The luxury iPad has sparkling gems set into its Apple logo, as well as a solid-gold rear and screen surround.
Fans of the blinged-up device should bring their money with them, however, as Mr Hughes’s 2.1kg unique iPad also weighs in with a hefty price tag of £130,000 – more than 180 times pricier than even the most expensive UK model.
Mr Hughes’s website describes the unique gadget as ‘outstanding even down to the precise polishing to reveal its most beautiful harmonious appearance’.
It continues: ‘A magnificent combination of top-of-the-industry technology and unrivalled craftsmanship was invloved in creating this masterpiece.’
Mr Hughes, 39, from Liverpool, started creating the super-plush gadgets with wife Katherine eight years ago.
He makes the stunning gizmos by casting moulds in the shapes of the gadgets, before pouring in gold to complete the process, which can sometimes take up to six weeks.
The couple offer luxury customised phones, like diamond-encrusted Blackberrys, as well as the ultimate games console – a gold-plated Nintendo Wii ‘Supreme’ costing £300,000.
For those who can’t quite stretch to £130,000, Mr Hughes also offers a budget gold-plated iPad for a mere £2,000.
He said: ‘The process works for objects and gadgets people can relate to, and when we’re finished with the products they can often look bizarre and outrageous.
‘We’ve gone for the higher end of the gadget market. When someone spends £80,000 on an expensive car, they don’t want to drive it home and find their nextdoor neighbour has got the same one.
Source: Daily Mail
Alongside the up-front cost of the device, consumers will have to pay for Wi-Fi access when they leave their home, or sign up for a 3G mobile broadband package.
O2 has announced that it will be offering three tariffs. For £2 a day, iPad owners can access up to 500MB, without having to sign any contract. It also has two monthly payment options: for £10 a month iPad users get 1GB of usage and for £15 they get 3GB. Customers can cancel their contracts – with 24 hours’ notice – at the end of the month.
Orange’s pay monthly option offers a better deal for heavy mobile broadband users with £25 buying 10GB. But all three of O2′s offers come with unlimited Wi-Fi access through hotspots operated by BT Openzone and The Cloud. Only Orange’s pay monthly deals come with Wi-Fi access and they only include a paltry 750MB of Wi-Fi browsing – again through BT Openzone’s network of hotspots.
Vodafone, the last of the three mobile phone networks that will be supporting the iPad when it goes on sale on 28 May, has yet to announce its prices. Figures being quoted on some websites are apparently incorrect, according to a Vodafone spokesman.
Source: Guardian
Since the announcement of the iPad there have been mixed views towards the iPhone development community, mainly to do with the fact that are potentially two different platforms to cater for. However, this can be an advantage to some developers, especially financially.
The iPad is backward compatible with iPhone application, since they will be scaled up by the iPad to make use of the larger screen (if required). That said, the iPad is a completely different device in it’s own right and is extremely different to the iPhone, mainly due to the larger screen surface.
However, when developing applications for the iPad, you must make sure you cover:
The iPad does not have a ‘right’ way up, it can be used in the same direction as the iPhone (portrait) or in the landscape orientation (on its side). Therefore, it is crucial that your application is able to rotate in either direction.
All iPhone apps which use the UINavigation controller (for drilling down information, such as the settings app) can now take advantage of the new view controller. This allows simulataneous viewing of the list (in landscape orientation) and the detailed view (as a two panel selector UI pattern). The regular orientation is still available in portrait orientation. The new and improved UIKit in iPhone 4.0 will allow these functions to be controlled for your iPad application.
Due to the size of the screen on the iPhone it is not common practice to have modal dialogues (except for third party ones like Facebook connect auth). The iPad SDK allows modal dialogues, modeless dialogues and attactive menus.
All applications which use the master/detail view will automatically convert the master list into a popover menu which the iPad is placed in the landscape orientation. The same technique can be used to create menus to show pages or dialogues.
Traditional tabs normally appear at the top of an application (except on the iPhone). iPad applications now have the option to place tabs at the top or at the bottom of the application, allowing tabs to be put inside popover views.
Again, due to the increased screen size of the iPad, UITableViews may now have multiple columns.
Although technically speaking you can have as many finger gestures as you like (as long as you it’s under 10 fingers of course!), but the iPhone’s limited screen size sort of made anything more than two fingers a pain to use.
The deliciously large screen size of the iPad now allows us to use a bunch of new gestures as seen on the MacBook trackpad.
Videos need consume the entire screen for the iPad. Video can now be restricted to a small portion or area of the screen.
The iPad also supports wireless headsets and microphones, allowing hands-free voice-driven control of the apps.
Improved CoreGraphics technology allows apps to generate PDF content, allow reports to be generated on the fly by using the SDK.
GPS location and compass technology is only available on 3G models of the iPad.
Each text field input will support spell checking and auto-completion (much like iPhone 4.0). Developers can toggle this behaviour to suit the needs of the application.
Virtual keyboards can also be customised withina single app, allowing scientific input, IP address keys, etc.
The screen sizes for the iPhone and iPad are not proportional. The iPad tall side is 2.13x side of the iPhone and the short side is 2.4 the size of an iPhone or iPod touch.
Getting sizes of the current view via the SDK, rather than introducing magic numbers should use dimensions for games.
Have you been waiting eagerly for the iPad to be available outside the U.S.? If so, then today is your day: Apple announced on Friday that it will make the iPad available in nine more countries this summer, as well as dishing on the prices for pre-ordering in the U.K.
There are pleanty of different advertisement platforms for the iPhone; AdMob, AdWhirl and many more. However, as you may already know, last month Apple have recently acquired Quatro wireless and turned it into iAd.
