After posting Retina-ready iPad wallpapers for iMore yesterday, we received a ton of requests for more — you wanted the special edition iMore rainbow logo, you wanted iPhone versions, and some of you even wanted Android Central, CrackBerry.com, webOS nation, and full on Mobile Nations 2048×2048 wallpapers (don’t worry, your secrets are safe with us!

So we’ve re-rendered everything and posted all of the above in the iMore forums. You can find them there now in both full color for the Lock screen, and in subtle gray for the home screen (in case you don’t want them clashing with your app icons.

• Official Mobile Nations wallpapers

We’ve also been sent some amazing Retina iPad wallpapers for Serenity/Firefly, Prometheus, and the Avengers, so make sure you check out our iPad wallpaper forum for the latest and greatest.

• iPad Retina wallpapers

If you’ve got any Retina-ready wallpapers, don’t hesitate to jump in there and share them!

Note: If you have an original iPad, iPad 2, or iPhone, you can still use all of them — iOS will automatically scale and crop them just the way you want!

Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett downgraded his rating on Sprint stock to underperform, along with a note that says bankruptcy is a very real threat with the LTE iPhone looming.

We believe an LTE iPhone will likely be badly disadvantaged on Sprint's network, potentially impairing sales … at a time when Sprint is subject to a punishing take-or-pay deal with Apple. The problem is 4G. Sprint doesn't have enough free-and-clear spectrum on which to launch a competitive LTE network, and it doesn't have the money to clear spectrum that's already in use. … To be clear, we are not predicting a Sprint bankruptcy. We are merely acknowledging that it is a very legitimate risk. And notwithstanding a recent rally in Sprint shares, we believe that risk is rising.

As you might recall, rumor has it that Sprint basically bet the farm on the iPhone 4S, but considering how much T-Mobile is hurting without it, who can blame them? Sprint’s LTE rollout was supposed to be kicking off this year, but if their 4G network isn’t reasonably matured by the time an LTE-capable iPhone is announced, they may be in trouble. One can only presume that most of the money AT&T forked over for the failed merger went to those kinds of network upgrades.

It’s worth pointing out that while Sprint currently offers the CMDA iPhone 4S, they didn’t get the new iPad last week like AT&T and Verizon did. Not on LTE. Not even on CDMA.

Anyone taking bets? Will Sprint be able to keep their network up to snuff for the LTE iPhone, or do AT&T and Verizon have too much of a head start?

Source: AllThingsD

In a recent interview, Blizzard senior producer John Lagrave said “it would be foolish for any game developer to not be looking ” at getting their game onto the iPhone, and admitted that they have been exploring how to get World of Warcraft into the mobile interface. There are particular systems of the massively multiplayer online fantsy game that they could conceivably transfer to mobile; specifically, Lagrave said fishing is something that could make the cut, as well as pet battles, a feature coming in their next content expansion. Of course, he also says that there are challenges they have yet to conquer.

We won’t do it until we think it’s decent. … Maybe we’ll stumble on the great way to put WoW on the phone – maybe we won’t, but we’re certainly looking into it. … When we have an epiphany, everyone will know, but for now, no epiphany!

We’ve seen WoW on the iPhone through cloud gaming services similar to OnLive (or VNC work-arounds), but a proper mobile client would be awesome. The new iPad may very well be the point where a mobile device will be able to handle the full graphics capabilities that such a game has to bear on its own, but there would need to be at least a little bit of scaling down; the current install on PC takes up 25 GB, which isn’t an amount of space most folks can spare on their iPad for a single game.

Blizzard has already been active in the mobile world through their Remote app for iOS and Android, but they’re charging an extra $3/month on top of the $10/month subscription fee for the privilege of selling loot on the auction house and chatting with guildmates while on the go. If Blizzard ever did get around to bringing the full (or even parts of) World of Warcraft to the iPhone, I hope they would just include the features in the existing Remote app rather charging even more. Otherwise, they’ll have a hard time competing in the mobile world where free-to-play with a side order of microtransactions is a common sight. Beyond that, Blizzard also has a mobile authenticator app to add extra protection to your Battle.net account.

Until Blizzard gets around to making this happen, Gameloft has a decent clone called Order and Chaos on sale for significantly cheaper than what you would pay for WoW.

Source: EuroGamer, pic credit

Want to go full screen? Head to iMore.com/live. Want to watch via iPhone or iPad? Grab the Ustream app and search for “mobilenations”!

