iPad Live hits the air tonight with Georgia, Chad and Rene and you know you won’t want to miss it!

Time: 9pm ET, 6pm PT, 2am GMT

Place: http://www.tipb.com/live/

If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to discuss, just leave them in the comments then come be part of the show!

Chat with you soon!

iPad Live podcast tonight 9pm ET! Come chat! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

The Wall Street Journal’s Yukari Iwatani Kane continues to leak Apple rumors, this time backing up Bloomberg’s iPhone nano story and once again raising the idea of a revamped, free MobileMe service to go with it:

One of the people, who saw a prototype of a new iPhone several months ago, said the new device is intended to be sold alongside the current line of iPhones and would be about half the size of the iPhone 4. The phone, one of its codenames is N97, would be available to mobile carriers at about half the price of Apple’s main line of iPhones, the person said.

Apple also is exploring a major overhaul of its MobileMe online storage service, the people familiar with the matter said. The service currently requires an annual subscription payment of $99 to $149. Apple is considering making Mobile Me a free service that would serve as a “locker” for personal memorabilia like photos and videos, eliminating the need for consumers’ devices to carry a lot of memory, the people familiar with the situation said. MobileMe could become a focal point for an online music service that Apple has been developing for more than a year, the people said.

TiPb took a look at the idea of growing the iPhone and iPad families earlier in the week and nothing here changes the balance. Apple already offers several versions of MacBook Pros and iPod so several versions of iPhone and iPad can never be off the table. What if any compromises Apple is willing to make, especially when it comes to app compatibility, remains the question.

Free MobileMe, on the other hand, could prove essential in matching free services from Google and Microsoft and paving the way to a universal Apple ID for cloud content, sync, and backup. (We can dream right?)

UPDATE: The WSJ has updated their post with info on what the iPhone nano and revamped MobileMe might just be like:

The person who saw the prototype of the new iPhone said the device was significantly lighter than the iPhone 4 and had an edge-to-edge screen that could be manipulated by touch, as well as a virtual keyboard and voice-based navigation. The person said Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., also plans to upgrade the iPhone 4.

The new MobileMe file-storage and music service could be available as early as June, depending on the progress of licensing talks that are in their preliminary stages, the people familiar with the situation said. Apple had planned for the service to be available a year earlier. The new service would give users access to their iTunes libraries from, say an iPhone or iPad, instead of requiring that the devices be synced by cable with a computer and use space to store the actual files, the people said. The new service likely would be compatible with the iPhone 4, one of the people said.

So now that the Verizon iPhone is off the rumor plate, you have any room left to believe in an iPhone nano?

[WSJ]

UPDATED: More iPhone nano, free MobileMe rumors is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

One of the most persistent complaints levied against the iPhone and iPad were/are the lack of multitasking. This, of course, has always been silly. However, now that BlackBerry QNX PlayBook>, Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets like Xoom, and HP webOS 3.0’s TouchPad are set to launch, “true multitasking” is again finding its way into the bullet points of competitively positioned slide decks and ad campaigns. It’s still silly but it’s also more complicated now.

Does iOS offer “true multitasking”, does its competitors? Let’s take a look, after the break.

The no iOS multitasking myth

Going back to the original iPhone’s introduction in 2007, Steve Jobs’ demonstration clearly showed music fading out as a call came in, staying on a call while browsing the web or sending email, and music fading back in as a call ended. Those of us who had Treo’s at the time were astounded at how smooth iPhone multitasking was, and how it didn’t crash or reboot the phone once.

From launch, the iPhone had great multitasking. It just didn’t have 3rd party apps. Fast forward to 2008 and iOS 2, the App Store launched and while Apple’s own apps continued to enjoy great multitasking, 3rd party App Store apps weren’t allowed any background processes at all. This kept things nice and simple and stable for a certain group of consumers but frustrated power users to no end.

Fast forward again to 2010 and iOS 4 (specifically 4.2 for iPad) and Apple set up a system to allow App Store apps limited multitasking. Not fake multitasking. Not untrue multitasking. But limited multitasking. Apps that were transferring data could keep the connection alive in the background for a short length of time after exit to finish the transfer (like a photo upload or status stream download). Music apps like Pandora could be streamed in the background. VoIP (Voice over IP) apps like Skype to keep a process in the background to receive or continue calls. Turn-by-turn navigation apps like TomTom could keep giving voice directions in the background. True multitasking all, it addressed a huge percentage of mainstream needs. (Not all needs mind you, persistent internet connections for SSH, etc. would have been nice for power users…)

In addition Apple added a few others things to enhance the “appearance” of multitasking from a user perspective. Instead of just leaving apps running forever in the background, using battery power and system resources and requiring user intervention to manage, Apple created a way to “save state” on exit. So, the next time an app launches it’s in the same place it was when last it was used. They also (re-)set double click on Home to launch a fast app switcher dock. Hidden behind the regular dock, invisible to users who don’t need or want it, it can be called up to quickly jump between recently used apps (or to expose controls for audio, brightness, etc). Not at all “true” multitasking but important when it comes to the perception of multitasking.

It’s a compromise solution, one that tries to address the aforementioned battery life and resource issues with ease of use and convenience and while it’s not perfect and could use some improvement, it’s pretty good. (Especially when you see how fast some competing devices chew through battery life.)

It’s also something that might be addressed further when iPad 2 — with more RAM and processing power — and iOS 5 are shown off sometime this spring.

Competitive multitasking

RIM’s QNX-powered BlackBerry Playbook, HP’s webOS 3.0-powered TouchPad, and the slew of Google’s upcoming Android 3.0-powered tablets, spearheaded by the Motorola Xoom, are all more or less touting “true multitasking” as a competitive advantage over the iPad. These are the same companies and campaigns touting Flash as the “whole internet/web” and both statements are, ironically, untrue. (We won’t touch on Flash here but suffice it to say that while Flash is the most popular plugin on the web, it’s far from the only plugin on the web.)

Lest you think this partisan or apologist, Kevin from CrackBerry.com was quick to point this out back during CES when RIM first spoke about true multitasking — what functionality does it provide to the end user?

Having a movie or video game continue to animate while in card view (webOS or Playbook variety) is great eye candy but isn’t functionally any better or truer multitasking than having it save state or pause and then resume when brought back to the foreground. You can’t interact with it when in background and more importantly — you can’t interact with multiple cards the way you can with multiple windows on a PC which really does offer true pre-emptive multitasking. To the best of my knowledge you can’t watch a movie and play a game at the same time, or drag and drop content between browsers and document editors, for example.

Cards (again webOS or Playbook) are a brilliant and elegant way to visualize multitasking for end users but until you can start dragging and dropping data between them the way you can on a Mac or Windows they’re functionally no better than the fast app switcher on iOS.

iOS, in fact, used card view before either webOS or PlayBook — Pages in Mobile Safari date way back to the original iPhone — Apple simply lacked the vision to (or chose not to) exploit them throughout the OS. (Even in Safari on iPad I’d argue a tabbing system would be more functional than the grid of pages we now enjoy.)

So while I’d dearly love for Apple repatriate cards/page to the iPad multitasking OS, I’d really only love it if it came with that multiple usage functionality. And when/if that comes, I hope Apple can figure out a way that isn’t at the expense of mainstream usability. (If part of the success of iOS is attributable to Apple ruthlessly cutting away everything and anything that wasn’t simple and easy for consumers to use, is complexity creep — while desirable to power users — the best thing for the platform as a whole?)

Android 3.0 Honeycomb seems to be bringing more of the desktop metaphor to the tablet space, including more multitasking. Their user interface and user experience, however, still seem to be on the back-burner. (Apple’s priorities are almost directly inverse to Google’s in that regard.)

The truth about true

The iPad multitasks fine. webOS and the strikingly similar BlackBerry tablet OS multitask with better visualization but it’s arguable about whether or not that’s “truer” and I’d argue it isn’t. Further, I’d argue that at this point it really doesn’t matter in terms of end user functionality. Android 3.0 Honeycomb may multitask more like a desktop but that’s neither more true nor proven better for a wide swath of users. Buried in all that, however, are a few important truths. The pad/tablet industry is still in its infancy and Apple, Google, HP, and RIM aren’t anywhere near done exploring interactions and interfaces on their devices. They’re all getting better. And since there are a few really strong players (and perhaps Microsoft one day as well), consumers get choice and the competition drives all of them to get better so we consumers choose them.

iPad competitors: Will the true multitasking please stand up? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

I think Sony’s lawsuit over hacking the PS3 might have driven iPhone Jailbreaker Geohot over the edge… and right into rap! Can he throw down? Watch the video after the break and let us know if he’s Geohot… or not. (Sorry!)

Sony lawsuit drives iPhone Jailbreaker Geohot to rap! [NSFW-L] is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Korea Herald is reporting that Apple might switch from the IPS displays used on current iPads to the new Samsung-manufactured Super PLS displays for even better viewing angles, brightness, and color. Not only are they better, but the super PLS displays are apparently 15% cheaper as well.

Apple has invested heavily in IPS, using it in everything from the latest iMacs to iPhone to iPad and has suffered from considerable supply constraint throughout 2010, largely attributed to the inability to get those panels manufactured fast enough. So even if PLS is better and cheaper it remains to be seen if Apple would be able to source enough panels to make it usable. But hey, they did just pre-pay billions of dollars to some supplier to lock up supply of something, didn’t they?

Is your iPad display just not bright, colorful, or viewable enough? Eager to see Apple make the switch?

[Korea Herald via 9to5Mac]

iPad 2 might switch from IPS to Samsung Super PLS display? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

While Apple — and hence TiPb — has no presence at Mobile World Congress, the might Smartphone Experts Network is there in full force to bring back all the Android, HP/Palm, and Windows Phone(/Nokia!) news that’s fit to post. Here’s where it’s all going down:

• Android Central Mobile World Congress coverage
• Windows Phone Mobile World Congress coverage

And who knows, they may even be able to snag some stories for PreCentral.net, CrackBerry.com, and TiPb.com as well. Meanwhile you’ll likely be able to catch most of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans Twitter, which typically includes @philnickinson losing every bit of luggage he owns — twice — while @backlon (Dieter) comes down with some heretofore undiscovered European flu and @malatesta77 (Dan) attends the Ballmernote in full motorcylce helmet (to protect against sweat and flying developers, no doubt).

If there’s anything at MWC 2011 you want us (meaning them!) to keep an eye out for, let us know!

Smartphone Experts at Mobile World Congress 2011 is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog