iPad

Apple wants how much for the portrait-orientation-only iPad Dock? $29? Sorry, but I'm tapped out after spending $500 on the iPad itself. What do you have in the $5-$10 range?

Nothing, of course. (Does Apple sell anything in the $5-$10 range?) Fortunately, if all you want to do is prop up your iPad for movie viewing, recipe reading, photo slideshow-ing, or whatever, you can buy or build a perfectly good stand for cheap. These five candidates cost anywhere from nothing to around $7. Take a look:

1. Think the kids will miss a handful of Tinkertoys? If … Read more

Editor's note: We used Cover It Live for this event, so if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component below. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates along with commentary from our readers and a few CNET editors. For those of you who just want the updates, we've included them in regular text here. To get the key points from today's announcement, you can check out our summary of what got announced, in our story here.

We're coming to you live Thursday from Apple's campus with news about the iPhone OS 4 as it happens.

Maybe the biggest news is this: Apple is bringing multitasking to the iPhone. CEO Steve Jobs and his crew showed 12 apps running at the same time. But not all models of the iPhone will get multitasking or other upgrades. Third-generation models of the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch will be out this summer.

In addition, Apple is touting services including background audio, background location, and voice over IP. And there's more: a new folders feature, flicking between pages of apps on the phone, and the new iAd mobile advertising platform.

The newly released iPad, meanwhile, will get OS 4 in the fall.

Transcript of live blog starts here:… Read more

When you bring home your first iPad and open up the box, everything is so pristine and pretty--so Apple. Eventually, as you warm up to the device, you're going to want to make it a little less "factory fresh" and a little more you.

Loading up your own media, photos, and apps is a good start, but there are also a handful of quick things you can do to really put your unique stamp on the iPad.

Whether it's slapping on your own home screen wallpaper or new ways to organize bookmarks in Safari, I've … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Even the raspberry cream eggs were getting ignored.

At one Easter dinner party on Sunday night, a gathering of single and coupled adults with an average age of about 30, the real centerpiece wasn't the vase of lavender tulips that one person had arranged on the table or the glut of various pastel-colored marshmallow-cream confections that were passed around. It was, instead, a trio of brand-new Apple iPads that three separate guests had brought, eager to show off the glowing slates to the others in attendance. At least one of them had shown up in line at an … Read more

Laughing Squid has what has to be the best example of iPad porn to come along yet: iPad Unboxing Porn.

A clever video (see below) made by Internet TV network Revision3 and sponsored by domain registrar GoDaddy--it's hard to get the connection, but whatever--spoofs 1970s-era porn movies as we watch the slow, tender, and foxy unpacking of one of Apple's hot new tablets.

There's not much else to be said. The production's a bit long, and you can certainly get the point within a couple minutes, but what I liked about it was that while it … Read more

In this video, CNET editor Donald Bell gives tips on how to tweak your iPad by rearranging apps, changing the background image, customizing the picture frame mode, and making Safari bookmarks more useful.

Best Buy has sold out of the iPad at all 673 of its U.S. stores with Apple shops. In contrast, Apple stores are maintaining stock.

"We expect to have iPad inventory replenished at these locations by Sunday," said company spokeswoman Paula Baldwin.

Six Best Buy stores contacted in the San Diego and Los Angeles area said they sold out of the iPad on Saturday, the day iPad sales began. Ditto for Best Buy stores contacted on the East Coast; stores in suburban Philadelphia and Boston also sold out on Saturday. A New York store, however, said it … Read more

In a cloud and iPad world, does open source even matter?

Much as we in the open-source world may not like it, progress doesn't necessarily look like a heavily customizable system. In fact, it might just be the opposite. At least, once a market matures.

As Nick Carr elucidates in his response to Cory Doctorow, Tim Bray, and others who argue against the closed nature of the iPad, closed (and easy) may well be a signal of real progress:

What these folks are ranting against, or at least gnashing their teeth over, is progress - or, more precisely, progress … Read more

Before many tech journalists even had a moment to sleep from the nonstop iPad coverage, Apple sent out a notice that it would be updating the world on iPhone OS 4.

One anticipated feature is an option for a global in-box. You're probably going to see a lot of predictions for the upcoming release. In the meantime, here are the features I feel iPhone OS 4 should have.

First, Apple should change the name of the underlying operating system from iPhone OS to Touch OS. With the operating system running on the iPod Touch and now the iPad, it makes little sense for Apple to continue to call the software iPhone OS. Something like Touch OS would convey the larger message that Apple wants to ultimately send about its vision for the future of computing.

Second, the push-notification system could use some help. The current push notifications are essentially dialog boxes that pop up, occasionally play a sound, and then give you the option to ignore or launch an app.

The biggest problem with the current system is that messages tend to pile on top of each other and obscure the previous push notification. This is especially cumbersome in IM applications. The next generation of push notifications should probably closer resemble the popular messaging system for Mac OS X called Growl, especially when it comes to a device like the iPad, which has more screen real estate.

I hope to see a queue for push notifications, and I hope that Apple allows developers to push out more advanced notifications that are more like tiny HTML widgets that would allow users to respond to instant messages without launching their chat client, display images, or even background messaging that updates news applications with the latest stories.

Push notification was Apple's solution to multitasking, but given the speed of the iPhone 3GS and few practical uses of multitasking on a screen so small, Apple has steadfastly refused to allow third-party multitasking on the device. Rumors of an Expose-style multitasking interface are floating around on the Internet, and I am inclined to believe that Apple is finally ready to allow multitasking, if only to get the tech press to shut up about the lack of multitasking. … Read more