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iPad 2 Now On Sale at Apple Online Store
In case you missed it, the iPad 2 officially went on sale online at the Apple Store at 1 AM PST today. Online sales may have started a good 16 hours before the iPad 2 arrives in physical retail stores, but if even if you order right now you’ll be facing a much longer wait than you probably would if you were waiting in line.

All models are currently available, but already wait times for shipping are listed at two to three weeks for every model save one: the black 16 GB 3G Verizon iPad ships in three to five business days as of this writing. Either the iPad 2 is doing amazingly well right out of the gate, or Apple put most of the available stock into its brick-and-mortar retail channels to ensure customers who braved lines don’t walk away disappointed.

A two to three week shipping timeframe for current orders puts the U.S. iPad 2 in line with Apple’s limited international release, set for Mar. 25. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but if demand is stronger than Apple anticipated, those of us outside the U.S. should prepare for an extended wait as Apple scrambles to fill existing orders. Apple is limiting customers to a maximum of two iPad purchases, likely an effort to staunch the flow of overpriced resales through eBay, craigslist and other similar channels.

Customers hoping to get their iPad 2 from other online sources can check out AT&T, which is offering the 16 and 32 GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad models for sale right now, with a listed shipping time of five to seven business days. Verizon doesn’t begin its online sales until 5 PM today, and other outlets like Best Buy and Walmart have yet to begin or detail plans for e-sales.

Did anyone already place their online order? If so, when did you order it and what was your expected shipping time?
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Apple TV Could Own the Living Room With a la Carte Content
Apple TV got live, HD streaming of MLB and NBA games with a software update yesterday. Ryan Lawler thinks this shows huge potential for bringing live TV to the platform, and I agree. But it also shows that Apple could offer specific, targeted content to audiences in a way that cable companies can’t.

MLB and NBA on the Apple TV are basically single-focus channels. They deliver exactly the content a user is looking for, and nothing more. This is already something Apple has experience with through the App Store. HGTVtoGO, for instance, provides on-demand shows from the home improvement and real estate-focused specialty channel for iPad owners to stream. Making similar apps available for the Apple TV would offer exactly what users are looking for in a cable alternative.

Right now, if you wanted a specialty channel focused on home renovations, you’d have to buy a package of various bundled channels, some of which might interest you, but most of which probably don’t. Cable companies often bundle some duds in with the good stuff to justify boosting prices. If Apple can provide app “channels” that offer users complete, customizable a-la-carte content selection, it could make much more of a dent in the living room entertainment market segment than it currently does.

Apple’s already paved the way for this kind of software on the Apple TV, both technically and by making it appear not much of a stretch to content providers from what they currently offer. Apple’s mobile devices offer users the chance to output content to the big screen, and the new HD mirroring feature introduced with the iPad narrows the gulf between apps on a mobile screen and apps on a TV screen further still.

If Apple can offer content providers a revenue model that looks better than what they currently get from cable providers (and they should be able to provide both paid and ad-supported systems, as they do in iOS), we might see more speciality content beyond sports join the fray very soon. I know all I need is an Apple TV Dog Whisperer app and I can leave behind my cable subscription without ever looking back.
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Why Square Has the Credit Card Industry on the Run
VeriFone's new "open letter" scare campaign proves that Square is going to for to the credit card industry what Apple has done for mobile computing — make cutting edge technology simple and accessible. Square allows iPhone owners to accept credit cards without monthly fees and contracts, and threatens the the entire credit card processing industry. I'm part of that threat as a small business owner and Square user, and apparently someone to be feared.

When I started my computer repair business eight years ago, I learned about the complex world of "merchant processing." Unlike the simplicity of cash or checks, credit cards pass through a variety of gateways and processors that sit between the customer's bank and the merchant's bank, and carry a complex set of fees and procedures that limit a merchant's ability to accept credit cards.

When I researched processing for my business, salespeople wouldn't quote exact fees. They wanted to see my last statement first, but they always promised they'll somehow save me money. They also required a credit check when applying. It felt like a used car salesperson looking at my bank statement before telling me how much the car costs. I had little choice but to just accept it as industry norm and sign the multi-year contract with a stiff early termination fee. Fees varied on each transaction depending on various unpredictable factors. This is why many businesses have minimums for transactions or give a cash discount.

This is still generally how the industry works. I even tried Intuit's iPhone solution and found out that while I didn't have a contract, my fees varied wildly from what was quoted and from what others were charged. Then I found Square, and I've been delighted every since. Simple statements and the exact same fee regardless of credit card type or issuer. No monthly fees either. I fell in love with my iPhone all over again, and customers loved how quickly and easily we as a business accepted credit cards.

Like VeriFone states, "anyone" can get a Square reader — as if this were a bad thing! VeriFone’s concern isn't about protecting customers, but rather about protecting VeriFone's business model. Square's system is actually more secure since the GPS location of the transaction is captured by Square. VeriFone's wild claim that providing free hardware somehow increases risk to consumers is incredulous. VeriFone believes that somehow consumers would be tricked by a rogue application using Square's free reader as a skimmer? There's already a skimmer built into the iPhone: the camera!

Verifone hasn't explained how Square's free reader is more dangerous than situations in which you hand your credit card to a complete stranger and they leave your view, such as in restaurants. In fact, if you believe VeriFone's fear-mongering, I implore you to follow your server (whom probably didn't have a credit check done on them) to the pay station at your favorite restaurant and demand that you personally inspect the credit card terminal and verify that in fact a skimmer is not attached, and rogue applications aren't installed. Let us know in the comments how that works out for you.

In reality, VeriFone's "open letter" is a de facto endorsement of the democratization of credit card processing being led by Square. It proves that with Square’s business model, the multilevel and multi-fee structure of the majority of current credit card transactions is the real thing that’s being threatened, not the security of the consumer.

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iPad Market Share Stabilizes as Post-PC Apple Products Surge
IDC reports that the iPad’s share of the tablet market fell from 93 percent to 73 percent on shipments of 10.1 million devices last quarter. For all of 2010, 18 million “media tablets” were shipped, with Apple accounting for 83 percent of that total. While a drop of 20 percentage points in market share might seem dramatic, it’s not; up until the third quater of last year, Apple had the market almost exclusively to itself, which is why market share numbers of nearly 100 percent reported at the time were largely meaningless.

Now, with genuine competitors entering the market, we’ll find out just how popular the iPad really is, and it doesn’t look like Apple has much to worry about. According to the IDC, the Samsung Galaxy Tab took 17 percent of the market in the last quarter, but there continues to be some debate about what that means. Going back to a conference call in January, Samsung executives stumbled on actual sell-through of the Tab to consumers, versus Tabs shipped to resellers. At the recent iPad event, Steve Jobs repeated the apparent misquote from Samsung suggesting consumer sales were quite “quite small.” The quote was actually, “quite smooth,” and yet Samsung has since been silent on both Tab sales and Jobs’ misquote.

Perhaps that’s why IDC expects Apple to maintain between 70 and 80 percent of the 50 million tablet shipments expected for 2011. However, that anticipated share may even be a little low, as IDC asserts it won’t be until the second half of the year that iPad competitors “hit the market in earnest,” leaving Apple with plenty of time to hook tablet buyers early on. As current competitors like the Tab and Xoom continue to struggle with mixed reviews, uncompetitive pricing, and now iPad 2, it’s an open question as to whether more competition along those lines will matter. If the iPad maintains market share at around 75 percent, it will mirror the iPod’s success in the media player market. But that’s only part of the story of Apple’s ongoing success.

During the last quarter, 92.1 million PCs were sold. Taking totals for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, Apple sold approximately 33 million post-PC devices during the same period. If it seems incongruous to compare Apple post-PC sales with PC sales, rather than other post-PC devices from companies like Samsung or Motorola, that’s exactly the point: No other single company compares to Apple when it comes to being ready for the transition from traditional computers to a range of handheld devices, “where the software and the hardware and the applications need to intertwine in an even more seamless way than they do on a PC,” as Jobs said.

PC sales are expected to be around 350 million in 2011. Apple will sell over 100 million post-PC devices. Apple isn’t just winning tablets; it’s winning computing in general.
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Can GarageBand for iPad Make You a Rock Star?

During the iPad 2 announcement event, I was possibly most impressed by the preview of GarageBand for iPad. With its so-called “Smart Instruments,” it seemed like it might be able to bring out the latent musical talent in even the most unmusical of users. GarageBand is live in the App Store now, so I decided to see if it could make good on its claims.

I am bad at music. I can’t sing, and friends consistently regret it when they manage to convince me to get up at karaoke and take a turn at the mic. I’ve tried playing guitar at many stages throughout my life, but I can barely manage finger exercises. Because of my experience with the real world guitar, I decided to try GarageBand’s Smart Guitar first.

