Apple iPad Problems Stacking Up

Problems with the new iPad just seem to keep popping up in the news

Since the release of the latest Apple iPad, it seems that one problem after another has been reported and is not looking good for Apple. In some respects, it reminds one of problems when companies push something out too quickly and then have to spend time cleaning up the problems. That is in the the public eye and Apple historically has delivered very good hardware and software which has become the standard for many in the industry. Could it be that the are losing that stature?

Heating iPads

One of the more publicized problems with the iPad has been the heat which it generates. The reports are many and one of the most damming is one from Consumer Reports where they found the new iPad operating at temperatures of up to 116 degrees while playing games. This is in direct opposition to statements by Apple. Those statements, as reported by All Things D, have Apple saying that the iPad is "Operating well within our thermal specifications". Whether 116 degrees is operating within "thermal specifications" is for others to speak to. But with that heat, you do feel it if it is on your lap. While it may not be much worse than some laptops, coming from Apple is a surprise.

Not Charging While Playing Games

There are reports where the iPad is not charging when playing games and it is really much bigger than that. It appears that any CPU intensive app which is running, including most games, will not continue to charge the iPad while the CPU intensive processes are going on. During those time, the battery is being drained just as fast as it is being charged. Thus a stalemate and the status quo of the battery remains as is. It could be worse and the battery continues to drain, but the issue of having a charger attached and not having the battery life increasing is a concern.

Other Battery Replated Items

From Information Week comes reports of problems with charging the battery on the new iPad. One item says that if the iPad is connected to a USB 2.0 port, it will not charge. If you are using your new iPad while the charger is plugged in, it charges very slowly if at all.

In another report from 9 to 5 Mac, they are reporting problems with the charging of the battery. It appears that after the battery indicator shows 100%, that the iPad continues to charge the battery. According to the article, once you see the 100% indicator, it takes another hour to completely charge the iPad. Could this be due to the much larger battery?

WiFi Problems

There are reports of WiFi problems on the latest iPad as well. Complaints about WiFi issues have been growing and were also part of issues with the iPad 2. It seems that the connectivity issues this time around are worse than with previous models. While the iPhone 4S is not having these issues, the new iPad is. This is primarily related to signal strength and the dropping of signals. Either of these make it problematic to use.

LTE And Excessive Data Usage

While not directly an Apple problem, there are growing complaints of people exceeding their data plans while using the iPad's 4G LTE data connection. Streaming comes with almost no effort and in a matter of days, you can use up an entire months worth of your data plan. These reports are growing, but the big one is going to be when owners get their wireless bills. That is when many are going to find out about overage charges on the new tiered data plans which AT&T and Verizon are offering. That is going to become the big store by the end of May.

In Summary

While some issues can be fixed with software updates, some of these cannot. The one item which is not easily fixed is that of reputation. While having a great reputation for releasing quality products, the latest iPad product is threatening Apple's long standing reputation. There are other complaints related to the iPad and some not directly impacting the iPad but part of bigger issues. The latest one is iTunes downloads where anything larger than 15 MB is resulting in an error. It is the growing list of issues which really seems to indicate that Apple released this product before it was ready.

What do you think?

Adding Site To Bing Webmaster Brings Trials and Tribulation

How To Series

Adding your site to Bing Webmaster may be simple, but getting it to work is very troubling

In my previous post, I talked about setting up a web site and the effort necessary to train Google how to crawl your site so that it would do it within 30 minutes. That exercise turned out to be far better than expected as the goal was to get posted articles to show up within 30 minutes. I posted that almost a month ago and now at 75 days and counting, articles are still showing up in Google search on average in about 10 minutes. This was really better than expected for a new site. I have since turned my attention to Yahoo and Bing as the next large search engines. Since Yahoo is using Bing search as a commodity, I will be focusing on Bing since it represents both.

Unfortunately, the results for Bing search and Bing Webmaster Tools are not as good as expected. In fact, I am very disappointed in the results. Setting things up was very straight forward in the process and I will be reporting more in the future when I get more substantial results from the unscientific testing that I am doing. At the moment, things are not doing well for my efforts. I set up Bing Webmaster at day 41 of my Google testing and I am now at day 37 of the Bing testing with some strange activities in the process.

