With the Canadian dollar back within a  hair of par, it’s time to look at what companies are doing a good job at letting Canadians buy with their newfound purchasing power.

One of the best companies in terms of pricing parity is Apple. Their laptops are within a hair of the USA price. Cheaper items like iPads have a 10% premium but still within a reasonable amount. The Apple TV pushes the limit at 20% premium – almost a “bad exchange”.

MacBook Pro 15

• USA: $1799
• Canada: $1849 (3% premium)

iPad

• USA: $499
• Canada: $549 (10% premium)

Apple TV

USA: $99

Canada: $119 (20% premium)

The collective internet wisdom is so far unimpressed with the iPad. It strikes me as a cool toy but not a very visionary device and nothing that many of Apple’s competitors couldn’t copy and improve on.

Asus, Acer, HP, Dell – All of them had existing tablet plans which they are slow playing while they waited for the iPad announcement. Expect a slew of tablet announcements in the coming weeks. I except these tablets to have many features missing from the iPad: accepting external storage (USB or SD), pen/stylus input, “open” operating systems and lower price points. Expect them to come in many sizes from 5″ to 12″.

Microsoft and Google – The OS divisions of both companies may be able to capitalize on some Apple’s missteps. With Windows 7 capable of running on a Atom processor and Android far more advanced than it’s horrible 1.x versions, they may finally be in a place to come up with an iPad alternative. Microsoft is going to have to rely on Windows 7 not Windows Mobile.

Jailbreakers and Unlockers – As I type this a legion of hackers are working on the iPad SDK looking to be the first to hack it. No wonder geohot is letting others do the PS3 hacking.

The Kensington LiquidAUX is an iPod/iPhone kit for your car. It’s made for cars that already come with an AUX port like my current car. Best yet, my current car has the AUX and power port right beside each other in the central storage bin, so installing this was a snap and easily hidden away with no wires.

The best feature of this kit is the remote control that can be used to control the iPod or iPhone while driving, and it comes with a clip for the steering wheel, but I just leave it in a small storage compartment near the gearshift.

The new iPod Shuffle has launched and it’s a goes back to a design like the original. It features a text-to-speech option for hearing the artist and title of the song.

The new version of iPhone firmware is out. Don’t upgrade if you are jailbroken and/or unlocked as this will probably lock you out until it’s cracked by the “iPhone Dev Team”. Use iTunes to get the latest update if you have a legit phone.

Pioneer has release version 2.0 of the firmware in their AVIC-F series of headunits (F90BT, F900BT, F700BT). The new firmware is available here and has the following improvements as documented by the AVIC forums:

1. 1. Boot time is a lot faster, its tolerable now. I am so used to waiting the original time it comes up and im like wowa, nice. 30 seconds exactly to music from ipod and screen. 72 seconds from bootup till vr update complete. 102 Seconds from boot for Bluetooth connection and loading complete.
   
2. The screens respond as fast as you touch them there is no lag now, great improved.
   
3. The blue boxes are now gone from the idle no route input map screen. Amazing what a difference this makes in the viewable area. The destination ins deleted now once arrived.
   
4. The screen bright max before is what 7 is now, at 10 its almost blinding! However this isn’t in effect until the unit completes boot up, you suddenly see when it reads the settings the screen comes up much brighter all of a sudden.
5. The contact screen is useful now! It lists them by mobile/office/home now.