iPad delayed till late April, price so unbelievable it doesn’t exist
By now most of you would have heard that Apple have delayed the release of the iPad. Whilst there’s specifics for dates and prices in the US, the same can’t be said for Australia. The iPad pre-orders will begin on March 12th, and be available on April 3 for the US. Many other countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain Switzerland and the UK will have to wait till late April.
Late April was the original timeframe for the Wifi+3G version, so it’s probably safe to say that date will slip into May.
What’s annoying is we still don’t have official pricing here in Australia. On the Apple website it says ‘A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.’ however it fails to list what that price is. Naturally this will be revealed in the coming weeks, but given it’s been a couple months since the iPad announcement in January, that should have been enough time to nail down production costs, shipping, taxes, and partnership deals with Australian carriers.
Make no mistake, price is critical here. The delay is annoying, but consumers will bear a slippage of a couple of weeks, but if the iPad is too expensive, consumer adoption will be severely limited.
More information when Apple deems us worthy.
Review: Microsoft Arc Keyboard and Mouse
Keyboard
The Microsoft Arc Keyboard is unique in its styling and configuration. The name arc comes from the keyboards arc shape, curing up in the center which has 2 benefits, the first is that it’s supposed to match the natural configuration of the human hands, as well as being able to rest comfortably on your knees if used in a home entertainment scenario.
Typing on the keyboard does take some time to adjust to, especially after having the muscle memory established on flat, laptop-style keyboards. Over the course of a few days your hands adjust and typing is fine. Note: I am a touch typist, if your a hunt and peck style typist, this really won’t be an issue. Part of the adjustment comes from the increased distance between keys. The Arc keyboard has chicklet style keys, similar to that of recent apple products, the difference being that the keys are higher. This means the gap between keys is deep, this can prevent you from free flowing from one key to another.
After first opening the box, you’ll notice this keyboard is small and light. Microsoft have had to make some serious sacrifices to reach this form factor. There’s no num pad which isn’t uncommon in laptops, but is rare for a desktop keyboard. There’s also a condensed navigation section, with the up, down, left right keys being condensed into a single 4-way key. This takes a bit of getting used to.
Looking to the top of the keyboard, there left hand side contains the standard F1-F6 keys, but to access F7-F12, you’ll need to hold the function key. Move across you’ll find Home(/Printscreen), End, Page up, Page down, then media controls, which are incredibly responsive, then top right is a decent sized Delete key. Great for correcting mistakes without looking. 
Mouse
Designed for portability the Microsoft Arc Mouse folds in half for easier travel. In it’s folded mode, it’d easily fit in your pocket, but before taking your mouse on the road, just snap the USB Bluetooth module in the underside of the mouse. After using the mouse for the best part of a week, I’d have to say the arc is simply too high to be comfortable and the back button is way to far forward to be accessible. Overall the mouse works great, it’s super sensitive which is great when gaming, but even in general desktop use. I run 2 monitors running 1920×1200 resolution, so moving from one side to the other can require quite a lot of physical movement with some mice. With a sensitive mouse like this, I actually had to turn the mouse speed down and can now move across the 3840 pixels with a slight move of the wrist.
Connectivity
What was surprising to me is that the keyboard and mouse need their own separate USB Bluetooth module, taking up 2 of your USB ports. Sure a wired solution would have the same requirement, however there are other Microsoft keyboard and mouse solutions that have a single USB dongle. Admittedly the Arc system is easier, just plug in and go, rather than have to sync each device.
Gallery
Device Stage
If your not familiar with it, Windows 7 comes with a new feature called Device Stage. Designed to be an attractive, functional interface into new devices connected to your system. Unfortunately there’s very few devices that currently support Device Stage. The Microsoft Arc Keyboard and Mouse does support Device Stage, a welcome addition, and naturally you’d expect the company to support it’s own hardware. Lets hope more hardware manufacturers adopt Device Stage in the near future.
Update
After testing the Arc keyboard with the Xbox 360 I found a weird glitch. Whilst the keyboard works great in the standard Xbox 360 interface, it fails in Media Center. Strangely only the left and right functions work, up and down does nothing. This is possibly due to the keyboard combining the 4 arrow keys into a single key.
Disclaimer
After posting on twitter that my Microsoft Explorer 3.0 mouse had died, I received an email from Microsoft. They offered to replace the mouse and after further discussions sent me through a Microsoft Arc and Keyboard.
More info @ Microsoft Hardware
Mana Bar opening March 20, free games, free drinks
If there’s one sure fire way to make sure the launch of your bar is a massive success, its to give away free drinks, free gaming and prizes. The official grand opening of Australia’s first video game bar – The Mana Bar, is happening on Saturday, 20th March.
If your anywhere near 420 Brunswick st, Fortitude Valley, QLD, then get your ass to the event and experience what’s sure to be one hell of an awesome night. As a Victorian, I’m very jealous right now.
More @ http://manabar.com.au
Your Face, getting bigger. Facebook ads Bigger Photos – Finally!
In a new post on the Facebook blog, Facebook have announced they will be rolling out a new updated photo size for ‘better viewing’.
