Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 2, 2011
Dongle Adds USB, SD and MicroSD to iPad
Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit is a wonderful thing, although overpriced at $30. Not only can you use it to inject photos from your camera direct into the tablet’s brain, you can also hook up all manner of USB peripherals, from keyboards to microphones to thumb-drives.
MIC Gadget’s 3-in-1 adapter does all this, and more. It combines Apple’s two small, easy-to-lose widgets into one slightly larger, slightly harder-to-lose package, putting an SD card reader and USB port into one plastic box. The extra is a micrSD slot, which is actually all but useless: the only way it would work is if your cellphone saves its photos into a standard folder named “DCIM”, which is what will trick the iPad into reading them.
There’s one thing that MIC Gadget’s version had in common with the official Apple version: it costs $30. I’d stick with Apple’s overpriced kit: it works, you only have to carry the part you need and it is built to last. It is also available now, unlike this 3-in-1 solution, which ship after Christmas.
3-In-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit [MIC Gadget]
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Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on December 15, 2010
Crazy Apple Rumor: iPad with Camera Coming Soon
Today’s ridiculous Apple rumor comes from Apple Insider. The claim? That a new FaceTime-equipped iPad will be in stores in time for the holiday season, just six-months after the original launch. Bull.
That there will be an iPad with a FaceTime camera is certain, and it will probably be there in v2. But the idea that Apple would bring out a new model so soon after the first one is nonsensical in many ways. First, Apple can barely make enough iPads to keep up with demand. Only in the last few weeks have order-times dropped to a reasonable 24-hours, and with the iPad’s Chinese launch coming soon, it seems that Apple will continue to sell as many iPads as it can make. Introducing a new model so soon would be pointless.
Second, Apple runs its portable devices on a yearly update schedule. Every summer sees a new iPhone, every September a new iPod lineup. And while there is no precedent yet for the iPad, its safe to assume that it, too, will receive yearly updates. One year is long enough that early-adopters like me will be happy to buy every new model, and long enough not to piss off customers who feel that their toy has be obsoleted too soon. Remember the fuss about the iPhone price-drop? Imagine what would happen if a new iPad came out in a month or so.
Apple Insider’s source is “a person with proven knowledge of Apple’s future product plans” and says that:
A version of the tablet device with a built-in video camera and support for the new FaceTime video conferencing standard has already progressed to the advanced testing stages.
He also said that “there was an ambitious push inside Apple to verify the refresh for a possible launch ahead of this year’s holiday shopping season.”
Which brings me to a third point. Why rush an update into stores with just one tiny, incremental hardware change? It seems very unlikely that there will be a Retina Display in a new iPad so soon after launch. After all, if the prices of such a big, hi-res screen were already cheap enough to keep to the iPad’s $500 price-point, wouldn’t Apple have put them in there already? The same goes for an SD-card-slot, which I’m guessing will be in iPad 2.0. The price of the rest of the hardware will have to drop before these are added, and six-months into a product cycle seems to soon.
I say this rumor is nothing but a rumor. If you want a new camera-toting iPad, wait until April.
Apple to move aggressively on FaceTime, camera-equipped iPads [Apple Insider]
Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 13, 2010
Concept Case Adds Camera to iPad
The iPad clearly needs a camera. Maybe not the fancy 5-megapixel, hi-def-shooting camera in the iPhone 4 – after all, who wants to hold a big slab up to snap photos? – but something for grabbing basic images would make Apple’s tablet way more useful.
Unless you want to wait for v2.0 next year, a case would be the only way to add a camera, and that’s just how Chet Rosales has managed it with his iPad Cam-Case. The concept case has an ugly fat strip up the side which has a camera at its top. This camera flips in its mount to fire forward or back, depending on whether you are videoconferencing or just snapping pictures.
Just think for a moment how useful this would be. Apart from Skype (sometime the only time I still wake my MacBook at weekends is to chat to my parents) and the usual quick snapshots, the big-screen iPad is perfect for augmented-reality applications, scanning and organizing business receipts (I still didn’t do my expenses from this year’s CES. Maybe with this I would have) and general photocopy duties: Being able to snap pictures of, say, your mom’s best brownie recipe and read it back full sized would be great (and fattening).
Chet’s cam-case is a concept, but we see no reason why such a thing couldn’t work: Apple lets add-on GPS units talk to apps as if they were built-in, so why not this? Clean up that design and I’d buy one right away.
iPad Cam-Case Product Design & 3-D Renders [Coroflot via Yanko and Laorosa]
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 7, 2010
