Amazon has announced a new Kindle that most bloggers are calling Kindle 3. The new device seems pretty awesome, both in features and price. It’s important that we declare both devices as winners in their own right and set some things straight for anyone calling iPad a Kindle killer or the other way around.

Kindle as a service

Kindle is a service that allows consumers to buy books from anywhere in the world as long as there is an Internet connection. Books can be purchased via any device with a modern web browser and you can read those books on any device that supports Kindle software like your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, Android and Amazon’s own Kindle hardware.

Amazon’s strategy is different from Apple’s. Apple developed the iTunes Store as a service to drive the sales of its hardware. Kindle software and hardware was created to drive the sale of books and other downloadable content. Kindle is huge for Amazon because going digital isn’t just convenient to the consumer. It’s great for Amazon because it doesn’t have to keep a stock of books and worry about paying to ship those books and the consumer wins by having that book accessible across multiple devices instantly. All Amazon has to do is ensure its selection of books is higher and its price is lower than the competition.

Kindle and iPad finally coexisting

Until today’s announcement, Kindle as a device was scrutinized against the Apple iPad, because while you could read books on both, the iPad was only $150 more than the smaller Kindle and a few bucks more than the larger Kindle DX.

Amazon aggressively slashed prices on the device in a way that made everyone think they were just being defensive and fearful of iPad but today, that all changed.

Kindle 3 is priced at $139 (Wi-Fi only) and an International version with 3G is only $189 (3G via GSM). TechCrunch Reports:

In addition to the price and screen change, the redesigned body is 21% smaller and 15% lighter, down to about 8.5oz. If their press release is to be believed, it’s also got twice the storage (4GB) and significantly improved battery life over the old Kindle.

Kindle is priced so aggressively that true book lovers can buy the new Kindle at a price that’s simply a no brainer considering that Kindle books cost considerably less than real books and you’re saving on shipping and the pesky 3-7 days it takes for a book to arrive at your door. No longer is there a decision to make between buying a Kindle device or simply paying $150 more and having an iPad that does books and so much more.

Amazon is finally showing the industry that it doesn’t want to make millions selling Kindles. It’s about the sale of digital books.

Apple and Amazon are both winners

When you’re just talking hardware, Apple will continue to sell millions of iPads to people who want books, games, movies, apps and the web and the Kindle will continue to sell in the millions for book lovers. This is a huge win for consumers because our decision is made for us and bloggers can stop comparing both devices like they’re the same. I’ll be buying a Kindle for my sister who reads books every day and an Amazon gift card so she can buy a few books to get started. It’s a much easier gift than paying $499 for an iPad that she’ll mostly be using for books, anyway.

So who are the losers?

Basically, everyone that’s not Apple or Amazon. For now and the foreseeable future, Amazon has done a phenomenal job getting Kindle on millions of computers, phones and other handheld devices. Its goal of selling books by the truck load is working well as it just announced Kindle books are now outselling physical books after only three years. The losers are Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Sony’s E-Reader, and any other devices that don’t either work with Amazon or have their own book store. B&N has a fighting chance but Amazon’s user base of passionate book buyers will stay true to Amazon and Apple has over 100 million accounts with credit cards who will dive right in to iBooks. Sorry, but it’s clear who the winners are in the digital book sales space.

What about iBooks?

Amazon and Apple may not be competing when it comes to Kindle hardware versus iPad but they’re still competing in the book sales space. I’ve been meaning to write this for a while but I won’t buy a book via iBooks outside of the free section. The reason is that Apple hasn’t convinced me that my digital DRMed books are safe with them. In the same way that my iTunes movies and music (prior to iTunes Plus) are not playable on other hardware other than Apple’s. Amazon has displayed the right strategy that any device or platform that comes out in the future will eventually get Kindle software and those digital books I bought in 2007 will sync to that device without fail and Amazon is a large company that I trust. iBooks may win me over eventually but for price, selection and compatibility, Kindle (the service) has me hooked.

Kindle versus iPad is a dead argument. You’re both winners. No one is arguing the iPad isn’t better hardware for much more than books but that comes at a price and, even on the iPad, Kindle is just one tap away via its own app.

Related GigaOM Pro Content (subscription required): Evolution of the e-Book Market

For Mac users who want to access media with their PlayStation 3, life just got a little easier.

One of the many features of the PlayStation 3 is accessing media such as photos, video and music from other devices via Universal Plug and Play (UPnP). Using a Windows PC with a PlayStation is very easy — the PS3 recognizes the computer instantly. However, up until now, it’s been extremely difficult for Mac users to get a UPnP server set up and have the PS3 recognize it. That’s where Playback by Yazsoft comes in.

After you download Playback and run it for the first time, the application automatically integrates with your media applications such as iTunes, iPhoto and Aperture. With a simple click of the Start button, the application sets up a UPnP server which your PS3 can connect to straight away by going to Video, Music or Photos on the XMB (sometimes called the Home screen).

However, it doesn’t stop there. You can customize exactly what Playback sends to the PS3, including specifying drives and folders on your Mac to share, and even streaming EyeTV recordings. To do this, open Playback and go to the Movies, Music or Photos tabs and use the boxes to check on or off how you want to stream.

Playback can also use Growl notifications to tell you when a device connects to its server, and you can allow and deny access for individual devices under the Access tab of the application window. It also allows for even more precise access control by allowing you to set exactly what media you want to be available to each device. For example, you could only allow movies to be streamed to one PlayStation, while another is allowed all three media types.

Playback is available as a 7-day trial, which limits streaming to 30 minutes per session, or a bundle of three licenses costs $15 from the Yazsoft website. You can also obtain a license for free by reviewing the software on your website, or get a $5 discount simply by posting a message about Playback on Twitter.

Apple updated its iMac and Mac Pro desktop line today with little or no design changes, but the technical specifications of these two machines are finally in line with what you can get from their Windows-running counterparts.

Let’s take a look at these two machines side by side for anyone looking to upgrade or switch.

First of all, if you’re looking to buy one of those shiny new 27″ Apple Cinema Displays to go with a new iMac, wait to make your purchase as those won’t be available until September. In my opinion, Dell’s monitor offerings are priced very competitively to Apple’s, but you lose out on that Apple touch such as an aluminum enclosure and built-in MagSafe adapter. I have a 30″ Dell LCD hooked up to my 27″ iMac and it performs perfectly with Apple’s Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter.

The 27″ & 21″ iMac Side by Side

For nearly every user reading TheAppleBlog, Apple’s new iMac is the perfect machine both in performance and price. It will make your wallet happy compared to the Mac Pro and is a versatile machine with a small footprint and speeds that most users have never experienced. It also uses far less energy than the Mac Pro, which is good for your electric bill. Here’s my recommendation for a top of the line Core i7 iMac:

• 27″ Monitor
• 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
• 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 4×2GB
• 2TB Serial ATA Drive
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB GDDR5 SDRAM
• Magic Mouse

Final Price: $2,549

For this, you’re getting eight total cores since the quad-core i7 processor has hyperthreading and the 8GB of RAM is far from the max of 16GB that the new iMac can handle while still being more than enough for most users. Remember, the MacBook Pro can take a max of 8GB of RAM. I’d recommend 16GB to any aspiring filmmaker, CGI artist or science geek doing complex computations that require a ton of RAM. Besides, you can add more RAM a couple of years from now as the price drops and your needs grow.

The lowest-end iMac I’d recommend would be the following:

• 21.5″ Monitor
• 3.60GHz Intel Core i5
• 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2×2GB
• 1TB Serial ATA Drive
• ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR3 SDRAM
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• Magic Mouse

Final Price: $1,699

This is a great machine for people who don’t need a spacious monitor or the performance gains of 8 CPU cores. There is a cheaper Core i3 available at $1,199 but jump to this model if you can for a machine that will keep up with your day-to-day activities a year or more down the road. The Core i5 is a dual-core machine with hyperthreading so you get a total of 4 cores. Of note, the clock speed on this machine is much higher than the i7 but comparing the Core i5 and the Core i7 is night and day when it comes to performance.

CPUs Compared

The most notable difference is that the Core i5 has 4MB of L3 cache while the Core i7 has 8MB for twice as much memory per core and a faster front side bus. This article may be a bit dated but PCWorld had an excellent run-down comparing the two chips that is worth a read. The short story is that the Core i7 is much faster in nearly every aspect.

Remember, more cores isn’t always faster. It’s easy to say the Core i7 has 4 physical and 4 virtual cores so it’s better than the i5, but so many applications don’t even know the other cores are there and I have some apps that max out one or two cores but leave the others alone. Snow Leopard’s Grand Central Dispatch makes it easy for devs to take advantage of those cores, but the extra time involved doesn’t make a task manager or note taking app move any faster. Apple’s page showcasing discrete graphics and more cores is convincing but don’t get caught up in its sales pitch when choosing the machine that’s right for you.

In actuality, it’s the i7′s faster front side bus, enhanced memory architecture, larger cache and features like TurboBoost that truly make for a worthy upgrade.

SSD & HDD Available

Another observation that Apple didn’t spend too much time highlighting is that you can have SSD and HDD drives in the new iMac. The previous model only supported a single 1 or 2 terabyte hard disk drive. Now, buyers on Apple.com can configure a new iMac with a 1 or 2 terabyte drive in addition to a 256GB SSD. If you can afford it, do it. My 15″ MacBook Pro has an HDD but my MacBook Air is SSD and the speed and overall performance of having an SSD is phenomenal. Apple is letting users have their cake and eat it too because SSD is still very expensive so you have to choose performance over storage capacity. Now, you can have the speed of SSD and the storage of a 1+ terabyte drive in the same machine but you’re playing an additional $750/$900 for the privilege. This option is only available on The 27″ iMac.

The Value Proposition for Switchers

To understand the true value of this new machine, let’s compare it with a similarly equipped Dell. With the 27″ iMac, you’re getting a $999 monitor built into the machine. Subtract that number from the price tag and you’re getting a blazing fast Core i7 machine with 8GB of RAM for just over $1500 which will beat any similarly configured Dell Desktop. The Studio XPS 9000 desktop from Dell had a $1,799 price tag pre-tax after I configured it as similarly as I could to Apple’s 27″ iMac – and this is before adding a Dell monitor. Apple’s iMac is so competitively priced that it’s a no-brainer considering you can install Windows 7 on it, if you want.

The Magic Trackpad

We’ve already provided a run-down of the Magic Trackpad here on TAB but I wanted to emphasize that this is a big deal. Apple is bringing the tech that makes its notebooks so much better than other PC notebooks and making a standalone input device that everyone can enjoy. In my post discussing the Trackpad two weeks ago, I said:

“A Bluetooth trackpad that I’ve eloquently dubbed “MagicPad” (Magic Mouse = Trackpad) would be Apple’s next step into a buttonless world that it so desperately is striving for. The Magic Mouse has fewer buttons than the Mighty Mouse and this would be one button as the entire trackpad is, exactly like we are used to on Apple’s notebooks.”

I still agree and it’s a $69 add-on when buying your new iMac. But I say go for it; there’s always eBay if you really don’t like it. Apple notebook owners will see this as a no-brainer way to interact with the desktop computer. My friend, who does graphic design, loves the trackpad over a mouse and she’s already ordered one of these for her iMac.

Final Thoughts

The iMac is the most affordable iMac ever as it blows the pants off any previous desktop Mac under $3,000. If you can afford it, the top model I recommended is perfect and will function as a capable Mac for the next 3+ years without buyer’s remorse. The Mac Pro has its place but it can’t compete in price and packaging with the iMac. Even the normally affordable Dell machines can’t compete in price and that makes this machine perfect for home users, pros and switchers in a way that no other Mac has before.

Of course, it’s only a rumor, but the word among bloggers is that iDVD will not be included in iLife ’11 and will be replaced by a mystery app that has nothing to do with DVD authoring. Why is Apple giving up on easy to make home movies that were touted as a killer feature among modern PCs around 2003? Oh yeah, that was 7 years ago. The truth is, iDVD has been on its “last leg” since 2006.

A brief walk down memory lane and we’ll all remember iDVD 1.0 that was released in 2001 with very minimal features but as an easy way to take movies made in iMovie and dropped onto a DVD to share with friends and family. Even though broadband was available back then, sharing movies simply wasn’t commonplace and I’d give Apple quite a bit of credit for “iTools Theatre” which was a way to share quick 320

I click through to Apple.com every other day mostly to read tech specs of new products and look for subtle changes that would warrant a post but mostly I just drool on my keyboard while glancing at the fancy gadgets.

I noticed something different this time around and I wanted to mark that in July, 2010, Apple’s flagship products (not mice, keyboards or displays) but the products Apple chooses to feature at the top of the store’s main page are now 50% mobile.

Apple dropped the “computer” part of its name and went Apple, Inc. a couple of years ago with the introduction of iPhone. Since then, it’s released the Apple TV, more iPods and the iPad, but it’s only now that Apple’s role as a mobile tech company becomes apparent at a glance.

Macintosh computers have high profit margins and Apple sold over 3 million of them last quarter but Mac sales only made up 33% of Apple’s earnings in that same quarter. The rest of their profits were made up of iPhone, iPad and iPod sales. Remember that Apple notebooks are technically mobile devices, too. That means that 9 out of 12 products of the marquee products Apple sells are mobile.

The Mac isn’t going away any time soon, but the amount of Apple products that are “mobile” will only grow. If rumors are correct, the MacBook Air will become even smaller, teetering on the brink of the netbook category (in terms of size, not specs) with an 11.6″ screen. We’ll see, but there’s no denying Apple is a mobile company and that’s not going to change.

Excerpt from: 
How to Get a FREE iPod Touch, iPhone 4, iMac, Macbook , or iPad with FreebieJeebies!

For the next part of our Back to School 2010 Buyer’s Guide, we’re going to take a look at ten more great Mac-specific items for the college-bound student. If you missed part one, be sure and check it out.

Apple LED Cinema Display or LG 23″ Widescreen LED Display

$239 – $799, Apple Store & Best Buy

Since every Mac supports the use of at least two displays (either including the built-in display or as externals), increase your workspace and productivity by adding an extra one onto your Mac. My pick is the beautiful 24” LED LCD display by Apple, but if you’re budget conscious, you can pick up a 23” LG display for under $300 at Best Buy. This display even features an HDMI input, which means it could double as your TV! Just make sure you have the right adapters. Apple’s display connects via DisplayPort but most others will connect via DVI.

MobileMe

$99 ($69 with purchase of a new Mac), Apple Store

Apple has steadily rolled out improvements to their cloud service and for some, it offers a lot of value. As a student, you’ll likely find the most value in the online iDisk storage and web-based access to email, calendars and contacts. Plus if you have an iPhone, you’ll get push service to that as well. If you just bought a Mac recently but didn’t get MobileMe, swing by a retail store with your receipt and you might be able to save $30.

Microsoft Office for Mac

$149.95, Apple Store

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you’ll be interacting with Word, Excel and PowerPoint a lot in college. The good news is, Microsoft offers an Office package with a price tag specifically designed for students. Sometimes, you can even pick it up cheaper at your on-campus bookstore. If you’re not in a rush though, wait a few months. Office 2011 is just around the corner.

iWork

$79 ($71 with educational discount), Apple Store

If you really want to impress the prof, grab a copy of iWork. With the built-in templates (and a growing collection of third party templates available), you can deliver reports and presentations that look professionally designed. Plus if you have an iPad, with the mobile version of iWork you can sync your work and create, edit, publish and present on the go.

HP Photosmart e-All-in-One

$129.95, Apple Store

While ink cartridges are still a wasted investment, fortunately these days printers are fairly cheap. Now is a great time to pick up a new multi-function printer that can scan, copy and print. You’ll save time and money by not having to use copiers and printers at your campus library! The HP Photosmart e-All-in-One is a great printer for everyday use and printing photos. You can even print to it directly with an SD card or wirelessly from your Mac!

MyBook 2TB External Hard Drive & SanDisk Flash Drives

Varies, Amazon.com

MobileMe gives you cloud storage, but sometimes you just need to move content around quickly or have a good backup of all your data. For the small jobs, you can pick up a 32GB SanDisk for under $65 or invest in a Western Digital MyBook 2TB external drive for under $200. The MyBook is great for Time Machine backups and it connects via FireWire 800 for fast transfer rates.

Magic Mouse

$69, Apple Store

Even if you love using a trackpad, an external mouse can be more comfortable for when you’re using your Mac for extended periods of time. Apple’s Magic Mouse supports multi-touch and connects via Bluetooth. Since Macs have supported Bluetooth for quite a while now, you can use this external mouse and not have to sacrifice a USB port for some unsightly adapter.

Pulse Smart Pen

$149.95 – $169.95, Apple Store

If you take a lot of notes and your professor doesn’t like the idea of a Mac joining you in the classroom, the Pulse Smart Pen is a handy tool. As you write, it records audio of your lectures. Simply tap the portion of your notes to hear playback of the lecture that was given when you were originally writing them. If you’ve used EverNote before, the Pulse uses similar technology by making your handwritten notes searchable when you sync them back to your Mac.

Kensington Locks

$24.95 and up, Kensington.com

Unfortunately, while Macs are very nice, they are also very attractive to those who wish they could have their own. A simple Kensington Lock can help keep your Mac secure, either in your dorm or in the library when you get up to grab some more books. I recommend the combination lock as some of their traditional keyed locks use the same key.

Elgato EyeTV Hybrid

$149.95, Amazon.com

If you don’t have an external display or a dedicated TV, you can still watch TV on your Mac. The EyeTV Hybrid contains a built-in tuner and you can use it to watch, capture and record live TV on your Mac. With the included software, you can even export the files and share them with others or take them on the go with your iPod or iPhone.

I know as a college student, budgets can be tight and so some of these items are great things to add to a holiday wish list, or to share with friends and family who still may be trying to find that perfect graduation gift for you. If that’s the case for you, use the links below to share this article with your family. Also, be on the watch for our guide for iPod/iPhone users and iPad users coming soon. If you have any specific suggestions for products to be included in those, use the comments below and share your ideas with us!

YouTube is experimenting with a new form of embeds that enable iPad users to play embedded videos right within a web page. The new embeds use iframes to switch between a Flash and an HTML5 version of the video, depending on the user’s device. The experiment was announced today on the YouTube API blog, but the site’s software engineer Toliver Jue didn’t make any direct mention of the iPad. Instead, he just vaguely promised that this method will “eventually allow embeds to work on mobile devices.”

However, we were able to confirm that at least the test video used for the announcement already plays on the iPad’s Safari browser, as shown in the screenshot below:

It’s probably a little early to swap out all your YouTube embed codes. The new method of embedding videos is dubbed “a preview” by YouTube, and there are a number of downsides:

• Videos with ads can’t be shown as HTML5 and are instead shown via Flash by default.
• There’s no way of automatically generating these new embed codes on YouTube just yet, which means you’ll have to manually change the code for each video you want to embed.
• The Next Web reports that changing the width of the embed will break the player.
• Firefox and Opera users will only get to see HTML5 videos if the source video is available in WebM, which apparently isn’t the case for every YouTube video just yet.
• Users have to opt into the Testtube HTML5 trial to see any HTML5 videos at all, which means that most users will still get Flash by default, even when using the new embed code. iPad users that haven’t opted into the Testtube trial just see a black box instead of the video.

Still, if you’re a developer or webmaster of a site with lots of iPad traffic, you might want to take a stab at it and play with the new embeds.

Related content on GigaOm Pro: HTML5’s a Game-Changer for Web Apps (subscription required)

While we’re patiently waiting for our friends over at the iPhone Dev-Team to finish up the new jailbreak for iPhone 4, I thought It might be fun to have a look at some of the cool apps available for those willing to crack open their magical devices. Please keep in mind that by jailbreaking your phone you’re totally voiding your warranty, so proceed at your own risk.

