Apple iPad, Applications and Accessories

Apple has made a new version of iOS available for download. iOS v4.2.6 doesn’t bring new newspaper subscription payments, or fix AirPlay to work properly with third-party apps. It doesn’t add gestures to the iPad. In fact, it does almost nothing, unless you are the lucky recipient of the new Verizon iPhone which officially arrives today. Apple’s release notes are infamously sparse, and this is no exception. Here is the entirety of the “What’s new” section on MacUpdate: Fixes a bug to ensure Personal Hotspot data usage is accurately reported (for Verizon iPhones).

When you read the words “World’s largest touch-screen”, you may be forgiven a sigh, or even a yawn. What’s the point? you ask. Well, take a look at this: The dramatic (and royalty-free ) music certainly helps, but a touch-screen of this size changes the experience completely. This is no giant iPad, as you can see from the galactic swirlings that the users shoot across the screen. The screen is the key to the immersiveness of this setup, a project designed and built at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands

SAN FRANCISCO — Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday launched a touchscreen tablet and two new smartphones powered by Palm’s mobile operating system, webOS. Dubbed the TouchPad, the HP tablet has a 9.7-inch screen with 1024 x 768 resolution, a front-facing camera for videoconferencing and a dual-core 1.2-GHz processor. Due for a summer release, the TouchPad also includes stereo speakers, gyroscope and accelerometer sensors, Bluetooth compatibility and support for Adobe Flash

> SAN FRANCISCO — HP’s response to the iPad is landing this summer. It’s called the TouchPad, and even though HP wouldn’t let us touch it, the tablet looks rather promising. Just like the iPad, the TouchPad has a 9.7-inch multitouch screen with a 1,024-by-768-pixel resolution. The tablet features a front-facing camera for videoconferencing and a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, stereo speakers, gyroscope and accelerometer sensors, Bluetooth compatibility and support for Adobe Flash. HP did not announce a price tag. The TouchPad runs webOS, the smartphone operating system developed by Palm, which HP acquired last year

There she is, the HP TouchPad . It’s the webOS slate we’ve been yearning for ever since probing (then) Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein on our first-ever Engadget Show , but sadly, it looks as if HP has yanked any and all Palm labeling from the final product.

Google has released the Google Translate app for the iPhone, bringing the live voice translation feature from Android to iOS. You should try it out: it’s hilarious. The free app can be used to translate typed words between any of 50 different languages, and you can also hit a button and speak to the app in 15 languages, whereupon your words are “recognized”, transcribed and then piped into the translation engine. The result is displayed as text, but if you hit another button it will be read out in a surprisingly good (and actually quite sexy) synthesized voice (available in 23 languages). Now, it might be my non-U.S accent, but the thing has some trouble recognizing my voice. For instance, I said “You can’t smoke here” and the app heard “Wake up sleepyhead.” And with my first test last night I said something I can’t recall now, but it certainly wasn’t the “Dog a bagel and cats” that Google Translate seems to think.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has made its iPlayer app plans that extra bit more official by announcing that iPad- and Android-specific versions of its software will be arriving by the end of this week. The iPlayer is a free TV catchup service hosting the best and most popular (those two being almost mutually exclusive categories) from the BBC’s catalog of recent programming, and the new native apps promise to bring that to your portable device in a touchscreen-optimized format with a “simple and intuitive design.” The finishing touches are being applied right now and the apps should be with us before the week is through, but the real cause for excitement is that the BBC plans to take the iPlayer out for an international walk, which will likely rely on such platform-specific apps for distribution and the collection of subscription fees.

Apple has started production of a thinner, lighter and faster version of the iPad, according to The Wall Street Journal . Citing the usual “people familiar with the matter,” WSJ claims the new iPad will include front- and rear-facing cameras for videoconferencing and shooting photos, similar to the iPhone 4. The WSJ added that cellular data plans will be available for the iPad 2 through Verizon and AT&T. The report echoes similar rumors about the next iPad published by multiple publications in the past. Tech observers expect the next iPad to be released this spring, since the first model was released April 2010

The BBC iPlayer app for the iPad will be released this Thursday. It has been years in the making (Gadget Lab first reported on a planned iPhone app in February 2008), but now BBC iPlayer engineer Geoff Marshall has made it all but official. Here’s his Tweet : iPlayer App for iPad is being released this Thursday – 10th Feb. 3G connection is browse only

A BBC Interactive Operations Engineer has British hearts all aflutter tonight with a tweet announcing that the iPlayer app for the iPad is ready to roll out this Thursday, February 10th. It’s specific to the tablet for now, so no iPhone, and will only debut in the UK, so no BBC America for you just yet, though this is the first step toward making that cozy dream a reality. Taking the BBC TV catchup service into international waters will be done on the basis of a paid subscription model, which should dissuade all the TV License payers in the UK from revolting, but do bear in mind that this upcoming tablet app will only allow content streaming over WiFi. You’ll be able to browse the iPlayer over 3G, we’re told, but will need to hook up to some roomier wireless pipes to sip the sweet nectar of BBC Entertainment on your iPad (in app form, browser-based options are a whole other matter). Stay tuned for the fully detailed announcement in a couple of days. BBC iPlayer app landing on UK iPads this Thursday, US in June originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Feb 2011 20:48:00 EDT