One of the huge disappointments of Pages for iPhone and iPad is there are only two paper sizes available: US Letter and A4. Even worse, is that you can’t even create a document with these sizes in landscape! However, if you first create the document in Pages for Mac and open it with Pages on your iPhone or iPad, the document size and orientation will remain unchanged.

This workaround works fine for users with a Mac and iWork, but what about Windows users or even Mac users who want to create a document without planning ahead and creating the appropriately sized document first? That’s where we come in!

I’ve created blank templates of all the popular document sizes and added them to my public Dropbox folder for iMore readers to download directly to their iPhone or iPad. Just simply tap the links with your iPhone or iPad and select Open in “Pages” for each one you want. Yes, it’s a bit tedious, but unfortunately, this is the best we can do for you.

• Grab the Pages templates via the iMore Forums

After picking up the ones you want, I recommend grouping them up into a folder so they don’t clutter up your main document screen.

When using any of these templates, make sure you duplicate it first before making any changes so that you don’t lose the original template.

So there you go! Hopefully this makes Pages for iPhone and iPad more useful for you.

See also: Pages for iPhone and iPad review

For today only, the iMore Store has the Qmadix Bezel Slide-On Cover for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 on sale for only $34.95! Get them before they’re gone!

Get the Qmadix Bezel Slide-On Cover for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 now!

The Qmadix Bezel Slide-On Cover for iPhone 4S, AT&T iPhone 4, or Verizon iPhone 4 combines revolutionary design with true innovation in a slim profile aluminum case.

This forward thinking protective solution utilizes a brilliant slide-locking mechanism that ensures a seamless fit. The Bezel Slide-On Cover exceptional ergonomics and is tooled from aircraft grade aluminum for a flawless fit and finish.

Features:

• Precise, custom fit for iPhone 4S, AT&T iPhone 4, or Verizon iPhone 4
• Complete access to buttons, controls, and ports
• Protects against scratches and bumps
• Easy to install and remove
• Aircraft grade aluminum case

iSuppli has tallied up the cost in parts and manufacturing for the various new iPad models, and determined that the 32 GB new iPad with LTE costs $364.35 in materials ($375.10 after manufacturing costs). This is a pretty stark difference to the $729 retail pricetag, but that just goes to show you why Apple is so danged profitable. It’s worth keeping in mind that Apple still has to pay to develop software, pay royalties, keep up their retail presence, among other miscellaneous costs, but even then, it’s obvious that Apple is enjoying a healthy margin from all of their iPad models.

Of course, that’s the what the production iPad costs, not the millions and potentially billions Apple has invested in research, development, prototyping, and in some cases inventing the manufacturing processes that allows these types of devices to be built. But that doesn’t make for as provocative a headline, does it?

On the flip side, once Apple does ramp up production and economies of scale start kicking in, it may well be that Apple could afford to knock down the price a little bit, but the $500 has been the starting point for all upper-end tablets since the original iPad launched. Only now are we starting to see decent tablets like the Kindle Fire and BlackBerry PlayBook approach the $200 mark, though even there, older refurbished iPads are within reach.

You can take a look at the full breakdown of material costs below.

Source: iSuppli, pic credit

Trying to figure out how to watch Flash videos on your new iPad? Unfortunately, Apple has never supported the Adobe Flash Player plugin (or any web browser plugin) for a number of stability, security, and other reasons, and Adobe has recently discontinued their attempts to get Flash to work properly on mobile devices in general. (It was designed for big, powerful computers, not highly portable, low power phones and tablets.)

But all hope is not lost! There are still a variety of ways to watch Flash videos on your iPad. (Some of these also work for Microsoft Silverlight content, like Netflix.com!)

The HTML5 alternative for Flash on the iPad

Many websites that use Flash on your Mac or Windows PC offer the exact same video in HTML5/H.264 format for your iPad. YouTube.com is the biggest example. Go there on your PC and you get Flash, go there on your iPad and you get HTML5/H.264. It “just works”. The same is true for many other sites as well, from popular video sharing channels to adult entertainment.

Before you try anything else, simply try going to the website in Safari. And if it doesn’t work automatically, look for link for “Mobile version” or “iPhone/iPad optimized”, use it.

The App Store alternative for Flash on the iPad

Instead of converting their videos to HTML5 on the web, some sites have chosen to offer apps instead. For example, if you want to watch the streaming video for our iPhone & iPad Live podcast on your Mac or Windows PC, you’re watching it in Flash at Ustream.com. If you want to watch it on your iPad, you simply download the Ustream app from the App Store and you’re good to go. Same for Netflix, Hulu+, and many, many others.

