iPad Gadget of the Year

iPad Named Time Magazine’s Gadget of the Year

Time Magazine has the iPad at Number 1 in their listing of Gagdets of the Year for 2010.

No great shocker here, as I expect the iPad to haul in lots of end-of year awards like this, but Time is a big name and it’s good to see the iPad recognized in their list. Here’s their blurb on why it is their choice for gadget of the year:

It’s not the first touchscreen tablet in the history of computing, but it’s easily the most successful so far. With 3 million iPads sold in their first month alone and a market for interactive magazines and newspapers created almost overnight, Apple finally managed to make tablet computing cool.

iPhone 4 dinosaur tooth and iPad 2 Feb launch

News of the Week
Apple's eagerly awaited iPad 2 is creating quite a stir despite having yet to be confirmed, This week the first leaked iPad 2 case appeared showing the second gen tablet will feature a rear-facing camera and increased connectivity options. This was followed by further case leaks and the original iPad has pushed Apple's mobile computing share to a global high. Elsewhere on the iPad 2 front, it emerged the device will not feature an OLED display as Apple push for a backlit screen and rumours began about an April launch as February shipping date information was revealed.



Android 2.3 officially launched this week as Google unveiled the Samsung Nexus S, the first device to run the Android Gingerbread filling. The 2.3 unveiling was shortly followed by the news that the upcoming Android release will be made available as an update shortly with HTC leading manufacturers and confirming its use of the update. Other Android news this week saw the revelation that 300,000 Android devices are activated each and every day whilst the next generation Android OS, Android 3.0 Honeycomb was demoed by Google's Andy Rubin on the upcoming unnamed Motorola tablet.



Back to Apple and the iPhone has once again been doing the rounds. Whilst a £40,000 iPhone 4 customised with a 65 million year old T-Rex dinosaur tooth and meteor rock might be a bit brash and pricey for some, the long delayed white iPhone 4 wont be and the white Apple handset has this week been dated for a spring 2011 launch by the folks at Cupertino themselves. Advancing to the upcoming iPhone 5 and new Apple patents have revealed the fifth gen smartphone will sport an FM radio receiver and graphical radio mapping tech.


Launch time for RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook is growing ever closer with the 7-inch tablet this week given a number of hands-on demos. Whilst the first saw the tablet's multifunctioning touchscreen credentials shown off, the second gave a look at the tablet, phone pairing that will allow for mobile web browsing. Elsewhere on the PlayBook fornt, RIM has started to accept apps for the upcoming tablet whilst rumours of an upcoming 3D BlackBerry smartphone kicked into gear following the acquisition of a 3D UI developer.

iPad top "gadget" of 2010

Apple's iPad edged out the Android-running Samsung Galaxy S to take Time Magazine's "Top Gadget" prize of 2010, a poll that finds the two companies dominating the mobile and technological hardware arena and leaving others in the dust. Of the top 10 devices, either Apple or Google occupied the top seven places, with Apple taking a plurality of four spots to Google's three.

The iPad, Time's Doug Aamoth wrote, "finally managed to make tablet computing cool" by reinventing the tablet concept and creating new markets, like one for interactive magazines and newspapers. When it came to smartphones, however, "2010 was the year of the Android," Time declared, naming the Galaxy S as the best of the multiple models that run Google's mobile OS, which was installed on more than nine million devices by the end of the third quarter.

The 11" MacBook Air won third place, followed by Google TV (via Logitech Revue), the Nexus One smartphone and the iPhone 4. While the iPhone 4 did not do as well as many might have expected, Time heaped praise on the phone's screen quality and Facetime innovation (both the front-facing camera and the software) saying it "finally made mobile video chatting popular with regular people." Though outranked by the Galaxy S and Nexus One, it is interesting to note that Time's editors also compiled a "Top 10 iPhone apps" list, a distinction not given to other mobile operating systems.

The reborn Apple TV took seventh place, considerably behind Google TV, but Time noted that it had to the potential to "totally upend how people consume movies, television shows and other digital content." The description of the device, perhaps constrained by the short word count, appears to suggest that only rented material could be viewed on it, which would be inaccurate (but correctly said that no content can be permanently stored on the actual device).

Eighth position was the first occupied by a non-Apple, non-Google device -- Toshiba's dual-screen, keyboard-less, $1,100 Libretto W100 laptop. Comparable to two Galaxy Tab tablets melded together, Toshiba "did the smart thing" by marketing it as a limited-edition "concept" PC, the magazine said.

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 was completely shut out of the list in something of a surprise snub, but grabbed ninth place with its Kinect add-on to the XBox, one-upping Nintendo's original concept of wireless game control with a clever device that quickly found an audience, particularly with "casual" gamers.

Rounding out the list was Barnes & Noble's Color Nook e-reader, simultaneously illustrating the emergence of e-readers as a market segment and acknowledging that multi-function devices like the iPad have proven more popular. The magazine praised the Nook's decision to use the same quality of color screen as the iPad, saying the decision to bring full color to an e-reader "could pay off" in terms of helping it steal mindshare from Amazon's Kindle v3.