Sydney restaurant replaces menus with iPads

Florence Sandford, Renate Ruge, Margarita Peker and Lisa Perkovic (left to right) order on the iPad menu. Picture: Ross Schultz

THE iPad is already a tasty product among gadget lovers, but a North Sydney restaurant has become the first in Australia to replace their printed menus with Apple's new touch screen device.

Global Mundo Tapas in the North Sydney Rydges Hotel yesterday introduced a custom-made iPad application which allows customers to browse the virtual pages of the menu with a sweep of their finger.

Diners can peruse the dishes and see a picture of what the dish looks like along with tasting notes before compiling their order and sending it wirelessly to the kitchen.

The iPad menu can also suggest the best wines to go with certain dishes and suggest the best food pairings.

When ordering steak, users can even specify how they'd like the meat cooked and which sauce they'd prefer.

It will even ask them if they'd like fries with that.

Mundo's iPad menu app can also help keep track of stock levels so if certain dishes and wines sell out they will automatically disappear off the on-screen menu.

Fear and Loathing in the Apple store - iPad Casualties

We were somewhere around Bondi Junction, on the edge of the iPad launch, when the Kool Aid began to take hold.

The opening of an Apple store has always had the feel of a Pentecostal revival meeting. The passion. The conviction. The showmanship. All those within the travelling tent united in the unfaltering belief that the good word from the Book of Steve, and a generous cash donation, can heal their broken lives.

I've seen new Apple store employees run laps of shopping centres on an opening day, possessed with the spirit and speaking in tongues as they fired up the crowd. Many bore witness as the sick were healed that day and the blind granted sight. Forming a guard of honour, or perhaps preventing escape, the temple priests lined the entrance and welcome the faithful into Apple's newest house of worship.

Such jubilation reached fever pitch this morning at the grand opening of Sydney's new Bondi Junction Apple store, as it coincided with the launch of Apple's latest modern miracle - the iPad. Apple fanboys had queued in order to be first to bask in the glow of Cupertino's miraculous tablet. Drinking heavily of the Apple Kool Aid, they lifted their arms to the sky and gave thanks as they stepped over the threshold and joined the congregation within.

Told to thrown down their netbook and walk, the faithful were lead like lambs to the cash register. Perhaps it was sleep deprivation, perhaps it was something in the water, but at that moment they looked as if they would follow Steve Jobs into the fires of hell, although some suspect that's whence he came. Apple worshippers claim the iPad is heavenly, a tablet carried down from the mountain Moses-style by Apple high priest Steve Jobs. Meanwhile Apple's critics see the iPad as the golden calf worshipped by heathens - wondrous and shiny but ultimately requiring you to sell your soul to the devil in black.

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The iPad Is Not The Silver Bullet For Print Media

The iPad won’t be the ‘silver bullet’ traditional news media was hoping for, according to a major new study by analyst firm Ovum.

Despite forecasting a ‘gold-rush effect’ that will see the total value of downloaded applications on the iPad hitting $68.8m this year and $511.8m in 2011*, Ovum believes Apple’s much-hyped tablet device alone will fail to secure the future of news and magazine publishing.

By way of contrast, Ovum has forecast that the global mobile applications market will be worth $5.7 billion by 2014, with total paid downloads of 3.3 billion applications.

Ovum’s research indicates that volumes of the iPad will take time to build. In addition, the tablet media market will soon become as congested as the smartphone app store market.

Adrian Drury, Ovum’s principal media and broadcasting analyst and report co-author, said: “The iPad promise is a set of new distribution channels for packaged media, but it is one device and volumes will take time to build. Traditional publishing’s challenge to find a new and sustainable business model is immediate.”

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Apple reseller left out in the cold

As Australian Apple enthusiasts welcomed the arrival of the iPad today at the company's new store in Sydney's Bondi Junction, one of them was not celebrating.

Steve Bardel, owner of the My Mac store in Bondi Junction, said he was bitterly disappointed after being left “in the dark" by Apple over its new store opening.

As the crowds queued up at the new eastern suburbs store, the My Mac shop was virtually deserted this morning, and Bardel said he sold far fewer iPads than he might otherwise have done.

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Future of News in the app of the gods as media invest in new online frontier - iPad News

THE "wild west" is how one Australian iPad user describes the new media frontier. Apple has left newspapers and magazines to decide what they want to do with content, layout, fees and advertising, and each is trying something different. Each organisation is excited about the new tablet computer, but none dare pretend to know what might work.

Fairfax Media, owner of The Sunday Age, is one of the first major Australian media companies to market, with iPad apps for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald expected soon.

A complete version of the printed newspaper, initially offered free and including all sections, will be delivered digitally to iPads about 2am each day. There will be search menus, zoom and the capacity to share articles by email, but no added extras such as breaking news, photo galleries or videos initially. Future versions are expected to include them.

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Tech-heads take the tablets as iPads finally go on sale

THIS was the march of the geeks, and it took place all around Australia.
Apple fetishists, tech-heads and moneyed young layabouts who had queued through the night to get their hands on an iPad as soon as possible were finally, blessedly, relieved of their dough.

And if most of the proud new owners of Apple's tablet professed to be excited at their purchase, it was an enthusiasm surpassed by the staff of the computer giant.

An hour before the iPad went on sale at 8am yesterday, the herd of young, coiffed employees at Apple's flagship store in George Street, Sydney, could be heard warming up by chanting "Apple retail!" and "iPad!". Dressed in bright blue T-shirts, they then proceeded to run outside, single-file, to clap and cheer all the customers they were about to serve.

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It was indicative of the sort of "feedback loop" that has helped create unprecedented hype and cynicism in equal measure.

Apple estimated 1000 people had lined up in Sydney, with the queue stretching halfway around a city block. Almost all carried iPhones or iPods, many had Apple laptops, and quite a few even sported iPads they had already purchased on Ebay or in the US.

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Apple iPad: Why I won’t be buying one – yet May 27, 2010

After months of hype, the iPad has finally arrived in the UK. I remain unmoved. Please don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine gadget: well-designed, cleverly conceived and beautifully realised. But no matter how much I tap it, stroke it, prod it and swipe it, I am not seduced by it. Unlike so many other Apple gadgets – the iPhone, the MacBook Air, which I have bought out of pure, unapologetic lust – the iPad just doesn’t float my boat.

What would I use it for? Thanks to my MacBook and my iPhone, I exist in an always-on, internet-enabled universe, where my emails, Facebook status updates and all the information the web can offer are never more than a few clicks away. When I’m out and about, I’ve got my iPhone; when I’m at home, I’ve got my MacBook. All my bases are covered.

The lack of Flash support is problematic, too; whatever the rights and wrongs of Apple’s dispute with Adobe over Flash, the fact remains that a huge number of websites use the technology for video or animation, thereby rendering great swathes of the web unviewable on my iPad. And although the virtual keyboard is perfectly suited to tapping out the odd email, I find it struggles with heavy-duty word processing, which means the iPad is not yet ready to replace my netbook when I am away at a conference.

That said, just because I have no need for the iPad doesn’t mean I can’t see how other people will find it useful. If you don’t own a smartphone, and your computer is a big, bulky desktop machine, hidden upstairs that takes 20 minutes to boot up, then the lure of the iPad is irresistible; a sleek, easy-to-use device that sits on the arm of your favourite chair and allows you to check your emails, look up the latest news headlines or distract yourself with an ebook or puzzle game.

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