Likewise, a lot of popular Flash games have versions of the same game in the App Store, ready for you to play with full native graphics and performance. Most of the time they’ll even sync back to the same games you’re playing on Facebook or Google+.

If a Flash video or game won’t play in Safari, go to the App Store and search for the name of the website or the name of the game. Often they’ll have an app for that.

The proxy browser alternative for Flash on the iPad

Instead of trying to render Flash video on the iPad, there are a few alternative web browsers on the App Store that render Flash on their own servers, then convert it to HTML5/H.264 video and stream it live to your iPad. Generally, you tap the Flash video you want to watch, it takes a few moments to start processing in the cloud, and then the video starts to play.

It doesn’t work 100% of the time, and only works with Flash video, and not interactive Flash apps or games, but it does work for a large percentage of content not yet converted for the iPad.

There are a few different alternatives.

Skyfire is great for general-purposed browsing.

$4.99 – Download now

iSwifter builds in a lot of popular online games.

Free – Download now

The VNC remote-computing alternative for Flash on the iPad

This is the nuclear option, but it’s still an option. If you really need to access a full Flash site on your iPad, one way to do it is to establish a remote VNC connection to your laptop or desktop Mac or Windows PC. The only drawback, and it might be a deal-breaker for things like listening to music or videos, is that there’s no sound — only video. And, if your connection isn’t good, even the video can be choppy.

If you really need it, though, there are a lot of great apps for this. Our current favorite is Screens.

$19.99 – Download now

If you have any other ways, or if you like a certain way better, to watch Flash content on your new iPad, let us know!

Anecdotal suspicions that the new iPad operated at a noticeably higher temperature than the iPad 2 have been backed up now that someone has pointed an infrared camera at the thing to see what’s up. After running GLBenchmark for five minutes, the new iPad ended up being  much hotter than the iPad 2 – 33.6 degrees Celsius versus 28.3 degrees Celsius. The processor is likely to be the source of the additional heat, particularly the additional graphics processing units in this model.

The extra heat isn’t getting to the point where new iPads are shutting down, but I would be worried about using it for an extended period of time on a hot day. Considering the new iPad is only marginally thicker than the last iPad, and they’re cramming a whole lot more battery and processing power in there, it’s no surprise that things are getting a little toasty inside the new iPad.

Have you been having issues with heat? Be sure to let us know about your experience with the new iPad’s temperature in the forums!

Update: Apple has issued a statement on the issue to The Loop:

The new iPad delivers a stunning Retina display, A5X chip, support for 4G LTE plus 10 hours of battery life, all while operating well within our thermal specifications," Apple representative Trudy Muller, told The Loop. "If customers have any concerns they should contact AppleCare.

Source: Tweakers via Engadget; The Loop

A spokesperson at the Federal Aviation Administration said they are reconsidering the requirement to turn off your gadgets on the plane while landing and taking off.  The F.A.A.’s deputy assistant administrator for public affairs said:

"With the advent of new and evolving electronic technology, and because the airlines have not conducted the testing necessary to approve the use of new devices, the FAA is taking a fresh look at the use of personal electronic devices, other than cellphones, on aircraft."

Odds are a lot of you have heard the tired phrase “please turn off all electronics prior to take off and landing” when taking a flight.  The idea here is that they may interfere with the pilot’s equipment. Of course, with the growing popularity of tablets like the iPad, there’s been a significant amount of public push-back on this policy, since air travel is one of the best use cases for these kinds of devices.

The problem is, every individual tablet model has to be tested on an empty plane in flight, and repeated for each different model of aircraft that it wants to be certified for. As you can imagine, this can quickly become an expensive affair for airlines. It’s worth noting that the F.A.A. isn’t showing any interest in updating their policy for smartphone usage While it certainly makes sense for Apple to be getting friendly with investors by dishing out dividends, maybe they could spend some of that money to get iPads approved at least on U.S. flights.

Not that it needs any help, but it would be a huge selling point if the iPad was one of the few tablets you could use through the entire duration of a flight. It’s too bad that the reconsideration isn’t including smartphones, since the only real difference between them and tablets at this point is size.