One specific item is that the site map that I added to Bing Webmaster is still showing as being in a state of Pending, which does not make any sense. For Google, I knew within hours whether there was a problem with the sitemap. Not the case with Bing. If you do a Google search on "bing sitemap pending", you will get a large number of results coming back. I filtered that on the last month and still have a large result set. It seems that there are problems with the "Pending" indicator which I started tracing back to November last year and then stopped. The most recent comments from Bing forums show that the support group is aware of them and a fix is coming at the end of March. Looks like there is no big rush in fixing this problem. Google would have had this corrected a long time ago.

In looking at the Bing Webmaster Tools, my site is being crawled everyday and being indexed. The problem that I am having at the moment is that the vast majority of pages are not showing up when I do the Site command on the Bing or Yahoo sites. That is not good when they are crawling the site everyday. Things are being indexed as well, but the results are not showing up. This is far different than what Google Webmaster tools is accomplishing for me. I have read some information where it appears that Bing places a higher emphasis on the longevity of a site and if so, that might explain why after 37 days that 6 out of over 40 articles are showing up. What happened to all the other articles from when I posted the site map?

It seems that Bing is picking things up very sporadically. Here is a quick summary of articles posted

• Posted on Day 1, picked up by Bing 10 days later


• Posted on Day 8, picked up by Bing 19 days later


• Posted on Day 27, picked up by Bing 1 day later


• Posted on Day 31, picked up by Bing same day


• Posted on Day 33, picked up by Bing same day


• Posted on Day 37, picked up by Bing same day

Some of you might be thinking that Bing is working pretty good if it is picking things up the same day. The problem is that an article is being posted each and every day in this test, so there are major gaps in what Bing is searching on and reporting on. In general, Bing has failed in this test to date and if the information that Bing places a higher premium on an older site, then it would make sense. More research into that aspect still needs to be done.

It is too early to report final findings on this, but the preliminary information is not looking very good on this report. As I begin to get more reliable information from Bing and they are picking up all the articles on the site, I will put out a final article on the findings. For now, it is a work in progress and more information needs to be gathered.

Facebook Timeline for Pages –What You Need to Know

The new Timeline layout is coming to your Facebook business Page whether you like it or not. Now the Facebook Timeline is mandatory for Pages. As of March 31th, 2012, ALL Facebook Pages will switch over to the new layout. If you haven't updated your Facebook Page and don't know what to do, then you should take a few minutes to watch the overview videos below.

To help you prepare for the changes, we have a number of materials that will help you with the transition. We have a video overview, broken into three parts below, that will explain the Timeline for Pages, how to use it, and some of the features of the new layout.

Then we have seven new training videos to walk you through how to update your Page and use some of the new features. We also have a 17 page PDF (and ePub) guide if you'd rather read about the changes than watch the videos. The links for these materials are at the bottom of this page.

The first video segment opens with Facebook's incredible reach and then explains the new Timeline layout, the cover image and restrictions, and how the new profile image works.



 

TEAR DOWN THE WALL! The infamous Wall has been replaced by the Activity Feed. This video explains how the About section, App display, highlight feed, navigation and the new Activity Feed all work.



 

Pinning. This last video in the series demonstrates pinning posts, the friend feed, Milestones, shared stories, messaging and more.



 

The list of seven Facebook Timeline for Pages how-to videos can be found on the following page, along with the downloadable companion guide:

Facebook Timeline for Pages

Smart Phone Screens Increasing In Size

Bigger Is Actually Better

When the iPhone came out with its 3.5 inch screen, it was seen as the standard for the future. There were some other phones out there which had 3 inch screens or larger, but that had established the new benchmark for what people wanted to see in a smart phone. For Apple, that size has not changed since the first iPhone was rolled out in 2007. Rumors of Apple increasing the size to 4 inches for the iPhone 4S never materialized and one must assume that it will increase with the iPhone 5. That is because people want to see larger screens. There is no other to state it that size does make a difference.

