One fun and free way to personalize your iPad is with a wallpaper background. There are thousands of wallpapers out there, so to help you narrow down the choices we’ve hand-picked 15 fabulous options that are available to download — for free — from trusted websites.
Twitter has released the first major update to its Twitter for Mac client, adding support for multiple windows and better usability. The update features some minor tweaks to the user interface, including a more traditional application title bar
Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on five particular stories of interest today. Nokia Enters Major Strategic Partnership With Microsoft Nokia and Microsoft have officially entered a strategic alliance that makes Windows Phone 7 Nokia’s primary smartphone platform
Starbucks locations in Toronto and Vancouver are beckoning passersby with an interactive window display promoting Tazo Tea. The touch-sensitive screens let curious pedestrians guide a hummingbird, dragon or butterfly on a journey to find the teas’ ingredients. The video above shows how the display was executed. This execution, along with a recent one at an Apple Store , show that advertising innovations aren’t just happening online, but, increasingly, in areas that used to house stagnant signage.
After some disappointing initial sales, magazine publishers are looking to offer their own digital storefront for tablet-based magazines, just as Apple is set to announce a subscription model for tablet and iPad-based magazines, according to two separate reports. According to The Wall Street Journal [subscription required], Next Issue Media, a joint venture between five media companies, will launch a service for distributing digital publications on tablets. The story quotes Morgan Guenther, NIM’s chief executive, who adds that NIM will likely go live with two titles from its four magazine owners — Conde Nast, Hearst Corp and Meredith Corp — by the summer. The offerings could include versions of newspapers from News Corp, the fifth member of the consortium. The service will initially be Android-based, but eventually will be platform-agnostic. The main benefit to publishers, according to the article, is that they would be able to recognize current print subscribers and offer them special deals. Meanwhile, Adweek reports that Apple is close to announcing a magazine subscription model for the iPad. The story quotes an unnamed publishing executive who says, “People are pretty confident” that Apple and magazine publishers have ironed out an agreement. Until now, iPad-based magazines had only been available as single copies. The move comes as publishers report weak end-of-the-year sales for the iPad editions of their magazines. Vanity Fair , for instance, sold 8,700 digital editions of its November issue, down from 10,500 for its August issue. Wired’ s digital edition sales fell from 100,000 in June to 22,500 in October and November. The lack of a subscription option in the App Store is often cited as a cause for their collective decline. Since single-copy prices of $3 to $4 are seen as a barrier, the notion of a “Hulu for magazines” has been bandied about for some time.
One week ago, the entire Beatles catalogue was made available on Apple’s online music store iTunes. Now, the numbers are in: according to Billboard, the Beatles sold more than 450,000 albums and over two million individual songs in the first week on iTunes. The best selling album in the U.S
Acer is placing its bets behind Android with the announcement of a 7-inch tablet, a 10.1-inch tablet and a 4.8-inch smartphone based off of Google’s mobile OS. The unnamed tablets sport 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, an eye-popping 1280
With the release of iOS 4.2.1 now complete, Apple is reportedly focusing on launching iOS 4.3 by mid-December. It will bring not only bug fixes, but could be the update that brings app subscriptions and Rupert Murdoch’s iPad-only publication to millions of iOS devices. Apple is set to reveal iOS 4.3 next month, according to Macstories . According to its sources, Apple has been planning a mid-December release of the new version of iOS for a while now, but because iOS 4.2 came out late (due to various bugs), iOS 4.3 could be late as well. Still, the release of iOS 4.3 is pegged for December 13. Not only that, but according to John Gruber at Daring Fireball , Apple will be holding a December 9 press event to announce the update. Apple doesn’t hold press events for simple iOS updates though, so if the rumors are true, then Apple is cooking up something big for iOS 4.3. It almost certainly looks like that will be app subscriptions. That would give app developers and especially publishers the ability to charge for daily, weekly, monthly or yearly updates or editions for their apps. That leaves us with the rumors surrounding The Daily , News Corp’s “newspaper” built for (and only for) tablets. As we reported previously , Apple and News Corp are working on an iPad-only publication that will cost $0.99 per new edition. It reportedly already has 100 journalists on the project, led by former New York Post managing editor Jesse Angelo. Since that report, Murdoch has confirmed the existence of The Daily in an interview with Fox Business , but didn’t reveal any other details. That’s okay though, because it looks like Murdoch is saving the real story for the December 9 event, where he will most likely reveal The Daily on stage with Steve Jobs. Because iOS 4.2 was released several weeks late, it’s possible that iOS 4.3 and The Daily will launch a little later than expected
Apple released iOS 4.2 on Monday, managing to put the update in users' hands within the month of November. Some users, however, had expected the completed iPhone, iPad and iPod touch update to be released earlier this month. The delays were reportedly due to bugs that required fixing. The latest release of Cupertino's mobile device operating system incorporates several new features, including AirPlay and Game Center for iPad. It also incorporates the Find My iPhone feature, which is now available free.
Apple's expected to release a new version of the iPad sometime next year, sparking endless speculation about when exactly it will arrive and what features it will tout. Although the original iPad was launched last April, some predictions posit the next iteration will arrive in January, though others give themselves some leeway by forecasting it'll be released sometime in the first quarter of 2011.