Old photo size (left) compared to the new size. (Note that actual photos are larger; this shows scale only.)
There is a caveat for external applications that upload photos to Facebook (i.e. Windows Live Photo Grallery, iPhoto etc).
All uploads on Facebook.com will support the new photo size, but uploads made from some external applications may continue to use the previous size.
This will likely be remedied with an update to the application or plugin.
Ultimately this is a good thing, the limited photo size has been a contentious issue for many, particularly photographers eager to show off their work. Sites like Flickr allow photos to be uploaded and viewed in a variety of sizes including full resolution.
TiVo updated, TiVo Australia take note.. we want this.
Cnet have just spilled the beans about the latest TiVo update. Expectations were high TiVo promoted the event with the tag line ‘A DVR was just the beginning’. So what did TiVo deliver and does it live up to the hype ?
The new Series 4 TiVo will come in 2 varieties, TiVo Premiere with a 320GB HDD (US$300) and a TiVo XL containing a 1TB HDD (US$500). Sadly Americans will still be forced to pay monthly, annual or lifetime subscription fees, something we gladly escape in the Aus version.
The new TiVo remote is essentially the same, with the addition of a slide out qwerty keyboard. Personally I think Boxee’s keyboard on the back would have been a better solution. It does look like they’ve been able to pull it off without adding much extra bulk to the remote, but not doubt it’ll weight a little more. The up, down, left, right control scheme for TiVo is fine for basic functions, but when searching for content it becomes a pain.
There’s a new UI, this time in HD, something current model seriously needs. Whilst the existing TiVo models do support widescreen, the interface is only SD and after being around for 10 years, it was well overdue for a reboot. The new TiVo UI features integrated online video sources including Netflix and YouTube.
The ‘Premiere’ model of TiVo comes with cable support, which is equivalent to our Austar or Foxtel PayTV.
Another new feature is the ability to manage user profiles. Naturally the way a home works is that different people like different shows, until now they’ve all been bundled into one main list of recorded shows. Now they can be browsed by user.
Sadly existing TiVo owners (Series 3 and HD) will not receive the update, so if you want the new hotness, you’ll need the new box. To pull of the new faster UI, there’s upgraded internal hardware which will ship in the US next month.
The skinny
Basically it’s an interesting announcement, fairly predictable, no massive shocks here and certainly doesn’t live up to the hype of the event. Where’s the 8 tuners, or boxee integration, or xbox media extender support, or even just DLNA streaming from PCs, sadly none of the features that would have been truly impressive have arrived.
Update
I may have been a little hasty to condemn the announcement as not that interesting. After reading through the official press release there is indeed a number of interesting changes.
Premiere is built on multi-core architecture that greatly facilitates future development of third party provided applications.
We Listened: By popular demand Premiere includes an on-screen disk space meter that shows how much room is left to record, a built in 30 second scan, and a new video window that lets you watch your favorite show while navigating the TiVo menus.
A new relationship with FrameChannel brings the best of the web directly to the TV offering users access to nearly 1,000 content widgets of personal and commercial content, ranging from Tweets, photos and status updates to news, weather, sports scores and stock quotes.
Even More Content: A brand new relationship with Pandora means in the coming months, Premiere as well as TiVo Series3™ and HD DVR customers will be able to listen to their personalized Pandora radio stations..
Australia
TiVo in Australia is only licensed, by Hybrid Television Services, so a US announcement like this does not automatically correlate to an Australian release. As a TiVo owner, I was really looking fwd to getting an updated UI, new features all via a firmware update, sadly this won’t be the case.
More @ cnet and zatz not funny
The Mana Bar, a new bar for mainstream gamers
First off, I love this idea as a concept. Combining two of my favourite activities, gaming and partying, The Mana Bar claims to be (and I believe them) Australia’s first video game bar. Combining alcohol with gaming is potentially a recipe for a great night out. Attempting to take the modern day house party into a licenced venue is bold move.
Located in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, renovations are nearing completion for a launch any day now. It’s new venues like this, run by people who really understand what people want, that will likely take advantages of new technologies like location aware mobile apps like Foursquare. Hopefully we see the mayor get a free drink, or game priority.
What they need to be careful of, is attracting a disproportionate quantity of guys, therefore becoming uninviting to females. With the right vibe, this idea has massive potential. If this works out, expect to see a Mana Bar in your city soon. Guaranteed there’ll be copy-cats as well, so TheManaBar needs to stay ahead of the curve and continue to innovate.
Get the latest info about TheManaBar from:
Website: http://manabar.com.au/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TheManaBar
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheManaBar
New blog launched – travelAU
Yesterday I launched a new blog called travelAU. The new site is aimed at providing a real-life run down of all things travel. From the initial planning including selecting your destination, to getting passports, shots at the doctor, currency exchange and more.
The main motivation for the blog in my upcoming trip to US in April. With most of the content not exactly relevant to the tech-focus of techAU, I thought it best to dedicate an entirely new blog to the effort.
If your into travelling or considering travelling, please check it out @ http://travelAU.wordpress.com there’ll be plenty of useful tips. tricks and of course photos there. Enjoy!