Rumors in Limericks: iPad 2 Media Event

The iPad 2 rumor du jour
Says the invites will go out the door
For Wednesday, March 2nd
Media will be beckoned
If true iPad 2, zut alors!

iBooks 1.2.1 Detects Some Jailbreaks, Disables iBookstore Purchases in Response

Tuesday February 15, 2011 12:14 PM EST; Category: iPhone
Written by Eric Slivka

Social Apples details a change employed in an update to Apple's iBooks application released last week that detects whether a device has been jailbroken using one of several tools, and if the device has been found to be jailbroken, refuses to open content purchased from Apple's iBookstore. Since using the greenpois0n jailbreak, I have been unable to open some of my iBooks that I rightfully purchased from the iBook Store. I thought it was a problem with the downloaded books, so I re-downloaded them. That didn?t work so I removed the iBooks from my iPhone and re-sync?d them from my computer... still no luck. Then I stumbled on a tweet from @comex tonight that really blew my mind.

According to noted jailbreak author @comex, whenever a user attempts to open an eBook purchased from the iBookstore and containing digital rights management code, the new iBooks tries to run unsigned or improperly signed binaries as a test to see if the device is jailbroken. If those binaries run successfully, the device is flagged as having been jailbroken and the eBook refuses to open.

Users of devices jailbroken by one of the methods that allows Apple's test binaries to successfully run who attempt to open content purchased from the iBookstore are met with the following error message: There is a problem with the configuration of your iPhone. Please restore with iTunes and reinstall iBooks.

Restoring a device from iTunes obviously removes the jailbreak, again rendering the device in compliance with Apple's standards.

Apple's tactics are of course drawing some scrutiny from jailbreak fans, many of whom are pointing to recent actions by the U.S. government to explicitly allow jailbreaking. Consequently, Apple's move to prevent access to legitimately purchased iBookstore content just because the user attempts to view it on a jailbroken device is seen as interference with legal usage.

Update: Reports have clarified that the jailbreaking detection mechanism has been present since iOS 4.0 and is part of the fairplayd DRM check. It has only recently been generating attention as newer jailbreak methods such as greenpois0n have opened up Apple's restrictions enough to trigger the blocks.

iPad versus MacBook Air: Which is right for you?

Both the iPad and the MacBook Air offer phenomenal hardware solutions, but they occupy distinct niches. A well-accessorized iPad may take you pretty far along the way in getting work done on-the-go, but in no way does it provide the full OS X experience. In cost as well as weight, a low-end MacBook Air is not all that different from an iPad, but it lacks the simple form factor and touch-based interface that makes the iPad a perfect lightweight reading and connectivity solution. Two tools, two form factors -- which one is right for you?

At this time, Apple's computing solutions consist of five families. They include:

Pocket solutions: small in form factor and big in music and gaming, these include the iPhone and iPod touch pocket-based devices.Tablets: perfect for on-the-go reading, media watching and lightweight connectivity, this family is represented by the iPad.Laptops: including the sleek MacBook Air as well as the more powerful (but larger) MacBook Pro, laptops provide mobility crossed with full OS X solutions.Desktops: ranging from the consumer-grade Mac mini through the incredibly able iMacs and topping out with the Mac Pro, these computers let you get your work done with as many monitors, hard drives and printers as your work demands.Other: a catch-all family for computers that don't fit into the other categories, this family is currently limited to the non-mobile TV-based Apple TV, which provides an iOS solution with a limited user appliance interface.

The iPad and MacBook Air belong to separate families, and yet they're often put up against each other for purchasing decisions, especially when considering the 11-inch entry MBA. Both provide mobile on-the-go solutions. Both are lightweight. Both are affordable. So why go for one over the other? It all comes down to use case.

When the MacBook Air first debuted, many people called it "Apple's netbook." It wasn't. The Air is a full-featured laptop with a proper keyboard and screen, despite its small size. Netbooks, for all that they looked like laptops, were used in a different way. Their incredibly low cost and mobile form factor was not geared to providing a full OS experience. Instead, they provided a simpler on-the-go way to keep in touch and perform light computing tasks. Netbook computing wasn't about work, it was about connectivity and experiencing media, the same tasks now performed by Apple's iPad.

The iPad is the perfect device for playing games, watching some shows, checking email, surfing the Web and reading books. It may not be the ideal device for any single one of those tasks, but it is excellent at doing all of them. Add in its incredibly slim form factor and amazing portability, and you're looking at what the netbook should have been from the beginning. Instead of shrinking a laptop and using 5 percent of a standard operating system, the iPad offers core netbook functionality with a physical package that beautifully matches those tasks.