In a report from Strategy Analytics, they found from a survey that the range of screen size for a smart phone which people desired is in the 4 to 4.5 inch range and that is an increase. One of the key observations was that the thickness of phone came into play as well. With the current trend to make phones thinner, it fits in with that particular finding in the survey results. Another factor was differences between men and women, where women desired phones which were smaller in size over all.

In the area of phone types, iPhone owners did not desire screens as large as Android owners which can be traced to the size of recent Android phones, some of which are over 4.5 inches in size. This is pushing beyond the survey results and could be presenting what the future may be holding for us all. Recent product offerings may be moving things even further than the current range of desired screens size to have it become 4.5 to 5 inches in size as the new range. This is mainly because of the Samsung Galaxy Note coming in at 5.3 inches which compared to most smart phones is very large.

With the convergence of smart phones and tablets, we can expect the idea of providing a larger screen on a smart phone to continue and 5 inches to become the standard. That is going to be dependent on several factors to make that become the case. One of the primary ones is going to be battery life. We have already seen that poor battery life impacts 4G LTE phones and cause some to reconsider the idea of purchasing a 4G LTE smart phone. This one items is going to have to be addressed or it will impact smart phone sales in the future. Larger screen sizes are going to require higher battery drain and thus the need for far better battery life than what we see today. Rumors of the reduction in the bezel around smart phones is one solution as the screens can increase, but not the size of the phones.

If the larger screens result in heavy smart phones in the future, that will impact sales as the screens get larger. If bigger batteries are the only solution to the battery life issues, then people are going to be looking at phones below the 4.5 inch size. The goal is to have a smart phone that easily fits into your pocket and if it weighs a lot, you are going to notice it during the day. That is not the trend that we have been seeing in recent years.

One of the biggest drivers for larger screen sizes is going to be much higher resolution on smart phones. This trend is all important in the convergence of smart phones and tablets. If a larger smart phone is to replace a 7 inch tablet, the only way that it will do that is through greatly increased resolution. You only have to look at the significantly increased resolution on the new iPad to understand how that changes the market over night. The increased screen resolution on Android smart phones has been increasing steadily over the past year and looks to be increasing far further this year as well.

What do you think is a good screen size on a smart phone?

Amazon Invades The Tablet Market

Tablet Trending

For all of 2010 and 2011, Apple has been in total control of the tablet market share around the globe and there has not been a significant challenger which could be taken seriously. That is until Amazon made a decision to enter the marketplace. Prior to that, all of the other tablet manufacturers were not seen as a threat to Apple and their dominance of the market which they created. There were many who were seeing 2011 as being the year of the tablet, but that has definitely not been the case and it is starting to look like 2012 may become the Year of the Tablet. With the entry of Amazon and their Kindle Fire, they have invaded an area which has been dominated by Apple and are now threatening that dominance.

Amazon had zero market share when they entered the 4th quarter of 2011 and went from nothing to having a 14% market share in not even a full quarter. Shipping 3.9 million Kindle Fire tablets beginning in November, they have grabbed a sizable market share, though there a some who believe they are not going to impact the iPad. That view is short sided as Amazon has found the one area which a majority of consumers seem to be interested in and that is price. By coming to market with a $199 tablet, they have broken the previous market model which had everything beginning at $399 and up. That has forever changed and now everyone has to look at where the market is going in relation to a $199 price line. Continuing rumors of a smaller iPad show just how much things have changed and how believable a smaller & cheaper iPad could be.

One would think that Samsung would have a far better market share than they currently do, especially considering the way that Apple has been trying to get injunctions against Samsung in countries around the world. With what appears to be their tablet of the month club, Samsung has been announcing tablet after tablet trying to find the spot where consumers look at Samsung as the first choice. With only 8% of the market share and behind Amazon, they have their work cut out for them. This again points to the idea of a cheaper tablet as being the way of the future to generate tablet sales.

Amazon is rumored to be working on an 8.9 inch tablet and a 10 inch tablet. If those rumors are accurate and they deliver larger sizes with the aggressive pricing that they did on the Kindle Fire, there could be another market shift where Amazon moves up to 30% market share in the 3rd or 4th quarter. If that were to happen, Apple would lose their greater than 50% market share and be seen as a big problem. If there is a way for Apple to prevent that from happening, it would be with the iPad Mini which has been rumored. If not, the current trending looks like Apple is going to continue to lose market share.

What do you think? Is Apple in danger of losing their current control of the tablet market?




The above chart comes from Statista.com

New iPad : How Everyone Missed The Name

Now that Apple has made the formal announcement this morning for the latest version of the iPad, many are going to be talking about what it contains or does not contain based on all the rumors which have been circulating over the past several months. Some of the rumors, such as the "Retina Display" were spot on in their accuracy while some others were close but not right on the mark. As an example, the A5X processor versus the A6 processor. Those are going to be talked about for weeks, if not months, regarding this latest version of the iPad. Apple has already put up a page comparing the new iPad to the now previous version on their web site. Twitter is flowing with Tweets about the latest iPad. Articles are being written, such as the failure on the part of Apple to include Siri which resulted in so much success for the iPhone 4S. These comments and debates will be with us for a some time. So many will be playing the "Monday morning quarterback" analyzing what Apple did right and what they did wrong.

The one thing that everyone missed in the rumor mill was the name. No one guessed that it would be simply called the iPad. Respected publications are still calling it the iPad 3, such as PC World among a list of others. How could everyone miss the name change and in a lot of cases continue to call it the iPad 3 hours after the formal announcement by Apple? That is something that is confounding. There was the well recognized name of the iPad 3. The rumors about the name being changed to the iPad HD because of the retina display were circulated by many as what it would be called and some are still using term. Some of those who were claiming the name to be the iPad HD or believed it would be include:

• Venture Beat


• The Washington Post


• CNet News


• Mashable Tech

And this is just a few of the many sources which seems to have believed that the coming iPad would be called the iPad HD. There was a majority of people who believed that it would be labeled as the iPad 3, the natural successor to the iPad 2. How could everyone be wrong? I have not found any leaks of the name "iPad" and no one was reporting a name other than the iPad HD or the iPad 3. It makes you wonder how everyone could have missed the change in the name so completely.

Now the debate begins as to why the iPad does not have a specific label assigned to it so that it represents the current model. It has already started with posts from CNN as to why the iPad does not have a name. Or the the New York Times talking about how it is puzzling experts. It seems that it is a marketing mistake to not provide a unique name for a product.

"It's just 'iPad.' It's what it is."

As to how everyone could have missed the mark on the change, we can chalked that one up to Apple. Their ability to keep things secret and control the leaks which then turn into rumors is one that continues to confound journalists. Why Apple has chosen to create the simple name will also confound journalists for quite a while. What are they going to call the next iPad they release? As for now, the name is the iPad. This will undoubtedly create confusion for consumers and there is nothing to stop Apple from calling it the iPad HD or iPad 3 in the coming weeks. But for now, the name is just simply the iPad.

Unlimited Web Hosting -Is it real? (Infographic)

Is unlimited web hosting really unlimited? The short answer: no it isn't.

When choosing a web host you may need to evaluate if that unlimited hosting plan you're thinking of buying will really fit your needs. If you are planing to host multiple websites you might run out of database storage. If any of your sites experience large spikes in traffic you could exceed your CPU allocation and your site could become temporarily unavailable at the worst time. And if you think you still have a lot storage space despite the realities of unlimited hosting, think again. Some hosts won't allow you to use the disk space as general file storage and will shut down your account if they feel you are violating their terms of service. On some hosts staying within storage terms but hosting a lot of files may negatively impact the overall performance of your account.

If you're just starting out with a new site then you'll probably be okay with unlimited hosting plans. But if you have a popular site, or one that is process intensive, an unlimited plan just might limit the growth of your business.

For an explanation of inodes and more information on unlmited web hosting read the chapter "Does Unlimited Really Mean Unlimited?" in our guide to choosing a web host, available as a free download in both PDF and ePub formats.