Aside from being the largest publicly traded company on the U.S. stock market, Apple’s sales in 2011 were worth $128 billion. To put that figure into perspective, that’s more than the gross domestic product of about 160 nations around the world.

Sales of Apple’s newest device, the 3^rd generation iPad, are staggering. And, Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone isn’t doing too bad either. Due to the company meteoritic rise, let’s take a look at just how big this consumer electronics giant really is. Take a look at the infographic below to get a better sense of Apple’s worth.

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John Shuttleworth designed the 139-foot Power Trimaran Superyacht Adastra to be an efficient long-range cruiser. In addition to its futuristic looks, all functions on the $15 million dollar vessel can be controlled through the use of an iPad.

A total of nine guests and five crew members are able to be housed on the Adrasta. There are several luxurious rooms on board including a master suite, lounge, dining room, and open bar.

Despite its substantial size, the Adastra has been designed for efficiency. Its frame has been composed of carbon fiber, Kevlar, and glass foam, making it just as strong as it is lightweight.

This is by far one of the most innovative uses for the iPad. Since the iPad is the top-selling tablet in the world, let’s just hope that the boat’s owner is the only one that has the app to control it.

But if you’re a heavy user intent on getting the most juice out of your iPad, there are several strategies to push those limits and maximize battery life.

Adjust Brightness Levels

The bulk of your iPad’s battery life is drained by the display. Since the latest generation boasts four times the pixels of its predecessor, there’s simply more to illuminate. When Apple tests battery life, the company sets displays to 50 percent brightness. Luckily, if you’re using your iPad in a bright room or outside, chances are you can turn down the brightness to 30 percent or less to conserve battery life while stilling having plenty of brightness.

Turn Notifications Off

Notifications can be helpful for some, but annoying for others. Either way, they turn on your iPad’s display on for a few seconds, which drains battery life unnecessarily. If you don’t typically pay attention to these notifications, it may be worth it to turn them off. To do this, visit your settings menu and set “notifications” to “off” for each app.

Turn Off Unnecessary Services

If you’re using your iPad for writing, drawing, gaming, or using an app that doesn’t require any Bluetooth of Internet connectivity, turn those services off. Unless you’re actively using a Bluetooth accessory, surfing the Web, or requiring the use of location-based services (GPS), dive into your settings and turn these services off.

Put a Stop to Email

As with notifications, your email forces your iPad to automatically wake itself up. It’s constantly checking for new emails and synching with your calendar. Needless to saying, having all this running in the background can drain battery life pretty quickly. If you’re in no hurry to check your incoming emails, go into your email settings and decline to have new emails pushed to your device. You can look for the “Fetch New Data” setting and simply select “off.”

Get a Backup Battery

For heavy users, every last bit of battery life is crucial. If you use your iPad for work, ensuring you have enough juice is especially important. After all, you don’t want to run into a meeting and suddenly find yourself with a dead iPad. That’s why a backup battery for iPad is a great accessory to have. If you ever find yourself running low on power at an inopportune time, simply plug it in and extend your iPad’s battery life for hours.

A new app called Paper makes great use of the iPad 3’s high-quality graphics. Promising to be the simplest, most beautiful way to create on the iPad, Paper is a free drawing app that gives users the chance to purchase tools to allow them to sketch, write, draw, outline, and color amazing creations.

Graphics on Paper are stunning thanks to a full 2048×1536 canvas. Drawing and painting tools also react to your subtle movements, allowing you to get a range of expressions from a single tool without having to manipulate settings.

Paper can be used with the swipe of your finger tip, but more precise control is achievable when using a stylus. Once you’ve made a piece of art that you can be proud of, Paper lets you share it with the world. You can easily send your pages to a Tumblr blog, send them over email, or share them with your friends via Facebook and Twitter.

Take a closer look at this amazing new app below to see why it may be one of the best ways to utilize the new iPad’s brilliant display.

Jetpac helps users share and curate the photos they upload to Facebook. Using innovative new geo-parsing technology, Jetpac can figure out where photos were taken, even if they aren’t geo-tagged by those who uploaded the image.

“We take all the un-located photos on Facebook (most of the 100 billion are un-located),” explains Jetpac founder and CEO Julian Green, ‘and locate them using geo-parsing technology we’ve pioneered, using the text – captions, album names, etc.”

Although Jetpac has just been launched for the iPad, it has already become the No. 1 app in the “New Travel App” section of Apple’s App Store. The app’s popularity shows how excited users are to discover and share places they like and want to go.

Because Jetpac is an interactive travel magazine of sorts that relies on photos from your Facebook account, it’s really helpful for those who depend on their friends for recommendations when they want to take a trip. If you’re looking to take a vacation, downloading Jetpac may help you discover a great place to visit.

Helping the iPad standout from the competition was its screen, which CR says is the best they’ve seen yet on a tablet. According to CR editors, the high-resolution screen of the new iPad establishes a new benchmark.

Even despite reports that suggested that the iPad operated at somewhat high temperatures, CR still praised Apple’s latest device. With 4G connectivity, a faster graphics processor, and a slew of other updates, the publication believes that the iPad still deserves to sit at the top of the tablet market.

Since its release last month, Apple has sold more than 3 million of its latest iPad. Despite unsurpassed success, most would agree that competition is still fierce thanks to the bevy of Google Android-powered devices hitting the market.

Not only are 55 million households smitten with Apple products, but the popularity of Apple’s products is only expected to grow. Almost one-quarter of the households that already own an Apple product plan to buy at least one more product in the next year.

The survey revealed that the bulk of Apple customers are male, college-educated, and wealthier: 77 percent of those earning more than $75,000 a year own at least one Apple product, compared with 28 percent of those making less than $30,000 per year. Age doesn’t seem to be too much of a factor, as the same percent of respondents from the 18 and 34 age bracket and the 35 to 49 bracket considered themselves Apple users.

Apple is quickly infiltrating American homes thanks to its now iconic product offerings, including iPhones, iPods, iPads, and MacBooks. With tablets expected to outsell computers within the next three years, Apple and its now dominant iPad are likely going to find their way into more households in the near future.

Our new cases boast innovative features and high-quality materials that will not only protect your new iPad, but also enhance its functionality. From the Apple purist to the pro on the go, our new iPad cases have something for everyone. Take a closer look below.

It was important for Adobe to launch the new app in time for the launch of Creative Suite 6 and Creative Cloud, which are also slated to arrive this year.

Photoshop Touch allows users to combine multiple photos into layered images, make edits and apply effects to create artwork, touch up photos, paint, and apply sophisticated image effects. The iPad’s built-in camera can even be used to fill in portions of an image that’s being edited. The app also integrates Facebook and Google Image Search to make it easy for users to quickly find images and share their creations.

“People will be amazed with what they can create on the iPad using Photoshop Touch,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Media Business Unit, Adobe. “Photoshop Touch combines the magic of Photoshop and its core features with the convenience of a tablet, bringing image-editing power to the fingertips of millions of people.”.

The new app, which is called “Friendship 7: The Voyage of Mercury-Atlas 6,” gives users a seat in mission control during the space flight that took place on Feb. 20, 1962. Film makers at Spacecraft Films have helped restore footage from the historic space mission to make an engaging app that’s sure to excite science and history aficionados.

“Fifty years ago John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth,” Mark Gray, Spacecraft Films’ producer, wrote in a description of the app for the Apple store. “Relive his three-orbit mission with exclusive access to over 4 hours of rare video, plus the complete audio from the onboard recorder and flight director’s loop recorded in mission control.”

If you’re interested in reliving John Glenn’s mission, you can download the app now for download for $6.99. Learn more at the Apple App Store.