United Airlines is launching a new program to equip their entire pilot staff with 11,000 iPads as part of a plan to produce a potentially paperless cockpit. The purpose of the iPads is to store digital versions of flight charts, manuals and other reference information of which pilots currently have physical copies. Now that in-flight Wi-Fi is ubiquitous, pilots will also have the Internet at their fingertips.

This new, “electronic flightbag” concept is catching on at other airlines as well. Alaska Airlines, Delta and British Airways have all launched pilot programs (Ha!) with similar goals. The Next Web quotes United’s senior vice president of flight operations, Captain Fred Abbott as saying the following about the program:

The paperless flight deck represents the next generation of flying. The introduction of iPads ensures our pilots have essential and real-time information at their fingertips at all times throughout the flight.

(via The Next Web)

Dude: Dell’s global head of marketing Andy Lark has Apple fans in a furor over his recent dismissive remarks about Apple’s future in the tablet market that it more or less created.

Lark, speaking to CIO.com: ”Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.” Per Lark, Dell is the company that is poised to win the enterprise market in the long run because “the majority of [Dell's] business isn’t in the consumer space.”

Apple fans might laugh this away, but it’s plausible enough:

Holland-based company Miniot has developed a very pretty wooden iPad 2 cover, featured in the above video, which is just sleek and functional enough to give Apple’s own Smart Cover a run for its money. Miniot’s cover works similarly to the Smart Cover, as it snugly fits atop the iPad 2, cleanly rolls back to reveal the device’s screen, and rolls back even further into a cylindrical shape to prop up and support the device. Preorders for the Miniot Cover will begin today, costing €50, making it roughly the same price as the Smart Cover’s $69, and Miniot will provide free engraving along with the purchase.

(via The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

The above iPad 2, made by Stuart Hughes in Liverpool UK, is so expensive and indulgent that only two are being made. Running a cool $8 million, the iPad 2 Gold History Edition is named as such because the front frame is made from Ammolite, one of the oldest rocks in the world, dating over 75 million years. On top of this, bits of a 65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex’s thigh bone have been mashed up and shaved into the Ammolite frame. The Ammolite was then finished with a single cut 8.5 carat diamond, inlaid in platinum, and surrounded by 12 outer flawless diamonds. If that weren’t enough, the iPad 2 is encrusted with 53 individually set sparkling gems, a solid gold 24 carat Apple logo, with the back of the gadget also being made of 24 carat gold. And you thought the regular iPad 2 was too expensive.

(Luxurylaunches via CrunchGear)

Online gadget-buyer Gazelle is reporting that over two thousand original iPads were sold in the hour after the lighter, thinner, faster iPad 2 was announced yesterday. Wired points out that before the iPad 2 announcement, the bare bones, 16GB iPad would net sellers $375. Now, just a day after the announcement, Gazelle’s iPad stock has dramatically risen, dropping that cool $375 to a less cool $300.

Now, everyone knows there is a large group of people who abandon their old tech for the new, pretty stuff when it releases, but if one does a bit of estimation and generalization, the two thousand iPads abandoned within one hour of the iPad 2 announcement–which only happened at one particular outlet–seems like a pretty large number reached fairly quickly. One has to assume other people are selling their old, last generation, clearly outdated and don’t-even-work-anymore iPads to outlets beside Gazelle, which would mean many, many iPads are being left out in the metaphorical dirt road like a red fox named Tod.

(via Wired)

Man, I’ve always wondered how iPad users get by without being able to physically attach the iPad to their hands. And now, for the not-at-all unreasonable price of $60, they can! Exactly one problem solved!

Of course, you can still do things while your iPad is monopolizing the use of one of your hands. It’s only kind of totally disruptive during everyday tasks, such as eating, drinking, caring for children, using the railing while walking up the stairs (assuming the railing is on the side of your “iPad hand”), putting on/removing clothing, shoe-tying, etc. But why should you get it? It’s patent pending and it spins! And you won’t have to hoooooolllllldddd it.

Rules in the House of Representatives forbidding the use of electronic devices on the floor might soon be changed so members of Congress can use their iPads. Because that’s what was preventing them from doing their jobs effectively. Not being able to use their iPads.

An iPad first appeared on the House floor earlier this month by way of Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar. He says he mainly uses it to read news and check emails, but also uses professional apps such as Congress in Your Pocket and another that functions as a teleprompter. But he also vows to keep his device “productive and distraction-free.” (The same way we all vow not to browse the Internet at work. Hi, everyone!)

There are definite benefits to being plugged in on the House floor.

According to Best Buy Chief Executive Brian Dunn, Apple’s iPad is eating up to 50% of PC laptop sales.

Consumers aren’t just buying up iPads left and right as an alternative to Mac laptops, as the iPads are equally cutting into Windows laptop sales as well. Due to this, Best Buy plans to expand its iPad distribution to every one of its stores that does not yet carry the Apple tablet, clearly displaying the sales prominence of the gadget. Chief electronics analyst for NPD Group Inc., Stephen Baker, says the market is trending differently now with mobile devices on the rise.

Hayao Miyazaki, animator and director for films including Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and My Neighbor Totoro, is not just a wise old man. He’s a crazy wise old man! Not in a super serious way or anything, just in that charming, old-fashioned “technology is ruining everything I remember back in the day mumble mumble mumble” adorable way.

In the July issue of Studio Ghibli’s monthly pamphlet “Neppuu,” Miyazaki had some choice words for the iPad. Now, of course nobody expected him to actually have an iPad. Those in the Miyazaki!know are already aware that he has no computer, fax, or DVD player and writes letters when he needs to communicate with someone, and he rarely watches television. So obviously he’s not an iPad groupie, but boy did he go a step beyond.

Read on...

Five months ago, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be releasing a “magical” device called the iPad. While it received decidedly mixed first impressions from the tech press at the time, Apple has had the last laugh, with 3 million iPads sold in its first 80 days. Love it or hate it, the iPad is here to stay — as are gimmicky, viral video- and photo-ready uses for it.

During these first five months, there have been creative, bizarre, and bizarrely creative uses for the iPad aplenty, propelled by an Internet that can’t seem to get enough of them. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to catalog them all in one place for posterity’s sake: