I wouldn't have called July 4th weekend as a great time for releasing studies about in-depth App Store information, but it was certainly that, as quite a few studies came to light this weekend about how the Android and the Apple App Stores compare. First up, App Store HQ has released some information from their own database of developers indicating that Apple's iPhone still has a larger developer base than the Android platform, and while some developers have gone cross platform, most prefer to stick to one or the other. Additionally, a recent survey of mobile developers shows this may all be in due course: the majority of developers prefer the iPhone for now, but in the long run, 54% of developers polled say that Android has the best "long-term outlook."

Analytics firm Distino also released a report this past weekend, about App Store offerings rather than developers, and it found that about 80% of iPad apps on the App Store were paid, with only slightly fewer for the iPhone. Google's Android market, however, has 57% of its apps listed as free, the highest percentage by far of all the mobile marketplaces tracked. That may give some indication as to why developers currently prefer the App Store -- they can make more money there, with a larger audience more ready to open the wallet. But don't count Android out -- the service is still growing (only developers from nine different countries can distribute paid apps), and as the platform becomes more viable, it seems developers will be ready to move in the future. As Appcelerator concludes, Apple's store is the current winner of developers' attention, but as soon as developers see a flexible platform with a solid userbase elsewhere, they'll happily go there. too.

A while back we did a review and giveaway of some iPad protection products from our buddies at NewerTech. Just before I headed off to the high seas for three weeks, I received some additional swag from NewerTech that I thought would be perfect for our TUAW Independence Day holiday giveaways.

While I won't review the products in this post, you can certainly either read the previous post or visit the NewerTech website for details. What we'll be giving away are three different products to three readers -- a NuVue screen protector, a NuGuard Carbon protection kit (seen at right, including a NuVue screen protector and a microfiber polishing cloth), and a NuGuard Leather protective casing.

What do you need to do to enter the giveaway? Just leave a comment below telling us what your favorite iPad app is. We'll randomly choose three winners who will get one of the three NewerTech products. Here are the contest rules:

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
• To enter, leave a comment naming your favorite iPad app.
• The comment must be left before midnight on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010, 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Three winners will be selected. One will receive a NuVue Screen Protector (Value: US$9.99), one will receive a NuGuard Carbon protection kit (Value: $24.95), and one will receive a NuGuard Leather (Value: $24.99).
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

This is our last giveaway for the weekend, so if you're feeling lucky and want to protect your new iPad, be sure to enter!

A study conducted by usability consultant Jakob Nielsen claims that reading on e-book readers like the iPad and the Kindle still doesn't match up to the reading speed of good old printed paper. The test chose 32 people (admittedly a small sample, but one that was felt to be representative of an e-reader audience), taught them how to read on both the Kindle and the iPad, and then clocked their speed in reading through an Ernest Hemingway story on both devices, a PC-based reader, and the printed word.

It turns out, according to the study, that the iPad was generally faster than the Kindle at reading speed -- about 6.2% slower than reading a normal book, compared to the Kindle's 10.7% slower than the printed word. The way it all worked out, there was no actual significant difference between the iPad and the Kindle, so the study can't say officially which one of those is faster. But the difference between the Kindle and the book was significant, so reading print is faster than e-readers so far.

The iPad and the Kindle barely beat the book in ease-of-use, while the PC lagged way behind, so the study is still bullish on e-readers in general. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of reasoning on why the e-readers are slower -- is the audience just not used to them, or is there something in the mechanics that make things slower? Since e-readers can adapt for usability and your standard book is pretty much as good as it's going to get, we'll likely see the iPad overtake a printed page in usability very soon.

[via PC World]

The MacRumors forums are abuzz with users comparing their recent upload speeds. TUAW reader Becca Holmes tipped us that iPhone users are experiencing uploads that appear to be capped at 100 kbps rather than the 1.6mbps that was a previous norm. Users have been comparing rates captured with tools like Speedtest.net's Speed Test to put concrete numbers on perceived performance drops -- and it looks like that drop is huge, compared to the way things were just a week or two ago.

According to the thread, affected cities include: NYC, Central Jersey, Boston, Orlando, Seattle, South Jersey/Philly, Columbus, Cleveland, West Houston, Phoenix, Northern Colorado, St. Paul/Minnesota, Suffolk County/Long Island, Quad Cities, South Jersey, Denver, Detroit Metro, and Cincinnati.

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Artists are taking to the iPad like ducks to water. The device seems to be a natural tool for many artists to use, and the public is now starting to see the fruits of the relationship in the form of some startling and beautiful digital art.

Kyle Lambert is a perfect example of an artist who has quickly adapted to the iPad as an art creation tool. The Cheshire, England based portrait artist recently spent six hours painting an astoundingly good portrait of performer Beyonce using an iPad, his finger, and the Brushes iPad app (US$7.99).

Lambert makes time-lapse movies of his creation process, and it's fascinating to see the details of Beyonce's face emerge from the digital canvas in the movie above. We'd also like to see what other professional artists are accomplishing with the iPad, so if you have a work that was created on the iPad or iPhone, let us know by clicking or tapping that Send a Tip link at the top of the page.

Thanks to Paul Kent for the tip!

Yesterday was the actual holiday, but today is the day that shops are closed, grills are burning and many of us are celebrating America's independence with a day off from work. As such, posting will be a little light around here today. But don't fret -- we'll be back tomorrow with a full serving of your regularly scheduled programming. Happy birthday, America!

Have you always thought that what the Set card game needed was some magic fireballs and little colorful knights? Well, then say hello to Castle Tiles [$1.99], a new iPad-only app from Machwerx that blends the line between board and video games.

Castle Tiles uses the set collecting element from, obviously, Set and lots of other games to drive a random battle engine. When things are really moving and all four players are collecting sets, the screen becomes a hot mess of warriors and flying attacks, and this visual excitement makes the game feel a bit more exciting than it really is. This doesn't mean that Castle Tiles is a bad game, just that this feels like a beta version, and we'd be much happier with the finished product.

Castle Tile's graphic design was done by someone with an obvious love for early computer games when 16 colors was as much as you could expect from a PC. Does this minimalist ethos work in the iPad era? Should a card game like Set get the video game treatment in Castle Tiles? Read on to find out.

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The difference between a port of a tabletop board game to the iPad by someone like Gameloft – makers of games like James Cameron's Avatar for iPad and Asphalt 5 – and smaller, independent companies is pretty stunning. It's also quite pretty. Take a look at the flashy images in the Blokus HD screenshots below. The game, originally released in 2000 by a small game company and more recently published by Hasbro, is a beautiful, colorful plasticky thing in the real world. Gameloft has emphasized the bright look of the game with a lot of panache in the US$4.99 iPad version (Gameloft also makes an iPod/iPhone touch version of the Blokus app that looks about the same, just smaller. We didn't test that version).

Are all of these fancy graphics a good thing? Well, it certainly shows that you can make a bubbly and light board game app that should appeal to the video game crowd (although, to be fair, this is ground that Zooloretto has already covered pretty well). It's also, for a traditional board gamer like myself, hard to criticize the push to get more tabletop games onto our iDevices, so I've got a soft spot for developers who try. But Blokus, while quite impressive, needs a little more time in the oven before it joins the ranks of great board game ports like Carcassonne or the Settlers of Catan on the iPhone. Read on to see if Blokus is a game you want to add to your digital collection.

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Zombie Wonderland was a game I didn't get to see at E3 a little while back when I met up with Chillingo, but I recently checked it out, and it's an interesting little zombie fightin' title. The undead action is somewhat removed -- instead of directly shooting the shambling brain-eaters, you're simply directing a little dude named Chuck around, trying to defend all sides of a house being attacked. The gameplay can be busy but isn't always compelling -- you're also tasked with cleaning up the floors in a pretty bizarre mechanic that seems meant to add a little excitement to the festivities, but even when Chuck is racing around, things never get to a real fever pitch.

That's ok, though -- the polish of the models (there's a Minigore aesthetic going on), the smoothness of the animation and the feeling that you really are defending a homestead from the onrushing zombie horde all make the experience quite fun despite the simple gameplay. And since the game is on sale for just 99 cents, it's definitely worth a look. For the last day of this year's Independence Weekend, try declaring your brains off-limits to the walking dead.

To say the least, Bill and Steve had had an interesting rivalry over the years. Of course, Bill Gates has retired to charity work leaving Steve Ballmer in charge of Microsoft.

The Huffington Post has put a fun post together of some of Jobs' best quotes about Gates. My favorite is from 2006:

"I have no problem with their (Microsoft's) success, they've earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products."

As the years have gone on, Jobs has mellowed a bit. In a joint appearance at the All Things Digital Conference in 2007 the two titans joked and laughed with each other.

So take a quick trip down memory lane and see the Steve Jobs fireworks before you fire off your own tonight.