If you’re willing to take the chance, modding your phone can really add a lot of new functionality to those little computers we’re all carrying around. Want to quickly create your own Wi-Fi hotspot? There’s an app for that. Would you like to sidestep Apple’s 3G restrictions? There’s an app for that. Ever thought it would be nice to wirelessly sync with iTunes? You get the idea.

Here’s a few I plan on installing once the new jailbreak drops and they’ve all been updated to work with the latest version of iOS.

• 3G Unrestrictor lets you get around all those draconian restrictions Apple places on how you can use your 3G connection by tricking the phone into thinking it’s on Wi-Fi. Watch high quality videos, download applications or podcasts, maybe even use FaceTime.
• Wi-Fi sync lets you cut that USB cable and sync your music, apps, photos, contacts, calendars, and more with iTunes over the air at the touch of a button.
• snes4iphone is an emulator that lets you relive those heady days of Super Nintendo fun right on your phone. F-Zero on your phone? OMG.
• MyWi creates a Wi-Fi hotspot for connecting laptops or other mobile devices to your iPhone’s internet connection. You can also use it to enable USB and Bluetooth tethering as a bonus.
• Action Menu adds some additional handy buttons to the usual copy/paste menu you see when selecting text on the phone. Send the text to your Twitter app of choice, look it up in the dictionary, access clipboard history and more.

Jailbreaking your brand new phone is always a risk. You void your warranty and start down a path of SHSH blobs, root passwords, and SSH connections. Oh my! The Dev-Team and app developers have done a great job at making things as easy as possible, but if you’re not willing to spend some time troubleshooting your own issues, you’re probably better servedleaving your phone factory fresh.

Still, I think it’s well worth jumping through all those hoops in order to pick up the kind of added functionality you see above. What do you think, is it worth it? What apps are you looking forward to adding?

Like Henry Ford’s Model T, you can have the Apple iPhone 4 in any color you want, so long as it’s black. That’s the continued message as Apple today announced further delays for the white iPhone 4, citing manufacturing challenges. The company says the “more popular iPhone 4 black models” are not affected by those challenges, but availability for the white iPhone 4 is now expected “later this year.”

This isn’t the first delay of the white iPhone 4 model, however. Indeed, in the press conference held to discuss antenna issues last week, Steve Jobs himself said the white model would be shipping by the end of July — and now a week later the device is delayed again? Engadget suggests there are production challenges at play, saying:

Specifically, the factory’s still working out the perfect combination of paint thickness and opacity — the former to ensure the next sub-contractor has enough clearance for the digitizer overlay, and the latter for the absolute whiteness that Jony Ive and co. strive for.

The cynical side of me says this is BS. It could well be that Apple is trying to get the white color just right, but I’d expect that it would have worked out the manufacturing process to do so well in advance of the product launch. If anything, I suspect that Apple is tweaking the antenna design or finding some non-bumper solution to improve the device signal in areas of marginal coverage.

If I was a betting man, I’d guess that Apple’s white iPhone arrives fairly close to September 30. That’s the date when Apple’s free bumper case program currently expires. Which raises another question: Why does it expire on that date? One reason is that Apple likely feels no further obligation to address the “antennagate” issues beyond that, since customers at that point should arguably know full well about potential signal issues when holding the device a certain way.

Another reason could be that by September 30, Apple will have a minor antenna tweak for its iPhone. At last week’s press conference Jobs addressed the bumper case date, saying “Maybe we have a better idea. We will re-evaluate in September.” The black models already sold with a perceived problem are mitigated by the free bumpers. A new production run — say of white iPhones first, followed by black models later — gives Apple to time to make its magical product better, sans bumper.

That better idea Jobs referenced might be more than just a case. I expect that when the white iPhone arrives, it won’t just have the “perfect combination of paint thickness and opacity,” but will have less of an antenna issue too.

Related GigaOM Pro research (sub req’d):

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