iPad Mini Introduced

Apple today introduced the iPad mini. It has a 7.9 inch display and comes in Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + Cellular. The price starts at $329.

• 7.9-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit Multi-Touch
  display with IPS technology
• 1024-by-768 resolution at 163 pixels per inch (ppi)
• Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating

The rest of the tech specs are here.

 

Apple Updates iPad iWork Apps

After the big release of Mountain Lion, the new operating system for Macs, Apple updates some iPad apps to make them compatible with the newer features of Mountain Lion.

A big new feature is the ability to work with iCloud to make presentations automatically available to your Mountain Lion Mac and updated Keynote 5.2 for Mac. If you have questions about using Keynote for the iPad, visit Apple’s support page.

Pages too has been updated to work with iCloud and Mountain Lion. If you need help with using Pages for the iPad, you can go to this support page.

E Textbook Push – 5 Year Goal

The FCC, US Dept. of Education and representatives of various textbook publishers were involved with a discussion about how to develop a way to put e-textbooks in K-12 schools within 5 years.

Cost estimates from Project Red show that the “new learning” will be less expensive.

Several actions to meet the transition goals were established. Those include: savings, push for states to transition to digital textbooks, a commission to develop the 5 year blueprint, and challenge to develop market ready products to present to the White House in the fall of 2012.

 

Pressure Stylus on the Way

Jot Touch, a new pressure-sensitive stylus, debuted at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas this week. The prototype contains a blue tooth antenna, a spring tip and software to allow the pressure to translate into line thickness.

You can read more from the Macworld article.

To read more about the manufacturer, check out their home page.

Battery Percentage Indicator

How do you get to see a more precise battery, one that shows you as a percentage, how much charge you have?

The steps are easy.

On you iPad, tap Settings. Then tap General > Usage.

You will see the Battery Usage switch. Slide it to on. Voila!

Photo Stream Reset

So, you have been playing around with Photo Stream and took a picture that you…well don’t want to be there (or on any of your devices) anymore. How do you get rid of it? Surprisingly, the answer is not an easy delete of the photo.

You have to use a browser to get to your iCloud.com account. Resetting will remove all Photo Stream photos from your iCloud account, not photos that have been downloaded to your iOS device or computer.

Apple has a knowledge base article on the steps necessary to delete a photo. The article is reproduced below.

To Reset your Photo Stream, follow these instructions:

1. From a computer browser, go to icloud.com and sign in.
2. Click on your name on the iCloud home page (this is the page that shows all the app icons). If you do not see your name, click the cloud icon in the top left of the page.
3. Click Advanced.
4. Here you will see the Reset Photo Stream button. Clicking this button will remove all your Photo Stream photos from iCloud. Once removed, they cannot be recovered, but you can re-upload any photos you’d like to restore to your Photo Stream from a Mac or PC.

After resetting your Photo Stream, you can also remove any photos that have been downloaded to your device or computers. To do this, follow the directions below:

• On your iOS device, you can remove photos from the Photo Stream view by turning off Photo Stream and then optionally turning it back on. You can do this at Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream. If you added any Photo Stream photos to other albums or the Camera Roll on your iOS device, you can locate and delete these photos manually, if desired.
• On your Mac, you can clear cached photos from the Photo Stream view in iPhoto or Aperture by turning off Photo Stream and then optionally turning it back on. You can do this in each application by visiting Preferences > Photo Stream. If you had Automatic Import enabled in your Photo Stream settings, your Photo Stream photos were also imported to your iPhoto or Aperture Library, and will remain after you disable Photo Stream. If you would like to delete any of these photos from your library, you can to do so manually any time you like.
• On your PC, you can remove Photo Stream photos by deleting them from your designated Photo Stream Download Folder. By default, this folder is located at C:\Users\Apple\Pictures\Photo Stream\My Photo Stream.

First 24 hours iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Over 1,000,000

Apple announced today that pre-orders of its iPhone 4S exceeded one million in a single day. This exceeded the previous single day pre-orders held by iPhone 4.

Unsurprisingly, Phil Schiller stated “We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S.”

You can read more about the availability and pricing here.

iOS 4.3.4 Update

Apple has released an update to fix security vulnerability associated with viewing malicious PDF files.

The explanation appears below.

To update, plug your iPad into your computer. In iTunes, check for the update.

You can read more about the security update here.

If You Ask iPad2 Commercial

Apple has posted its latest advertisement “If you ask.”

In a few short scenes, they show the iPad, sans user, in different environments and suggest multiple uses for everyone from a teacher, to CEO, to doctor, to a kid.

iPad2 Commercial – We Believe

Apple has posted its new iPad2 commercial to youtube and it is also available on Apple.com/ipad.

Interestingly, the ad focuses on technology by telling the audience that the technology is not in the way of your interaction with the device.