Tablet Computer | featured news

Hoping to take a small slice from Apple's big pie, newspaper publishers are developing tablet computers of their own.

Twitter has started gradually rolling out a new, HTML5-based version of Twitter.com for the iPad.

In the world of tablets, some companies launch one model and stick to it (Apple). Others introduce several models and boast about their flexibility and desire to fulfill diverse customer preferences (Samsung, etc.).

The US Army is near finishing a largely successful test of smartphones on the battlefield. In an interview this week, project director Michael McCarthy told CNN the six-week trials in Fort Bliss, Texas and White Sands, New Mexico were 'encouraging' in gauging the effectiveness of Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone hardware for communicating information in the field. They had also been testing iPads as well as unspecified Dell and HP tablets.

A online Sears ad that mistakenly advertised the 16-gigabyte, Wi-Fi-only iPad 2 for $69 — and got shoppers' hopes up and orders placed — was retracted by the retail giant, which blamed a third-party seller of Apple's popular tablet for an advertising typo. That model iPad 2 is normally sold for $744.99 by the third-party seller, GSM On Sale.

MacBook Airs and baby bottles don’t mix. I was reminded of this in May when my MacBook Air, the slimmest and sleekest of Apple’s laptop products, had a meeting with my son’s baby bottle. A few drops of milk on the keyboard left me searching for a replacement laptop. Eager to try something new, I landed on the then hard-to-find Android-based Asus Transformer, also known as the Asus Eee Pad.

Tablet computers are selling fast — but it’s starting to look like the stripped-down computers won’t eat the rest of the PC industry alive anytime soon. Worldwide shipments of so-called media tablets into sales channels fell 28% in the first quarter of 2011 to 7.2 million units during the first quarter, according to tech tracker IDC.

Here's the latest: The company reportedly is working on a new iPad, due out later this year, that will have a higher-resolution screen. Dubbed the "iPad HD" by a blog called This Is My Next, which is run by former editors from the respected tech site Engadget, the new iPad is said to be a "pro" device that could be used for high-end video editing and photography.

Game company Nintendo denied reports that it was preparing apps for Android and iOS devices, telling Bloomberg that it was not changing its policy to develop software only for its own gaming devices. Pokemon, an independent Nintendo affiliate, is developing software for Apple and Google and this summer will release a game for those companies related to its popular series.

Yes, we all know that the iPad is an extremely successful product. It has invented, created, a new niche, a new product line, in computing. We can see the effects of the shipments on the bottom line of Apple: and the reflection in Apple’s share price.