Everything iPad

It’s Sunday night here on the West Coast, and that means it’s time for another Week in Review. We know, we know, you’re excited. We wish we had more to bring you, as we do every week, and so we can only hope that the week following this post sees a plethora of new news. It’s definitely possible, considering with one more Week in Review set into our belt, we are one week closer to the inexorable launch of Apple’s tablet device.

First up, we’ve got the first in-depth glimpses of the iPhone 3.2 SDK. When the Software Developer Kit launched on January 27, there wasn’t much gleaned from the release. It took a few Beta releases before we started to get anything really shocking or revealing. In this case, a lot of more media details. The reason it was pretty revealing, was because this time around we got some images to back up the text. We saw the media controls on the lock screen, along with some handwriting options for Chinese characters. And, a battery percentage meter. In other SDK news, Apple released Beta 3 over the last week, and in doing so, showed off some more camera details (that are obviously meant for the iPhone (at least)), but that could easily be “retrofitted” into the iPad if and when a future version does indeed get a camera.

Sure enough, Flash Player made its way into the news a few times here in the last week, just as it has every week since the announcement of the iPad. We’ve still got words flying from both sides of the fence, but this week it’s been mostly on Adobe’s side. Basically, they’re reinforcing their position, reiterating that it’s not Flash Player’s fault Apple and Steve Jobs didn’t include support. Nor is it Adobe’s. Apparently, Adobe and others see the video software as a direct competition to Apple’s App Store. We don’t see it the same way, to be honest, but maybe the fact it showed up a second time during the week makes it more believable.

Right off the bat, the iPad was getting a lot of mix feelings. People were confused about its existence, and whether or not Apple had a direct hit on their hand or a flop. All sorts of analysts began commenting on whether or not the iPad would sell one million or 15 million units, with a strong feeling that it will be somewhere between one and four million. But early in the week, a report came out that made it seem the sales numbers could be a bit higher than previously guessed, considering the demand for the tablet seems to be out-pacing the demand seen for the original iPhone.

The App Store took a heavy hit in the media recently. Apple scratched more than 5,000 applications out of the digital store for “sexual” content. While the politics of the situation have already been bandied about by several hundred people by now, Apple apparently wanted to take a step in the right direction, and they went ahead and issued an “explicit” category for app store developers. However, in a not too surprising move, subsequently removed the option only a couple of hours later.

And finally, we’ve got two stories that are both seated pretty firmly in science fiction, even if one of them is a real patent from the Cupertino-based company. That story, which came out only a few days ago, speaks of a crazy patent from Apple that issues a new way to interact with the camera. And no, not just by taking pictures. We mean by tapping the camera, and crazy things happen. Like activating certain elements within the User Interface. And lastly, we’ve got what the iPad might evolve into a few years from now. It’s crazy stuff, we tell you.