The I.T. Life

Another one picked from All Things D today, British Airways has handed 100 iPads to cabin crew to test out. The idea is to make the paper work (like flight manifests) easier, which would speed up how they do their job and improve the experience for passengers.

If the idea works they will deploy 1’800, and the response they have so far is very positive. I think this could be a great idea, anything that makes the crews job easier, and makes my time on the plane more relaxed and enjoyable gets my vote. Also, if you were curious BA is not the first, United recently handed out thousands to pilots along the same lines, and again if it makes their job easier I have no reason to object.

In Brighton, England while visiting a computer server conference ‘The Woz’ (Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple) mentioned he would be willing to go back to Apple in an active role if Tim Cook or Steve Jobs invite him back. I’m not going to get into the (long) history of Apple and the Steves, if you want that then check out the book iWoz. Woz currently works as an advisor for Apple, while he works as chief scientist for a a start-up. Not that Apple is really in need of new direction, but I would love to see Woz have an active role with more direct input.

There are a few different stories floating around on this, one of them is that Best Buy is simply “holding” sales for a upcoming promotion. However the timing for that to be true seems really strange, considering the recent ad that Best Buy has pulled.

As you can tell it is a little tasteless, especially considering the iPad 2 is probably going to be the best selling tablet Best Buy will stock. Now however true this upcoming “promotion” is, to me it seems a bit more likely to me that Apple has decided to let Best Buy take some time to think about what they have done.

This one left me scratching my head, but it is something only Apple could get away with. A new app was just released (by Apple) that is nothing more than a slideshow of all the current ads in the iAd network.

Apple seems to think that its ad network runs such high quality ads people would be willing to browse them just like content.

You may laugh but if you have a iOS device chances are your going to check it out.

The Apple Store has recently been replaced by the beloved yellow sticky note, and it seems the big change is that they have removed any evidence of the white iPhone 4. There were rumor that we would see the white iPhone 4 this year, however with this change it is looking more like its been wiped from history. 9to5mac had a source check Apples inventory system and noticed the white iPhone SKU was completely removed.

It sounds as if there is a MacBook Air update in the works, as Intel is building a new ultra low voltage chip that should replace Core 2 Duo chips that currently run them. Apple has stuck with the Core 2 Duo for several revisions now, which has confused many people considering the MacBook Pros uses i5 and i7 chips. Now, the reason that is likely behind this is the Core 2 Duo is a fairly low voltage chip, which would be required to allow the NVIDIA GPU chip. The rumor is that in June we will see these new MacBook Air’s, I’m hoping this is true because I’ve wanted to upgrade to a Air for a while but the old processor has been holding me back.

Here is a different kind of rumor for the iPhone 5, it seems AppleInsider has some photos that give hope (or dread) to the idea that the new iPhone may have a 3D camera. This won’t stop me from getting a iPhone 5, but it will be one of the few features on the device I never use.

The future of Blockbuster may be revealed in the next few days, as the the new owner of the company will be decided this week. Blockbuster, who has been completely destroyed by companies like NetFlix, and services like the iTunes store has been in bankruptcy for a little while now, and a few companies are bidding to take over.

Dish network is just one of the players, and the current big is somewheres around $290 million. My only question is what the heck is somebody going to do with Blockbuster, because nobody rents DVDs these days and the last thing we need is another online video store.

Sir Howard Stringer (the big cheese at Sony) had a minor slip of the tongue during a WSJ interview. He mentioned that the issues in Japan may delay there shipment of camera sensors to Apple, which likely means they are providing the sensors for the next iPhone. I really hope this is true because though I love my iPhone it doesn’t have the best low light shots, and I’ve always been a Sony camera fan.

CNN is reporting that the iPad 2 is completely sold out, and 70% of this is to new customers. They are also estimating there have been 400’000 to 500’000 sold, compared to 300’000 when the first iPad launched.