What the iPad does not do well is work. Yes, you can get work done when the need arises, but the iPad was not designed for day-to-day business. It is, at its heart, a netbook with the core demands of light computing and connectivity guiding its use. If you want multitasking, multiple windows, professional software suites and so forth, then you want a proper computer running a full-featured OS. You want a laptop or desktop, not a pocket or tablet device, even if you still need mobility.

That's where the MacBook Air excels. It provides the same kind of beautiful form factor and portability that typifies the iPad while adding in the full OS X experience. When your demands are business, deadlines and mobility, the MBA is the solution. Yes, you can find iPad workarounds and viewers, but why settle?

The MBA offers exactly the same UI, the same software and the same power as other desktop installations, but it provides these on a lightweight laptop that travels in the car and to the coffee shop as well as into the boardroom and the classroom. It does this with a full hardware keyboard and trackpad, without iPad compromise.

In the end, it all comes down to you and your needs. The iPad is not a laptop, and laptops are not iPads. Your specific use case and your personal needs should guide you as to whether you want to cuddle up with an iPad or drink mocha with a MacBook. They are both powerful, affordable and usable solutions. Which one is right for you?

Best Apps for Your New iPhone

So you’ve gotten a new iPhone on Verizon’s network. Mazel tov. For those new to the iPhone ecosystem, you may want to check out our many guides to the various apps available for your new smartphone.

We have dueling iPhone app choices from technology columnist David Pogue and App Smart columnist Bob Tedeschi’s favorite apps, picks from former tech reporter and longtime Apple watcher John Markoff and selections from media columnist David Carr.

Check back often, as our Apps Index is continually updated with apps coverage from all corners of nytimes.com.

For example, Mr. Tedeschi likes:

SOUNDHOUND (FREE AND $5) You’ve probably heard of Shazam, the app that identifies songs. SoundHound is faster, and it offers a broader range of ancillary features. You can hum a tune into the phone and it’ll find the song, look up lyrics and run YouTube videos of song performances. The $5 version lets you identify an unlimited number of songs. Users of the free version get five tags monthly.

HIPSTAMATIC ($2) Scores of photography titles are in the App Store. Many are terrific, but not one matches Hipstamatic’s blend of simplicity, serendipity and art. At heart, the app is a filter that will unpredictably saturate, blur or discolor your images, among other things. The results are always surprising and often stunning. Add packs of lenses and film effects for $1 apiece.

EVERNOTE (FREE) The company advertises this as a personal digital assistant, and it’s an apt description. Evernote is a traveling notepad that synchronizes with desktop and browser software (also free). Use your iPhone to copy an image, take a photo, record a voice memo or jot down a note, and it appears on your computer (and vice versa). It also recognizes your written text, within limits. The free version stores a fair amount of information, but for $45 a year, you needn’t sweat the data limits.

ANGRY BIRDS ($1) A runaway favorite among the iPhone crowd, the app tests your ability to break down the barricades that protect green pigs. The weapon: flightless birds, launched by catapult. No wonder they’re angry. The game is easy to learn, yet challenging to play, with witty touches throughout. You can try a limited free version, but if you do, good luck resisting the paid version, with more than 800 possible scenes.

UK carriers discount iPads

 

Orange and T-Mobile in the UK slashed prices for iPad models with 3G connectivity to as low as GB£99 with a 24-month contract. In addition to boosting new business for these popular mobile carriers, the "limited time" offers appear to be a strategy for clearing inventory ahead of the highly anticipated launch of a next-generation device.

New customers qualify for a £99 iPad by signing up for an Orange data plan priced at £27 per month. Meanwhile, existing Orange and T-Mobile customers qualify for the discount with iPad data service starting at £25 per month. The monthly fee provides iPad users in the UK with up to 1 GB of "anytime" mobile data. The current offer represents price cuts of at least £100. Previously, subsidized pricing for the iPad with 3G started at £199 for existing customers and £229 for new customers.

A new 3G-enabled iPad without a carrier contract costs £541.

It's unclear whether these popular UK carriers -- that provide mobile services to approximately 37 percent of the UK -- have been informed of Apple's plans for a new iPad or are simply making an educated guess about the device's immediate future. The iPad was originally announced over a year ago in January 2010, and it went on sale in April 2010. Much like its cousins in the iPod and iPhone families, the iPad is expected to follow an annual release cycle. Many expect the "iPad 2" to go on sale before the end of April 2011.

