Dear iPhone 4 Users,

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned……READ MORE

CUPERTINO, California—June 28, 2010—Apple® today announced that it has sold over 1.7 million of its iPhone® 4 through Saturday, June 26, just three days after its launch on June 24. The new iPhone 4 features FaceTime®, which makes video calling as easy as one tap, and Apple’s new Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, resulting in stunning text, images and video.

“This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”……READ MORE

CUPERTINO, California—May 31, 2010—Apple® today announced that iPad™ sales have topped two million in less than 60 days since its launch on April 3. Apple began shipping iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend. iPad will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year.

“Customers around the world are experiencing the magic of iPad, and seem to be loving it as much as we do,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We appreciate their patience, and are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone.”

iPad allows users to connect with their apps, content and the Internet in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before. Users can browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more, all using iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ user interface. iPad is 0.5 inches thin and weighs just 1.5 pounds—thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook—and delivers up to 10 hours of battery life.*

Developers have created over 5,000 exciting new apps for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch user interface, large screen and high-quality graphics. iPad will run almost all of the more than 200,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone® or iPod touch®.

*Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II, then reinvented the personal computer with the Macintosh. Apple continues to lead the industry with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system, and iLife, iWork and professional applications. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store, has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices. Read More

In April, Apple launched its “magical and revolutionary” new device, the iPad. Just 28 days later, it seemed the real magic was how Apple sold more than a million devices in that time period. As I write this at the end of May, iPads are in short supply in most Apple stores. Here in the New York City area, I couldn’t find a single iPad 3G, and there were only a few lower-end Wi-Fi models to be found.

Apple’s sales record here is even more impressive if you factor in that iPad is a new class of device, somewhere between the phones and computers that most consumers understand. It’s also a category of device that’s vexed every vendor who’s tried to enter this space over the last decade.

So how did Apple do it? Why did Apple succeed where no one else has and how did they do it so quickly?

The answer is, it took a decade of education and teaching. The key to Apple’s success is that the company often takes the time to explain things to the consumer that no other vendor bothers to do. By keeping a laser focus on key features and introducing them one at a time over a period of years, Apple taught and evangelized everything the consumer needed to know to understand the iPad from day one. Without that foundation, it’s not likely the product would have been nearly the success it has been. READ MORE

Related articles by Zemanta

• Opinion: Apple’s secret weapon is consumer education (macworld.com)

Remember how, back on Windows, you used to use the Win key and the Control key quite often? Well, on OS X, the Command key is your best friend.

There are two Command keys, one each side of the spacebar. You should find them easy to reach with your thumbs while typing.

Mac OS X is stuffed full of keyboard shortcuts – quick ways to get things done without taking your hands off the keyboard. The vast majority of them are done by holding down Command with your thumb while tapping another key with a finger.

Some of these shortcuts are universal: Command+S always saves what you’re working on. Command+Q always quits the app you’re working with. Command+N usually opens a new document; Command+O usually allows you to browse to a particular document so that you can open it in the current application.

Other commands vary according to the application you’re using. For example, in iTunes, Command+T shows the visualizer; but in Safari, Command+T opens a new tab…..READ MORE

Before you do any updating to Iphoto 09, make sure you make a backup of all of your files on time machine.  For some reason, people were having issues with Faces and Places according to CNET. You can see more of the Faces and Places article here.

Problems:

• Faces not recognizing “faces”.
• Places putting locations in wrong areas.

Solutions:

Faces

• manually add faces, re-import the library or remove the faces database

Places

• manually enter the geographical location of each photo.

The two new features that Iphoto introduced earlier this year in the ‘09 edition is: Faces and Places. Places is really a neat concept (Google’s Picasa also has this feature – go figure! ) in that it uses Google Maps technology to pinpoint where you took that picture. So, for example, you took a picture of the Eiffel Tower, it would be pinpointed on a map for your to look up.

How does it work?

In order for this feature to work, your digital camera or your phone (Hi iPhone users!) must be GPS-enabled. Iphoto bases your location off of detecting the longitude and latitude of photos you take immediately. However, if you run into an area where you couldn’t get reception, then obviously this feature won’t work.When this happens, you’ll have to manually enter the places you’ve visited on Iphoto directly.