Source: NY Times

One of the things I most eagerly wanted in the new iPad was a better speaker. I didn’t expect it, mind, you, but when some early reviewers mentioned the new iPad had the loudest speaker they’ve ever heard on a tablet, my ears perked up and I became very excited. That’s simply because Apple thus far hasn’t been willing or able to put a decent speaker into any of their mobile devices. For the company that revolutionized music with the iPod and iTunes, that’s mind boggling. Yet year after year I have a hard time hearing my games and movies out of the tiny, tinny iPad speaker, and find myself cupping the speaker with my hand and craning my ear down just to make out the dialog. Sure, I could put on headphones or use a Jawbone JAMBOX — which admittedly the iPad handles really well — but that should be an option, not a requirement.

Back to the new iPad. After hearing that the speaker may, mercifully, be louder, I tried listening to some music and playing some videos and… I couldn’t tell the difference. Both the new iPad and the iPad 2 sounded about the same to me. I turned off volume control and pushed the levels to the maximum on both and repeated the test. Still no difference.

My next step was to download an app to measure what, if any differences there might be. While not as scientific as a proper, soundproofed lab full of carefully calibrated equipment, it was enough for our real-world tests. The app I chose was Decibels [free - Download now]. I then placed my iPhone, armed with the Decibels app, a finger’s width away from each iPad’s speaker, and played a video.

The Decibels read out never reach 90. (Based on the car I was watching in the video, my inner geek really wants to say it never hit 88!).

To be absolutely sure, I asked Rene to repeat the same tests on his new iPad and iPad 2, and he recorded the exact same results. (So even if the app wasn’t scientifically accurate, it still showed the same result for both.)

All this means that, in the end, the speaker for the new iPad isn’t any louder than the speaker for the iPad 2, and to my ear there’s not much, if any, difference to the sound it produces.

Given the love the camera and screen got this time, I’m now once again hoping the speaker gets it next.

The iPad has led to a renaissance of apps for handwritten note-taking, but with top contenders like Noteshelf, Remarks, and Notability to choose from, which one is best for you?

Steve Jobs might not have been a fan of the stylus, but for many iPad users it’s become an indispensable tool for note-taking, thanks to excellent handwriting apps like Noteshelf, Remarks, and Notability. At their core they all offer a big piece of digital paper for you to scribble, draw, scrawl, annotate, mock up, sketch out, or just plain write down your thoughts, ideas, and projects. Whether you’re in a corporate brainstorming session, a student/teacher conference, or family meeting, they’re your virtual whiteboard, sheet of lined or graph paper, scrapbook, and art pad all rolled into one. Yet each has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and each excels in different aspects of the same, broad purpose. So the question becomes, which one is best for you?

Design

When it comes to looks, Noteshelf’s beautiful design blows both Remarks and Notability out of the water. The main screen displays each of your notes like a notebook and displays them nicely on a bookshelf similar to iBooks. Noteshelf also has the greatest selection of paper and pen color and sizes. There is also a Noteshelf store where you can buy more paper and book cover designs. Making Noteshelf visually appealing was clearly a priority on the developers’ list.

Organization

All three apps allow you to organize your notes into folders, but do so differently. Noteshelf has separate bookshelves for groups of notes, Remarks displays each folder like it’s own notebook, and Notability has more of a file system take on grouping notes. All of them are equally functional, but Noteshelf’s is the most visually appealing.

With Notability, you can also add categories as a way to further organize your folders.

PDF Annotation

One feature that Noteshelf does not offer is importing and annotating PDFs. Both Remarks and Notability do, however. To import a PDF, you must browse to the PDF from somewhere else — like Dropbox or email — activate the “open in” option and select Remarks or Notability from the list of choices. Once opened, the PDF works like any other note that you have in the app.

With Notability, you can also import from Dropbox, iDisk, or WebDave directly from the app.

Audio Notes

A unique feature to Notability is the ability add audio recordings to your notes. Neither Remarks or Noteshelf offer this functionality. Unfortunately, you can’t indicate which area of the notes your recording is applicable to, but this feature will still be welcomed by many.

Sharing

Remarks and Notability have the “open in” feature enabled, allowing you to quickly open your notes in another other application. It is a little buried in Notability and Noteshelf does not offer this functionality at all.

For Notability, the destination options are Dropbox, email, “Open in”, WebDAV, iDisk, iTunes, and print.

With Remarks, you can email, print, or “open in” another application (including Dropbox).

Noteshelf allows you to export to email, iTunes, Dropbox, Evernote, your iPad album, or printer. Noteshelf is also the only app of the three that lets you share just individual pages from a note. You can also choose to quickly share the page you are editing to email, Twitter, or Facebook.