The iPod Gets the Dick Tracy Treatment

Last September, at one of those periodic events where Apple offers up a new product with much fanfare, Steve Jobs invited the audience to join him in admiring the latest iteration of the iPod Nano. With the touch-screen interface associated with the iPhone and the iPad, the music player had shrunk to a square, weighing less than an ounce and almost comically wee. Some observers took it for a joke when Jobs said an Apple board member intended to sport the thing as a watch. Others didn’t laugh; they sprang into action.

Plenty used the gizmo’s clip to simply attach it to a sturdy watchband, and a few began devising brand-new bands specifically meant to accommodate a Nano. Soon the gadget blogs were pointing readers to wristband sources and offering reviews of the device not as a music player but as a time-teller. Today you can buy several wristbands manufactured by the companies iWatchz and Griffin Technology directly from Apple’s online store, each about $25. (The Nano itself is $150 or more, depending on memory capacity.) And most recently, a Chicago design firm set off a frenzy with its Nano-watch product proposal, hitting a new record on the site Kickstarter, where creative types can solicit donations to underwrite new projects.

The Nano-watch fad merges two well-established developments of the gizmo era. The first is that Apple’s various handheld devices have spawned ecosystems of spinoff and add-on products and accessories, from function-adding attachments to style-focused cases and covers. The second is that no matter how many devices we carry around that happen to have clocks built into them, the idea of the wristwatch soldiers on. And Apple seems to have anticipated — maybe even hoped — that its unnamed board member wouldn’t be the only person to use the thing as a watch: as an item on The Huffington Post noted at the time, the device came with “clock functionality” preinstalled. (“Clock functionality” seems to refer not only to the fact that the thing tells time but also that one of the choices for the default screen mimics an analog watch face.) Still, it’s curious to witness a sophisticated piece of technology wholly reimagined for use as a mere timepiece.

The case is best made by Minimal, a design firm based in Chicago that set the fund-raising record on Kickstarter, setting out to drum up $15,000 and instead attracting an astonishing $941,718. (Many of the donations amounted to preorders — any pledge of $25 or more entailed receiving at least one of the products as a “premium.”) In a promotional video, Scott Wilson, a designer who founded Minimal, directly acknowledges the declining need for wristwatches, which “have been reduced to a status symbol and a fashion accessory,” as he puts it. But, he continues, watch designers have long “chased” the notion of a “multitouch watch,” and the Nano’s interface and petite size almost accidentally resolve that quest.

And so Minimal offers two wrist-wearable bands. With the TikTok (preselling for $35 in January), you snap your Nano into a reinforced plastic case attached to a “high-grade silicone rubber” strap. (You can pop it out via an empty space on the back that happens to be the right size to reveal the Apple logo, and is referred to in the promo video as the “brand hole.”) The LunaTik has a two-piece, bolt-together compartment fashioned from “aerospace-grade aluminum” and is meant for someone less concerned with removing the Nano for nonwatch uses; it’s preselling for $70.

Despite the exciting sound of a “multitouch watch,” the truth is that the Nano’s functions are limited. It has a stopwatch and a timer, and the built-in pedometer syncs with the Nikeplus tracking system for runners. The clock face can be black or white. It’s true that the thing holds gigabytes of music, but this incidental fact is completely ignored in the Minimal video. And honestly, even in this stylishly done promotional piece, it’s distracting when the LunaTik appears on an actual wrist: it’s a little too big and a little too weird, and looks a lot more hyperprop than hyperpractical.

Although in fairness, it could also send another signal — that its wearer is tech-forward and inventive, the sort who embraces not only what’s new but also the latest way of using the new for something other than its stated purpose. The slightly off-kilter, blatant geekiness of the result underscores this message. Yes, the watchified-Nano wearer silently declares, I do think I’m Dick Tracy.

Adding a gizmo to the wristwatch formula doesn’t avoid the idea of the watch as status symbol or fashion accessory — it squares it. If there’s one business that matches fashion in its relentless efforts to make this year’s model seem dated and in need of prompt replacement, it’s technology; before long there will be another batch of gadgets, unveiled by Apple or some rival, that will no doubt render Nanos-repurposed-as-watches obsolete. But for the moment it’s a highly noticeable, and vaguely fun, tech-fashion statement. And it does add something new to the history of wearable clock functionality — an idea that, surprisingly, really has stood the test of time.

AT&T's old $49 iPhone 3GS gets a new ad to sell it (video)

It looks like someone's realized that simultaneous voice and web will not be enough to keep kids away from the Verizon iPhone. But where technical details fail to entice, perhaps a good deal will. Because, really, what's better (or at least as good) as retaining your current customers? Well, if you ask AT&T it's bringing in a slew of new ones by advertising that bargain-basement $49 iPhone 3GS (8GB). Feel free to check out the latest commercial after the break -- as is usually the case, this one is a non-stop thrill ride.