s no questioning the genius of either man — but it’s also clear that, without the rivalry they shared, neither Jobs nor Gates would have achieved quite as highly.  Steve Jobs, in particular, took some painful lessons learned from his nemesis and turned them into pure Apple gold.  To understand that ironic cause and effect, you have to go back to the beginning…

Back in the eighties, in the true infancy of desk top computers, the field was crowded with companies attempting to gain market share.  At one point Atari was a market leader, with their box-like 16K contraption that offered nothing more than the most basic programming.  There was also the Commodore 64 – Atari’s main competitor.   But, as the industry started to grow,  two main players started to emerge.  One was a company called “Apple,” with its self-contained, giant-toaster-looking computer built in Steve Jobs‘ garage.  The other was a little company started by a Harvard drop out named Bill Gates.   Gates had shrewdly purchased the rights to something called DOS at the time, and then wrote a new program called Windows that made operating a personal computer much more simple for the non-technical user.

Steve Jobs had his fans

Right from the start, Steve Jobs’ company had its loyal — some would even say ”fanatical” –  user base.   Mac users were as die-hard then as they are now.  But back then, Apple was engaged in a life-and-death struggle to gain market share against this nerdy kid in Washington state who had a company called Microsoft.  The future of computing was at stake — and each of the two major players in the game was determined to win.

In retrospect, Steve Jobs and Apple really didn’t stand a chance.  Microsoft and Windows was licensed out to just about every major hardware company on the planet.  The result of that was that there were essentially two types of computers – Apple’s proprietary devices,  and every other computer by every other manufacturer in the world, all of which were running Windows and DOS.

For the consumer though,  what really made the computer was the software and programs you could run on it.  Computer gaming was a new trend back then – after all, this was a generation that had grown up in seedy mall arcades across North America.  It was an exciting development when you could suddenly play in your own living room, on your own computer.  The only  question was:  which computer would you buy?

In that dark time before the Internet, downloading, and file sharing, software was something you bought from a store.   And when you were deciding which computer to buy — your decision was largely influenced by how much software it was compatible with.  On one little wall in the corner, you’d see the Apple-compatible software – and, then, taking up ten shelves and four aisles of floor-to-ceiling space, you would see the software dedicated to Windows programs.    This is where Windows had an insurmountable lead over it’s main competitor – a lead that it has never given up.

It didn’t take a degree in psychology to know that Steve Jobs was not a happy camper when, in 1985, the company he created was wrestled away from him in the boardroom of Apple Inc.    Jobs went on to found Pixar, the company responsible for such huge hits as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.   He also created a new computer company called NeXT which was acquired by Apple in 1996 – a move that brought Jobs back into the near-bankrupt Apple organization.  As he took over the post of CEO and Overall Supreme Warlord – Jobs took those painful lessons he learned from Microsoft and turned them to his advantage.

Steve Jobs Applies the Lessons Learned…

It started with a new service called iTunes – introduced at the same time as a new portable music player called iPod; a handy little device that could hold 1000 songs in your pocket.   Then, in 2007, Apple announced that it was getting into the cell phone business and the world caught its first glimpse of the iPhone.   Shortly after that, Apple introduced the App store – a giant online software retailer where Apple was the only kid on the block.   It signalled the end of one era and heralded the beginning of another — an era where Apple no longer had to play second fiddle to Microsoft and Windows.  Steve Jobs had learned the hard way that no matter how cool or smart the device was – the real key to consumer loyalty was in having the software applications to make that device an indispensable element of the owner’s life.

Twenty years earlier, Jobs had learned from Bill Gates that no matter how smart your computer was – what made people buy it was the programs they could run on it.  Applying that knowledge, he built the entire Apple mobile empire on software that was only compatible with Apple devices, such as the iPhone, iPod , and iPad.

It’s a lesson that other companies may be learning right now — a lesson that is bringing Blackberry creator Research In Motion to the brink of bankruptcy, and a lesson that many new players in the Tablet and Smart Phone industry will learn as they fail commercially.  As the school of hard knocks taught Steve Jobs, it’s ultimately the software programs that make any device a must-have item.