Handwriting quality

Just like different pens and writing utensils can make your handwriting look better or worse, different handwriting apps can have different impacts on the look of your handwriting. Of the three, Noteshelf is my favorite.

Noteshelf and Notability actually have a way of improving the look of your handwriting with smooth, natural looking strokes. The beginning and end of each stroke gets slightly thicker and mimics the way a nice pen would write. How thin your stokes appear is dependent on how fast you write, slower strokes are thicker and faster strokes are thinner. Notability uses this technique more drastically than Noteshelf. In my opinion, Noteshelf’s implementation is better and more natural.

Remarks doesn’t have bad handwriting, it’s just not as good as Noteshelf and Notability. The strokes have a fixed width regardless of how quickly you write. The strokes are nice and smooth, though, so your handwriting does look nice, just not as nice as it does with Noteshelf and Notability.

Conclusion

When it comes to design and features such as colors, highlighters, and pen sizes, Noteshelf is the clear winner. If you’re looking for PDF annotation, however, you’ll probably want to scratch Noteshelf off your list.

Between Remarks and Notability, I think Notability is the better option primarily because of the handwriting. But Notability’s UI isn’t anything to brag about, and I’m a sucker for well designed, beautiful UI’s. Remarks has a nicer, more intuitive design, but is lacking in other features like pen sizes and highlighters.

If audio notes is something you need, Notability is the way to go. The other big thing that Notability has going for it is the price. At just $0.99, Notability is a lot more affordable then both Noteshelf and Remarks.

Personally, I use Noteshelf and go back and forth between Remarks and Notability. As a teacher, I like to provide my students with solutions to quizzes and exams and use Notability or Remarks to get that done. I can’t decide which of the two I prefer. Even though Remarks is doesn’t have all the features (yet?), Notability’s clunky UI gets on my nerves. For all my other note-taking needs, I use Noteshelf because of the larger selection of papers, notebooks, and pen colors.

If you have a preference between Noteshelf, Remarks, and Notability, let me know which and why.

Noteshelf – $5.99 – Download Now

Notability – $0.99 – Download Now

Remarks – $4.99 – Download Now

DisplayMate has just run through a set of vigorous tests that compare the new iPad with the iPad 2 and a bunch of other tablets, and have confirmed many of Apple’s tall claims about the new Retina display.

What makes the new iPad really shine is its very accurate colors and picture quality. It's most likely better and more accurate than any display you own (unless it's a calibrated professional display). In fact with some minor calibration tweaks the new iPad would qualify as a studio reference monitor.  … With this degree of picture quality and accuracy the iPad is now qualified for many interesting professional level applications.  … For this the new iPad beats every laptop, tablet, and mobile projector I have seen.”

While the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 had weak blues and purples, DisplayMate reported that the new iPad reproduced 99% accurate color reproduction. Though the sharpness is incredible and approaching overkill, the “Retina” quality is being disputed slightly; in order for the human eye to be unable to distinguish pixels at a distance of 12 inches, a screen would have to cram in 573 pixel per inch, which is a far cry from the new iPad’s 264 ppi. Further, he notes that at a viewing distance of 6 feet, your HDTV technically counts as a retina display, too.

The only areas Apple can really improve on, according to DisplayMate, are separated backlights for red, green, and blue pixels for even more accurate colors, reduction of reflection, and smarter automatic brightness handling. Eventually, they expect Apple to switch to OLED screens of varying sizes, but cost remains a big factor.

At this point, it seems like it will actually take content creators some time to catch up to the new standard of high definition. That said, Apple is now freed up to improve different parts of the device while the rest of the tablet world scrambles to catch up. Maybe they can get in on that textured display technology that was rumored just before the announcement…

Be sure to take a look at the source link for all of the technical nitty-gritty of the new iPad’s tests. The guy who wrote it has been in the business for over 20 years and definitely knows what he’s talking about.

Source: DisplayMate

Forums: What are you thoughts on using the Retina display

Today, has been a pretty exciting day for Apple news. Apple announced record sales for the new iPad and just what, exactly they’ll be doing with all their cash. If you’re still looking for more iOS goodness then check out the iMore forums. You can register now to get started today and while you’re at it, check out some of the threads below:

• How are the iPad speakers for everyone?
• Not getting iCloud e-mails from @me email
• How can I block certain incoming calls?
• Would you consider an iphone with 4:3 screen ratio?
• Is HDR there for the new iPad?
• Awesome iPad Retina wallpaper of the day!

If you’re not already a member of the iMore Forums, register now!