Archive for March 31st, 2011

Yesterday Apple released the second developer preview of Maс OS X Lion for testing purposes. The new Build 11A419 is not a Gold Master Candidate build, as it still contains many known issues that need to be fixed. Changes included in the update are currently unknown. It seems that the update is aimed at allowing developers to download future updates. Nevertheless, TechCrunch reports that this is indeed the "golden master candidate" build it discussed over the weekend and that the company is simply not going to push out a final release candidate until around its Worldwide Developer Conference in early June.

Yesterday Apple posted on its website an announcement saying that it will reveal its earning for the second fiscal quarter of 2011 and host a conference on April 20th. The company is expected to provide sales numbers for the iPad 2 and the Verizon iPhone, which was initially rumored to have sales “below Apple’s expectations”.  During the conference the company plans to discuss financial results of its second fiscal quarter. The conference call starts at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific after release of financial results which typically comes around 4:30 PM Eastern.

iPad 2 antenna: GSM (top), CDMA (middle), and Wi-Fi (bottom)

iFixit announced that they completed the teardowns of the GSM and CDMA models of iPad 2. Wi-Fi version of the iPad 2 was torn down on launch day. The GSM model has the micro-SIM card slot along the upper left edge to provide the device with subscriber information. On the CDMA version such information stores directly on the WWAN board inside. The CDMA iPad offer slightly different antenna configurations, it has an additional antenna and an integrated GPS receiver. What’s really curious is that the 3G version of iPad 2 has the older Infineon 337Se833 baseband chip rather than a dual-mode Gobi chip found inside the CDMA iPad 2. Maybe it was a supply issue or an engineering decision designed to cut costs a bit.

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