To my intense surprise, I made a decent sounding snippet of a “song” in about 30 seconds. It isn’t fancy, and in fact, it’s probably incredibly derivative, but it sounds pleasant, and you might actually catch yourself humming along to it. I was able to make this so quickly because GarageBand for iPad does a pretty great job of offering a range of tools that cover the user spectrum from absolute novice to serious professional.

I created my brief track (see below) by not changing any of the default settings, including the type of guitar (acoustic), the length of the track, the song tempo or equalizer settings, or the key of the overall tuning. I just dialed up the Autoplay to 4 (each number represents a different strumming pattern) and tapped the chord I wanted to play whenever the included metronome hit four beats.

It may not be anything fancy, but now that I have this, I could loop it and sing over it, for instance, if I happened to be any good at that but not particularly good at playing an instrument. And for casual users just messing around for their own benefit and the benefit of their friends, this is much better than what I’d be able to come up with on even the desktop version of GarageBand. The touch interface just makes an absolute perfect match for what GarageBand is designed for, and it’s truly amazing to note the difference in the sound you produce depending on how hard you tap the virtual instruments. It really seems quite sensitive, and is an amazing use of the iPad’s built-in sensors.

I’ve only just begun to explore the various options available, and I’ve managed to create impressive-sounding riffs using drums, piano, guitar and bass. People might disagree with me on the definition of what constitutes “impressive,” but it certainly sounds better than anything I’ve been able to put together using GarageBand for OS X, Fruity Loops or any other digital audio program. And it beats the pants out of what I can do with real-world instruments.

Am I on my way to becoming a rock star? Well, I’ll probably never sell out Madison Square Garden, but I can definitely see jamming with a small group of iPad-wielding friends in my near future. And if I can accomplish as much as I did with GarageBand, I can’t even imagine what professional musicians might come up with. Kudos, Apple, for providing some of the most fun available on the App Store for under 5 bucks.
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GarageBand Hard Rock Guitar

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Updated, Universal iMovie for iOS Now Available
Apple released the updated version of its iMovie app for iOS devices Thursday. The new update makes the $4.99 app universal, so it can run on the iPad 2 in addition to the iPhone 4 and 4th generation iPod touch. Original iPad owners won’t be able to use the app, but it does introduce new features for existing iPhone and iPod touch users.

If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on an iPad 2 tomorrow, the new iMovie features a reworked interface that much more closely resembles the OS X version of the program. You get a media viewer, timeline and preview screen all in the same landscape layout. iPad 2 users also get precision editing tools, which allow you to zoom in on your video timeline to fine-tune transitions, and get a better look at your video’s soundtrack.

Users with Apple’s small-screened devices also get a few new tricks, including the ability to rotate your video in the editing preview screen, and other multi-touch gestures that expand your options for common editing tasks like zooming, splitting or trimming clips. There are also new themes, each of which contain new audio and video effects.

Apple also included better handling of photos in iMovie. You get automatic face detection for photo slideshow transition effects, and you can create text overlays for images, too. Soundtrack options are also better, letting you use three separate audio tracks which can use songs from your on-device iTunes library, or recorded directly from your device’s microphone. There are also a bunch of new sound effects and songs included in iMovie itself in the update. New sharing options should please social movie makers. You can now publish to Facebook, Vimeo, or CNN iReport right from within the app, and use AirPlay to push your video out to an Apple TV-connected display.

It’d be nice if Apple made this available for the original iPad, too, since I don’t see why you have to be able to shoot video on a device in order to be able to edit with it, but Apple clearly has its reasons (including providing a small upgrade incentive, possibly). Still, this is one of the apps I’m most looking forward to trying out on the iPad 2 when I eventually get one, though I’ll probably depend more on video shot on my iPhone 4 than on that filmed using the iPad’s rear camera. How about you?
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iPad and iPhone 4: Benchmarking the iOS 4.3 Update
Most people’s attention might be on the iPad 2 launching tomorrow, but iOS 4.3 brought some impressive improvements to existing hardware, too. I followed the same testing I’ve used when benchmarking updates before, only this time I applied it to the iPad. On both devices, I cleared all running apps from the multitasking menu and powered off then back on the device to ensure the there were no background tasks running to interfere with test results.

iOS 4.3 Update Tested

The only concern I had was that the benchmark apps were all iPhone apps, not true iPad apps, but it shouldn’t affect the overall results. I used GeekBench 2 ($0.99), Gauge Mathematical Tool (free), BenchTest ($0.99), SunSpider (free) and V8 (free) to test the performance of each OS version on the iPad. I performed all the tests on the same device, both before and after the upgrade.

