Jared Newman, PC World

Mar 5, 2010 12:50 pm

Apple gave us the answers to two very important questions today — when can you pre-order an iPad and when can you buy one — but left a lot to the imagination. iPad pre-orders start on March 12 for both the Wi-Fi-only and 3G-enabled models, and the tablet will be sold in Apple Stores on April 3. Here are the questions Apple didn’t answer:

How will Apple handle reservations?

Note that Apple is taking reservations for store pick-up. If reports of a supply shortage are accurate, Apple may not be able to fulfill everyone’s order on launch day. I’m curious how this will be handled, but I’m guessing customers will be told that the iPad is first-come, first-served on April 3.

When does the iPad ship for online orders?

Of course, it’d be great to skip the launch day madness and just have an iPad delivered to your door. The only thing is, Apple hasn’t said how long it’ll take for online orders to arrive. Having that information would make it easier to weigh your options.

Where else will the iPad be available? And when?

At an investor conference sponsored by Goldman Sachs last month, Apple’s chief operating officer, Tim Cook, said the iPad will be sold through a store-within-a-store concept at Best Buy, adding that other retail locations could be added over time.

So what other locations are on the table, and what’s the time frame for all this? Will we see iPads at Best Buy in April, October or 2011?

Why Wi-Fi first?

One thing that’s never been clear about the iPad launch is why people who want a 3G-enabled device will have to wait an extra month to get it. My best guess is that AT&T needs the extra time to prep the new Micro SIM cards that the iPad will use for 3G.

Does “late April” mean “early May” for 3G?

At Apple’s January 27 event, chief executive Steve Jobs said the Wi-Fi-only iPad would be available in 60 days. He was off by six days. The 3G iPad is supposed to arrive 90 days after the launch event - that’s Tuesday, April 27. Will the iPad 3G’s launch be pushed into May, and if so, how far?

Will iPad accessories be available at launch?

Apple’s pre-order press release didn’t mention accessories. The company will sell five: A keyboard dock ($69), a charge dock ($29), a case ($39), a camera connection kit ($29) and a dock connector to VGA adapter ($29, according to iLounge). Will these accessories be in plentiful supply at Apple Stores, and can they be pre-ordered online along with the iPad itself?

How many tablet apps will launch with the iPad?

App Store development reportedly exploded in January, presumably in response to Apple’s iPad announcement. But how many of those new apps will be designed specifically for the tablet? Developers may want to stick with the iPhone’s huge customer base rather than take a risk on apps that only work with the new device. Then again, tablet-specific apps would enjoy the spotlight for iPad owners. I want to know more about the apps.

Will magazines launch with the iPad?

We know Apple is positioning the iPad to be a major player in e-books, but what about magazines?

Apple hasn’t made a big deal of digital magazines, though the New York Times recently reported that publisher Condé Nast is prepping several of its magazines for the device. The clock’s ticking to have these multimedia concoctions ready for launch.

Where’s iLife?

One of the apps to debut with the iPad will be iWork, Apple’s software suite for documents, spreadsheets and presentations. But creative types were given the cold shoulder, with no apps announced for editing photos, videos or music.

If not Final Cut, will there at least be an iPad version of iLife for basic multimedia editing?

10 Hours Doing What?

Okay, so this question is perhaps the least related to the iPad’s launch itself, but I couldn’t help noticing the disclaimer in Apple’s press release: “Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.”

Come on Apple, at least tell us how much time you get watching video, compared to music, compared to e-books.

The unemployment rate held at 9.7 percent in February as employers shed 36,000 jobs, fewer than expected. The figures suggested the job market is slowly healing but that significant hiring has yet to occur.

The Labor Department wouldn’t quantify how the snowstorms that hammered the East Coast last month affected job losses. Economists said the storms probably inflated job losses but by less than predictions of 100,000 or more. Without the storms, the economy likely would have seen a net jobs gain in February for only the second time since the recession began two years ago.


Doubts about last month’s data arose because the snowstorms occurred on the same week that the government surveys businesses about their payrolls. Employees who couldn’t make it to work and weren’t paid weren’t included on those payrolls.

