iPad - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

  • Apple ads cited in overheating iPads lawsuit

    A trio of iPad owners who sued Apple last summer because their tablets overheated have added Apple's own television and Web commercials to their ammunition, court documents show.

  • Android security under scrutiny

    Apple has done enough security-wise with its iPhone and iPad to make many CSOs comfortable with the mobile devices connecting to corporate networks, but Google's Android still has a ways to go.

  • Netbooks vs iPads - can they coexist?

    The term "disruptive", a common buzzword in tech journalism, is typically used to describe something that jars people out of existing ways of doing things, and provides them with both new ways to do the old things and new things to do. Weather-beaten as the expression might be, it fits when talking about two products that took personal computing by storm over the past couple of years: the iPad and the netbook.

  • iPad lures business users

    Apple's iPad tablet is being used by doctors, lawyers and businesspeople to ease their workloads, but many believe the popular touchscreen device can't yet replace a laptop for functions such as writing long documents.

  • Has Microsoft Blown the Timing on Tablet PCs?

    When CEO Steve Ballmer gave a quick peek at an HP Slate running Windows 7 at CES in January, Microsoft seemed prepared for battle against the iPad, which, at the time, had not even been announced yet.

  • iPhone in the enterprise: 5 shortcomings

    Sightings of iPhones and iPads inside companies are becoming more common, to the chagrin of those IT departments that prefer the enterprise-class features of the BlackBerry. One of the reasons: Apple has cleared some of the more daunting security hurdles, according to Forrester Research.

  • Apple attacks its developer lifeblood

    I supported Apple CEO Steve Jobs when he trashed Flash and banned it from the iPhone's and iPad's iOS. I agreed with him when he was tough on the website that purchased (probably illegally) a lost iPhone 4 prototype. But Apple has crossed the line at least twice last month, prohibiting app developers from using AdMob and Google's advertising services on the iPhone and censoring sexual content in iPhone and iPad apps.
    Taken together, Apple's moves threaten to deprive developers of needed income, and they place Jobs & Co. in the role of dictating what types of content users will access on their own hardware. Neither action is good for Apple's business and they smack of monopolistic bullying.
    So how did Apple, which ran the famous ad of a hammer-throwing rebel smashing an image of Big Brother, become a Big Brother wannabe?
    Late last year, Google purchased AdMob, the leading seller of ads inside iPhone apps. The $750 million acquisition raised antitrust concerns, but the Federal Trade Commission decided that the deal isn't likely to harm competition in the emerging mobile advertising market.
    No sooner was the deal done, then Apple turned around and used its monopolistic power against AdMob and developers who work with it. ("Monopoly" is not a dirty word. Remember: It is not illegal to have a monopoly; it is only illegal to use that power to unfairly restrain trade.)
    "Apple proposed new developer terms that, if enforced as written, would prohibit app developers from using AdMob and Google's advertising solutions on the iPhone," AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui wrote in a blog post. "Let's be clear. This change is not in the best interests of users or developers."
    Interestingly, the new language in the developer terms makes it OK for some developers to build ads inside iOS apps, but not others. Here is what it says: "An advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent." And only "independents" have that right.
    Sure, Google is Apple's competitor in the mobile ad space, and there is a limit to how much cooperation it is reasonable to expect. However, given Apple's grip on the platform, locking out a competitor could well be seen as a restraint of trade.
    Suppose Microsoft made it impossible for a competitor to place ads within an application that runs on Windows? It would be denounced as outrageous. And what about the promise by Jobs, who last month said earlier, "We are not going to be the only advertiser. We are not banning other advertisers from our platform?"

  • Cisco tablet not an iPad wannabe: Chambers

    Cisco Systems' new Cius tablet for business collaboration will remain a business tool and will not become a consumer-market competitor to the iPad or Kindle, Cisco CEO John Chambers told a press roundtable at the Cisco Live conference in Las Vegas last week.

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