Just like the Faces feature, once you enter a piece of information on your photo, Iphoto will automatically find other photos of that landmark or place.

Navigating and Publishing

You can use Google Maps to navigate all of your pictures by placing your pointer over each red pin that shows up on the map. You can also use the column browser to click through locations by country, city or by points of interest. The great thing about Iphoto ‘09 is that you can then publish your own very travel book with all of the places you visited. Everything is almost all automated!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Backstage: Eye-Fi Geo: Add iPhone-Style Geotagging, Wi-Fi Uploading to (Virtually) Any SD Card Camera (ilounge.com)

Tagging has become a staple for all of us writing for the web. Some people still get confused with tagging and equate that to categories. While there are similarities, and I’m sure some people use them as categories, tags are usually used to specifically identify something. You can have one or more tags, they don’t have to match your title or even your article but be something related. For example, you could have a category called “dogs”, but if you are writing about golden retrievers you could have tags: golden retrievers, sporting dogs, furry dogs, red dogs, retrievers…..get it?

Iphoto ‘09

You already have an example of tagging with the features available in Iphoto ‘09. Yes—you’ve guessed it. Faces and Places! Those are the examples of tagging. You can tag all of your favorite pics of your favorite person and all the places with that person in it!

Iphoto ‘08

While Iphoto ‘08 doesn’t have the faces and places features, it does have basic tagging features you can use to essentially do the same thing, except manually.

Individually

Open up your events or album of choice and select a picture. On your keyboard press the COMMAND KEY (apple) +SHIFT + K. This will allow you to see the keywords underneath each photo.

Next enter the keyword that you want for that photo, by clicking in the box where it says “add keywords”. Do that for each of the photos you want to tag. On the bottom of your Iphoto window, type in the keyword to search for your pictures and press ENTER. All of the pictures you “tagged” will show up.

Group Tag

Now let’s say you have a batch of pictures you took and you want to tag them. Obviously, tagging them individually would be rather time-consuming and laborious –and what if you wanted to add more than one tag to each picture? Would you have to sit there and type all day? Therefore, you’d want to tag by group.

Press COMMAND+ K to view keywords

All the keywords you have created will be displayed here. If you click on EDIT KEYWORDS you’ll be able to create new ones or edit existing ones. Simply select the pictures you want  (You can press the SHIFT key and drag a box around a group of pictures to select more than one) and click on the keyword. You can even add a keyboard shortcut to add that keyword.

Last year when I attended the Mac world convention and the unveiling of ILife ‘09 took place, I was WOWED by the new features added, especially to Iphoto. Facial recognition was added to this robust software to make photo archival much much easier!

How does it work?

Iphoto ‘09 uses two features to enable facial recognition:

Face Detection

Face Detection looks for the existence of faces in photos.

Face Recognition

Face Recognition separates each face from the other even if you have multiple people in the photos.

Once you add names to the pictures, Iphoto will look for all of the pictures with look alikes. Once it presents you with those images, you can either choose to confirm or reject them.

Rocky Road

That’s not you!

As Wilson Rothman points out in his full review on Iphoto ‘09, in the beginning you get a lot of false positives–for instance, you might have a picture of someone with a purple hat. Iphoto might pull up all of your pictures of all people with purple hats. As you enter more data about  a person with more pictures and manually tag those pictures, then it becomes more accurate in gathering all the pictures of that person. However, sometimes it can get confused with faces at different angles, or with blurry images and you might end up with a lot of unknowns.

Where’s Fido?

Iphoto should be able to recognize your pets. (I still have Iphoto ‘08 so I can’t verify this claim yet–but don’t worry I will upgrade I promise!!)   However, according to Rothman and then Macworld’s article on Iphoto ‘09 , Faces SUCKS with pets! There are reports that it’ll pick up any old object instead of Fido’s face. Of course, you can manually tag them, but what’s the point right? You want Iphoto to pick them out for crying out loud!  I’m sure that Iphoto’s updates will include a fix someday soon. I’ll have to check for more updates on any new changes  and then update this post.