Electronics, Gadgets | featured news

Is this an iPad 3 in the wild? This morning, BGR published photos of an alleged iPad prototype obtained by a source. The information in the images was taken from iBoot, a development and debug tool. If the pictures are indeed of the next-gen iPad, they show the tablet will have an A6 processor with model number S5L8945X. BGR says as a point of reference, the Apple A4 model was S5L8930X and the A5 is S5L8940X. The new processor looks like a quad-core one, “making the upcoming iPad 3 the fastest iOS device ever, we have been told,” BGR wrote.

Apple's iPhone was a hot seller in the company's first fiscal quarter of 2012, but that's nothing compared to what one analyst predicts we could see in just a couple of years' time. Morgan Stanley thinks Apple's efforts in China could pay big dividends by 2013.

The Kindle Fire is…on fire. Despite some mixed reviews from the pundit class, consumers have flocked to Amazon‘s first entry into the tablet market. Stifel Nicolas analyst Jordan Rohan in a new research lifted his estimate for the company fourth quarter Fire sales to 6 million units from 5 million. He also raised his financial estimates for the company, asserting that the Kindle and the Kindle Fire have effectively become the third major mobile ecosystem after Apple iOS and Google Android.

A new book examines Apple from the inside out, revealing details about the company’s level of detail that continue to give it an edge in the market. “Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired-and Secretive-Company Really Works,” by Adam Lashinsky, senior editor-at-large at Forbes, shares highly guarded secrets about the company’s development and design processes, as well as insight into former founder and CEO Steve Jobs, who passed away in October of last year.

On Sunday, AT&T is reconfiguring its mobile data plans in way that will anger many customers but may actually please others. It’s raising its smartphone and tablet data plan rates, while simultaneously offering customers a better deal on the data they do consume.

Eastman Kodak Co filed for bankruptcy on Thursday in a bid to survive a liquidity crisis after years of falling sales related to the decline of its namesake film business. The once-iconic photographic film pioneer, which had tried to restructure to become a seller of consumer products like cameras, said it had also obtained a $950 million, 18-month credit facility from Citigroup to keep it going.

Apple on Thursday lifted the veil on its plans to remake the educational landscape in a way that centers on its best-selling tablet computer, the iPad. "Education is deep in Apple's DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, said in a statement.

Samsung Electronics Co said on Wednesday it was not interested in buying ailing Blackberry maker Research In Motion or licensing its operating system, refuting a tech blog report that RIM was seeking to sell itself to the South Korean technology giant.

Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the “GarageBand for e-books,” so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.

Kindles, Nooks and iPads can do many amazing things, but they can’t bump you ahead in line at the Reston Regional Library. In fact, if you want to borrow a book, it may be quicker to put down your sleek new device and head into the stacks.