“It looks like the impact of weather was not as large as we thought it would be,” said Marisa DiNatale, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

Some economists said the data suggest that the job market is now pointed in the right direction and that the unemployment rate may have peaked. Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, said private employers will likely add jobs in March and continue to generate jobs for the rest of the year.

Still, hiring is likely to be weak for much of that time. The recession eliminated about 8.4 million jobs. And it takes 100,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with population growth and keep the unemployment rate from rising.

Even optimistic economists don’t expect employers to add much more than 150,000 jobs a month this year - and not until the second half of the year. Gault expects the jobless rate will remain above 9.5 percent by the end of 2010.

On Thursday, the House passed legislation giving companies that hire the jobless a temporary payroll tax break. Economists doubt, though, that it’ll create many jobs. President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are under pressure to address the jobs crisis in a congressional election year.

“The report today shows a labor market with no momentum,” said Larry Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “Employment is not growing. And even a generous interpretation of the snow’s impact suggests that the underlying trend is insufficient to drive down unemployment in the near future.”

Nearly 14.9 million Americans are unemployed - nearly twice the total when the recession began. The Labor Department revised its estimate of job losses for January from 20,000 to 26,000.

Hiring for the 2010 Census accounted for 15,000 jobs last month, the department said. The government expects to hire 1 million temporary census workers this year.

The February Census gains were countered by steep losses in local government jobs, particularly in education. Overall, government at all levels lost 18,000 jobs.

The stock market rose in response to the report. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 87 points, or about 0.8 percent, in late-morning trading. Broader stock averages also rose.

The jobs picture is gradually brightening at a time when the U.S. economic rebound is faring better than Europe’s. The 16 nations that use the euro currency scarcely grew in the fourth quarter, scratching out a 0.1 percent gain. Spain is suffering from 18.8 percent unemployment.

Still, the U.S. economy is lagging behind those in Asia. Asian economies such as China and South Korea largely escaped the downturn that followed the 2008 financial crisis. China’s economy grew a sizzling 8.7 percent last year.

The Labor Department’s report found that many U.S. industries that economists thought might be hardest hit - construction, retail, and hotels and restaurants - didn’t seem to be heavily affected. The construction industry lost 64,000 jobs, compared with an average of about 40,000 in the previous three months. Retail employment was flat and the leisure and hospitality industry posted a net gain of 7,000 jobs, the first increase since September.

The unemployment rate, which hasn’t risen since October, may be bottoming out. But economists caution that many of the unemployed have given up on their job searches and aren’t included in the jobless rate.

Many of those discouraged workers will likely resume looking as the economy improves. As hiring is likely to remain slow, the influx of jobseekers could boost the jobless rate.

When discouraged workers are included, along with those working part-time because they can’t find full-time work, the so-called “underemployment” rate rose to 16.8 percent last month from 16.5 percent. That reflects a jump in the number of involuntary part-time workers. The figure is below October’s all-time high of 17.4 percent.

Christina Romer, chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, said the report was “consistent with the pattern of stabilization and gradual labor market healing we have been seeing.”

One encouraging sign in the report: The number of long-term unemployed - those out of work for six months or more - fell for the first time since November 2008, to 6.1 million from 6.3 million. Still, about 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work six months or longer.

The average work week dropped to 33.8 hours from 33.9 the previous month. That’s a negative sign: Employers are expected to increase the hours for their current employees before hiring new workers.

Still, economists said much of the drop in hours worked was reported by construction workers and likely reflects the impact of bad weather. The department said more than 5 million people worked fewer hours last month because of the snow.

Job losses have moderated sharply in the past year. The economy shed an average of about 700,000 jobs in the first three months of 2009.

New hiring is desperately needed after the worst recession since the 1930s. The economy grew at a 5.9 percent rate in the October-December quarter last year, the fastest pace in six years. But most economists expect the pace of growth to slow to about 3 percent in the current quarter, which won’t be fast enough to quickly bring down the jobless rate.

Here’s an unusual phone design. It has curves in all the wrong places. It has a fully curved display, which is kind of cool, but not very practical. The Energy 888D is unusual for sure.


We don’t know very much about it, but whats to know? It has curves and a pink finish. That should be enough incentive to stay away. The clip on the back will make sure that it is always with you, since it’s not pocket-friendly.

