iPad and Tablet News – 7/5/2010 no comments
The Wall Street Journal reports that South Korea’s largest wireless provider, SK Telecom, is in talks with Apple to offer the iPhone and iPad in that country. The iPhone is already available in South Korea through KT Corp, which is SK Telecom’s biggest competitor.
Korea is one of the countries that briefly banned the iPad when it was first introduced in the US. The ban lasted until the appropriate government agency certified the iPad’s wireless networking features.
Korean is also one language that is MIA on the iPad.
While I am on the topic of the iPad’s language support, this is one type of accessibility that the iPad is good at delivering and that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere. The fact that the iPad is great for providing email and Internet access to the elderly and others who would not otherwise have access due to computer illiteracy is old news, but the support for various languages takes this to another level.
The iPad currently only supports nine languages, but it is very easy to set these up in the Settings. If you install the keyboards for any of the other supported languages you can then switch back and forth between keyboards very easily with a tap on the global key while the virtual keyboard is displayed. My wife reads in Japanese, so I have that keyboard installed for her as well as the English keyboard that I use. My wife now uses the iPad for all of her Web browsing as it is much easier than setting up and using Japanese on the desktop.
If you know an elderly person from the old country that cannot currently use email or access the Internet, the iPad may not only provide that access but allow him/her to do it in their preferred language – which can make a huge difference. Hopefully Apple will increase the number of languages supported.
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LG has announced that it will enter the tablet market by the fourth quarter of 2010 with an Android-based device. No details yet, but engadget has a video of the LG UX10 tablet prototype at Computex 2010.
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Of the many apps available at the iTunes Store for reading 
PDF files, GoodReader is probably the most popular. Good.iWare, the developer behind GoodReader, has announced the reintroduction of USB support for its app.
File transfer via USB was available until a few months ago when app developers had to discontinue USB support due to a conflict with Apple’s iPhone SDK.
You will need to download and install the GoodReaderUSB program on your desktop, but there are advantages over transferring files using iTunes:
| GoodReader USB | iTunes |
| Transfer files and folders. | Transfer only files; no folders. |
| Browse deeply into subfolders from your computer. | Transfers only to the root folder; cannot browse subfolders. |
| Works with all versions of GoodReader and all eligible devices. | Requires GoodReader v.2.8 (not yet released) for compatibility with iTunes File Sharing. |
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Future Apps is the developer of the iSpeak Translators, which
are the best selling translation apps in the iTunes store. The developer recently announced a major update to the iSpeak Translators as well as some new language support.
With the addition of iSpeak Arabic, iSpeak Greek and iSpeak Russian, the number of languages supported has increased to 14: Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, Arabic, Greek, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, jCzech, Finnish, and Norwegian. The iSpeak apps cost $1.99 each.
This is another app that will make good use of the multitasking features of iOS4 – enabling you to switch in and out of the app without getting dropped out of other apps, such as an ebook you are reading. The iSpeak apps also include TTS that you could have playing a translation in the background while doing something else. iOS4 should be coming to the iPad in November of this year.
