Apple may finally discontinue the iPad 2 in the "near future"
One of the more surprising and disappointing parts of the latest Apple iPad announcement back in October was that Apple was keeping the almost three-year old iPad 2 on the market and pricing it even with the brand new iPad mini Retina. But, new rumors make it sound like Apple is almost ready to discontinue the iPad 2 in the "near future".
The iPad 2 has seen pretty low sales recently, and people supposedly close to the situation are saying that Apple is planning to seriously cut production of the iPad 2. It shouldn't be much of a surprise that the iPad 2 has been selling badly. If you were choosing between a three-year old tablet for $399, a brand new iPad mini Retina at the same price, or an iPad Air for just $100 more, which would you choose?
The decision to keep the iPad 2 in the lineup made a bit of sense, because it meant the original iPad mini wasn't the only non-Retina tablet in Apple's lineup; and, it also made the $100 price bump to the iPad Air look much more attractive, making an upsell much easier for Apple. It is unclear what the plans are exactly. It is possible that Apple will simply cut production and not take the iPad 2 off the market, or it may replace it with the iPad 3 or 4.
Angry Birds celebrates over 1 billion downloads, teases a new game
This latest piece of Angry Birds news shouldn’t surprise no one – the game celebrates today its 1 billionth cumulative download.
Rovio has even prepared a short video to express its gratitude to fans for the support its given for the franchise. Of course, with this milestone, there are even more staggering statistics. Angry Birds players have spent 300 million minutes of game play per day on 266 combined game levels launching 400 billion birds. And in the process 44 billion stars were collected.
Check out the video and pay close attention at the end.
Did you see it? Yep, Rovio is teasing a new game in their catalog.
After analyzing the footage, 148Apps might have deciphered it. Their educated guess is that Rovio might’ve teamed up or even bought the blockbuster iPad game Casey��s Contraptions and the studio behind it. Check the Source link for more information.
Acer CEO advises Microsoft against making tablets, tells them they're no good at it
Acer’s CEO JT Wang has some words of wisdom for Microsoft and they involve telling them not to enter the tablet market, which is exactly what Microsoft plans to do with the Surface.
While everyone assumed that Microsoft’s decision to enter the hardware manufacturing business will not go down well with their OEM partners, these companies were strangely quiet initially. That is until now, when the reality of the situation seems to have slowly dawned upon them and Acer is the first one to take a shot at Microsoft.
According to Wang, Acer has told Microsoft to think the decision over as it will create a huge negative impact for the ecosystem and that the other brands may take a negative reaction to this move. Wang also thinks that this is not something Microsoft is good at so they should think about this twice.
What Mr. Wang and perhaps even other OEMs are failing to grasp is that Microsoft may have had to take the drastic step of manufacturing its own hardware because companies like Acer are incapable of doing a good job. It would have been very easy for Microsoft to go to an OEM like Acer and get them to manufacture the Surface tablets for them. But a lot is resting on the success of the Surface for Microsoft and the fact that they don’t trust other OEMs to do this important job for them clearly shows that Microsoft doesn’t think others are capable of doing the job right, something they would have learned after years of working with them.
Maybe Mr. Wang should take a look at some of Acer’s own products before telling others they are not good at something.
Adobe's having an apps-plosion, announces Photoshop Touch and five other apps for tablets at Adobe Max 2011
Yesterday, at its Adobe Max 2011 keynote, Adobe unveiled a whole family of Touch Apps designed to help creative minds throughout their design processes when they are on the go. Leaded by Photoshop Touch, the Adobe Touch Apps are going to be available for Android tablets as well as iPads alike.
The full Touch Apps family includes: Photoshop Touch, Debut, Proto, Collage, Ideas and Kuler. Let’s break them down and see what each of them is good for.
Adobe Photoshop Touch
The touch version of Adobe’s famous Photoshop software will work pretty much the same way as its bigger desktop brother. You can create layered images or edit and add effects to already existing ones.
A particularly nice feature is the Scribble Selection Tool. With its help users can tell Photoshop with just couple of scribbles which part of the image to keep and which to delete. If for example you’d like to remove the background from a portrait of a beautiful girl, you just scribble over the girl, which tells the application that this is the part you want to keep (obviously), and then scribble over the background to remove it.
You can also import images from the gallery, Google, Facebook and the Creative Cloud. Naturally, there’s also the option for sharing your creations on Facebook for your friends to admire, or laugh at. Either way – fun times are ensured.
Here’s an introductory video for Photoshop Touch from Adobe themselves. You can find more Touch App demonstrations on the Adobe website.
Adobe Ideas
Ideas covers the vector-based drawing in the Touch Apps family. You can draw with either a stylus or a finger, choose color themes and use layered images. The final results can be then imported to Adobe Illustrator of Photoshop for further adjustments without breaking too much sweat.
Adobe Debut
Adobe Debut is the presentation tool in the Touch Apps’ lineup. With Debut users can open tablet-compatible versions of Creative Suite files and present them to clients or friends. Furthermore, the ability to add notes and drawings on top of the presented work makes it easy to add feedback.
Adobe Proto
Adobe Proto is a particularly useful applications, because it allows for creating wireframes and prototypes of mobile and desktop websites. The app takes advantage of CSS grid frameworks, as well as jQuery and WebKit. Proto will be initially available for Android.
Adobe Kuler
Adobe has finally made it’s existing Kuler website into an mobile application. Adobe Kuler lets you create color swatches from existing images and browse color swatches from other users, which can later be used in different designs. Users can rate and comment on different swatches, which enables for browsing by different criteria like rate and views.
Adobe Collage
And finally, Adobe Collage is there to help you refine ideas and concepts by mixing different drawings and images into concept “mood boards”, as Adobe calls them. The mood boards are not constrained by size and can also accommodate text, photos and color themes.
Creative Cloud is Adobe’s way for letting people share and view files whether on the go or through a desktop computer. Availability and pricing, will be announced in November, but Adobe has revealed that it’ll offer 20GB of free storage, which is quite nice. Here’s what Adobe has to say about its new service:
Adobe? Creative Cloud is a major new initiative that radically redefines the content creation process. Adobe Creative Cloud will become the focal point for creativity, where millions can access desktop and tablet applications, use essential creative services, and share their best work.
All Touch Apps will cost $9.99 and will be available some time in November. Unfortunately, Apple lovers, iPad availability will be announced early next year, so Android users will enjoy the Touch Apps at first. Can’t wait to try some of them. Which one do you fancy most?
Oh, and by the way, here’s the especially cool opening of the Adobe Max keynote. Make sure you watch it!
