Rumor: iPad 2 Mishandling Gets Best Buy Blacklisted By Apple

A reader who works at Best Buy just told us that there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding between the electronics retailer and Apple. Apparently, Best Buy was holding off on selling the iPad 2s it had in stock, telling customers there weren’t any when in fact they had just reached their quota of sales for the day.

Yeah, doesn’t seem like a smart strategy to me either, but this is Best Buy we’re talking about. Apple didn’t like it either, and has declined to sell any more iPads at the store for the time being.

The tipster continues, saying that no less than Tim Cook is involved in this little snafu, and will be helping with the negotiations. He says the Apple Rep at his branch of Best Buy confirmed the story, though until we get proof in the form of a lack of iPads in-store, we’ll consider it a rumor. A very likely rumor, but still.

I just don’t get why you would mess with Apple. Their retail roll-outs are very carefully planned for maximum splash effect, and selling them by the million on day one is a big part of that. Did Best Buy really think it was wise to tell customers to come back later?

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Rumor: iPad 2 Mishandling Gets Best Buy Blacklisted By Apple

More Hints That Chrome OS Is Coming To Tablets

The last thing the tablet world needs right now is yet another platform, but that appears to be where Google is heading — or at the very least, they’re bracing for the inevitable by making Chrome OS a bit more touch-friendly.

Some hints, in the form of layout adjustments, virtual keyboard graphics, and so on, have been uncovered by Stephen Shankland over at CNET, but the import of these items isn’t really clear just yet. After all, Honeycomb is just at the very beginning of its life — but that doesn’t mean it’s Google’s only answer to the tablet question.

For one thing, Chrome OS is potentially much more lightweight than Android, especially Honeycomb, which has strict hardware requirements. On the other hand, Chrome OS is designed to boot in seconds and run on anything that can handle a browser. What web apps and video decoding might require in a year or two is another question entirely.

For now it’s just vague inklings of a future product. I’ll keep an eye out for more news like this; I like the idea of Chrome OS on tablets, though it doesn’t make a lot of sense commercially right now.

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More Hints That Chrome OS Is Coming To Tablets

100 classic Atari games for iPad

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I don’t have an iPad but the brand new “Atari’s Greatest Hits” app looks like a blast. From touchArcade:

By way of in-app purchases, Atari’s Greatest Hits can deliver to your iOS device up to 99 more games from the historical studio’s back catalog, a mix of both arcade and (then) cartridge-based VCS / 2600 releases that you just might’ve grown up with. These games can be had in four-title game packs available at $0.99 each, as well as in a 68MB lump download of the entire library for $14.99.

“Atari’s Greatest Hits” Review – My God, It’s Full of Pixels!


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100 classic Atari games for iPad

Opera house’s fabric curtain looks like crumpled aluminum foil

Wp-Content Uploads 2011 04 Paewhite2
Seen here is the fantastical curtain of the Oslo Opera House. Los Angeles-based artist Pae White created it by scanning crumpled aluminum foil and translating that data into instructions for a computer-controlled loom that wove the material out of cotton, wool, and polyester. “Pae White Uses Computer-Assisted Loom To Weave Opera Curtain Of Scanned Images Of Aluminum Foil” (FEELguide)


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Opera house’s fabric curtain looks like crumpled aluminum foil

Oscium’s iMSO-104 turns iPad, iPhone into mixed signal oscilloscopes

We’ve seen oscilloscopes repurposed as clocks and MAME machines, but we hardly ever see the pendulum swing in the opposite direction. The iMSO-104, however, actually turns your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch into an oscilloscope display. Using a Cypress Semiconductor system on a chip, the iMSO-104 touts a 5MHz bandwidth and as much as 12 megasamples per second, and connects to your device by way of the dock connector — according to its maker, it’s also the world’s smallest and most portable oscilloscope. That’s all well and good, but what we really want to know is, does it support Tennis for Two? The iMSO-104 is now available for pre-order for $300, but if you’re itching to see the thing in action, you can download the corresponding app today and give it a test drive. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Oscium’s iMSO-104 turns iPad, iPhone into mixed signal oscilloscopes

Oscium’s iMSO-104 turns iPad, iPhone into mixed signal oscilloscopes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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