Results for the Wi-Fi iPad

For the most part, the test results showed that performance was slightly better on iOS 4.2.1 than on iOS 4.3 on the iPad. But overall, the results were close enough to consider the upgrade to iOS 4.3 on the iPad simply worthwhile. That is, until you look at the JavaScript test results. Mobile Safari on the iPad was significantly faster on iOS 4.3. The only problem I ran into was that the Google V8 JavaScript tests would not complete on the iPad. The test would either hang or crash mobile Safari. I had a similar issue on the iPhone 3G when trying to execute the same tests.

Results for the iPhone 4

While I couldn’t upgrade my iPhone 3G, I could apply the latest update to my iPhone 4 for comparison to prior results and see how it was affected by by the upgrade. Unlike on the iPad, I’ve been maintaining benchmark results on my iPhone 4 for some time now, so I have some historical data to compare the latest tests to:

Over time, you can see where the performance of iOS on the iPhone 4 has slowly degraded with each release. 4.3 is no exception to this trend. Keep in mind that this performance degradation is not nearly as dramatic as that which occurred with the iPhone 3G. Note also the continual increase in performance noted in the JavaScript performance with each release. The 4.3 update is the most significant yet in that regard on the iPhone 4.

Conclusions

For what you get in the form of features withe the iOS 4.3 update, and for the almost insignificant general performance hit on the iPad, the upgrade is overall a great one. Any time you get more features for little or no degradation in performance is a good thing.
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iPad 2 Launch Details: How, When and Where to Buy
Apple has just issued a press release confirming details of the Pad 2 launch for tomorrow. The “next generation of its magical device” will be available at all 236 Apple Retail stores in the U.S. at 5:00 PM local time, as well as at a temporary retail location at SXSW. Apple’s online store will begin sales at 1:00 AM PT.

Those buying at local Apple Stores will have the option of a free Personal Setup service. Introduced last year with the original iPad, Apple Store employees will help iPad 2 buyers set up email, load apps from the App Store, and customize settings. While not as time consuming as iPhone setup, this won’t help shorten lines already lengthened by a lack of pre-orders and the evening launch time. Plan on being at an Apple Store early (lines are already forming at some locations).

If you can’t get to an Apple Store, Best Buy, Target, Walmart/Sam’s Club will also begin selling the iPad 2 at 5:00 PM local time tomorrow, and presumably will have an option for buying online, though online plans have not yet been formally announced for these outlets. Prospective iPad 2 buyers should be aware that historically Apple retail partners have had considerably less stock of new Apple products, so while lines might be smaller, iPads will sell out much quicker.

Those looking for a 3G iPad will have to choose between Verizon and AT&T, both of which will offer the iPad for sale at retail stores tomorrow at 5:00 PM local time. In addition, AT&T will be selling the iPad 2 online, but not Verizon. If you’re still trying to decide on which network, price favors AT&T on data plans at the lower end of the bandwidth cap spectrum, but Verizon offers more data at a better price:

If you haven’t already decided which iPad 2 you want to buy, now is the time to choose, because tomorrow you’ll be too busy trying to find stock to worry about making decisions.
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Apple Opening Temporary iPad 2 Store to Handle SXSW Demand
South by Southwest (SXSW) starts on Friday March 11, and the iPad 2 goes on sale on the same day. Apple has two stores in Austin, where SXSW is held, but when you’re hosting thousands of gadget-hungry geeks, two stores is not enough. That’s why Apple is opening a temporary store (via The Statesman) that will exist for only two weeks, beginning March 11.

The special store will occupy a 5,000 square-foot space (room for plenty of impatient bloggers and app developers) in the Scarborough Building at the corner of Congress Avenue and West 6th Street (see map below). Apple began preparing the space on Wednesday, so it probably won’t look exactly like a finished permanent Apple Store on the inside when it does open, although you never know what Apple is capable of in 48 hours.

View Larger Map
Just the other day. Stacey Higginbotham, who’ll be covering SXSW for GigaOM this year, was talking to me about how Austin would be an absolute mad-house with the iPad 2 launch falling on festival kick-off day. This new temporary store should alleviate some of that craziness, although only if Apple has enough stock to satisfy demand, which should be considerable given the tone of early iPad 2 reviews. You can bet that if it’s going to the trouble of building a giant temporary sales floor, it probably has a fairly healthy supply headed to Austin.

Will you be at SXSW? If so, will the new iPad 2 store be one of your first stops?
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