More than 10% of smartphone users connected to a social network in January, up almost 5 percentage points from a year ago.

By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek

A rising number of smartphone Web browsers are being used to access social networking sites, an indication of how the online services are extending beyond the PC.


“Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web,” Mark Donovan, senior VP of mobile at ComScore, said in a statement. “Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser.”ComScore measured smartphone and other mobile phone use only through the use of the devices’ browsers. The numbers do not include access by the nearly 6 million phone users who only use mobile applications.

In looking at mobile phone users as a whole, Comscore found that more than one in 10 used the device’s browser to connect to a social network, an increase of almost 5 percentage points from a year ago.

More than 25 million Facebook users accessed the site via a mobile browser, which was more than double the number of MySpace users. Facebook’s mobile phone audience has exceeded MySpace’s since February 2009, three months before Facebook surpassed MySpace as the leading social network on the Web, according to ComScore.

Twitter, which has experienced tremendous growth in both mobile and PC-based visitors, attracted 4.7 million mobile users in January.

The influence of smartphones as an access point to the Web is growing in the United States as more people buy the devices. At the end of 2009, 17% of mobile phone users had smartphones, up from 11% at the end of 2008, according to ComScore.

In January, almost one in three smartphone users accessed social networks with their mobile browsers, up more than 8 percentage points from a year ago, Web metrics firm ComScore said Wednesday. The number of cellular phone users in general connecting to Facebook through a mobile browser grew 112% from a year ago, while Twitter experienced a 347% jump.

By Chris Foresman

Apple came out swinging Tuesday against smartphone maker HTC, filing a federal lawsuit and a complaint with the International Trade Commission, both alleging that HTC’s phones violated numerous Apple patents. Some believe the suits are the beginning of a protracted legal battle against Google’s Android OS, and analysis of the patents in question suggest Apple’s two-pronged approach may be successful, though HTC says it’s ready to fight back with its own patents and with Google in its corner.


The best analysis we have seen of the patents themselves comes from Engadget’s Nilay Patel who, in a previous life, was an IP attorney. Patel notes that the older patents are more directly related to operating systems and only one could be said to apply to HTC’s Windows Mobile devices while the rest are directed at Android. The patents referenced in the federal lawsuit are newer and have yet to be tested in court. Still, Patel believes that at least some of the claims of the various patents seem legitimate on the surface.

Needham & Company analyst Charles Wolf also thinks Apple’s chances are good, and believes Apple is doing the right thing by filing the suits. “Apple invested heavily and imaginatively in designing a unique, disruptive smartphone,” Wolf wrote. “In our view, the company has every right to protect the iPhone’s unique features.”

The strategy is also likely to merely start with HTC, with Apple eventually going after other Android-based phone vendors as proxies to combat Android. “It clearly involves some form of litigation strategy of picking off the weaker members of the herd first,” Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School, told The New York Times. “They can always add Google to the suit later on.”

For its part, HTC isn’t planning on going down easily. The company said that it had been building mobile devices for 13 years in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. “So HTC is not only a mobile technology innovator, [we] also hold a large number of patents,” according to the filing.

Google won’t sit idly by while its hardware partners are sued by Apple, either. “We are not a party to this lawsuit,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch. “However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it.”

It’s hard to say how the whole thing will play out. Patent cases often take several years to go through the courts, though Apple has a large enough war chest to settle in for the long haul. Experts say that 90 to 95 percent of such cases are often settled out of court.

Still, not everyone is convinced that Apple’s strategy is a wise one, and many are concerned this battle is another example that the US patent system-especially where software patents are concerned-is fundamentally broken. “The social value of patents was supposed to be to encourage innovation-that’s what society gets out of it,” MIT professor of technology innovation Eri Von Hipple told the Times. “The net effect is that they decrease innovation, and in the end, the public loses out.”

Apple typically uses patents as a defense against lawsuits from others, so the fact that it has gone on the offensive against Android suggests that the problem may have a connection with the growing competition between Apple and Google. It may also explain Steve Jobs’ rather brusque comments yesterday. “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Jobs said in a statement.

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