News tagged ‘mobile’

As Patently Apple reports, US Patent and Trademark Office published a patent granted to Apple, which covers 3D display and imaging technologies. This invention could lead to Kinect-like navigation by manipulating holographic images and performing gestures within a virtual 3D system.

Read the rest of this entry »

Voice input in Android

9to5Mac has reported that Apple seeded some mobile carriers with a “near-final” build of iOS 5 with the enabling of Nuance's Speech to Text as a system-wide service:

According to a source testing the feature, it works almost identically (video above) to the Android operating system’s speech-to-text feature. It’s also very polished, quick, and accurate said the source – which is obvious for being an Apple product but also is indicative of the product being nearly complete.

The special microphone button was already noticed in iOS 5. This allows users to dictate rather than type. It seems that Apple plans to release its Nuance speech recognition system alongside the public release of iOS 5 set for launch in this fall.

Apple’s sales in China are up sixfold and reached $3.8 billion in second quarter revenues. Chinese market remains largely untapped and Apple could increase iPhone sales there by reaching agreements with additional Chinese carriers. However until now Apple hasn’t succeeded in reaching the agreement with the largest wireless operator China Mobile, and the sole Apple’s carrier in this country remains China Unicom. Moreover, according to DigiTimes, Apple’s iconic smartphone will compete with devices from both carriers:

Read the rest of this entry »

Several sources have claimed that GameStop will soon sell the full lineup of popular iOS devices such as iPods, iPads and iPhones at its stores. The company announced it to dealers at this week’s trade show in Las Vegas. Besides, this week GameStop began offering trade-ins of iOS device for in-store credits.

Read the rest of this entry »

Best Buy expects that the iPhone 5 will be available for pre-order during the first week of October. BGR points to an internal memo:

Thanks to a leaked document from a Best Buy source, we have discovered that Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores are anticipating taking preorders for the iPhone 5 starting in the first week of October. What’s a tad bit more interesting, however, is the mention (and further anticipation) that Sprint will be carrying the iPhone 5 at launch.

Of course, the dates may be changed. Noteworthy to say that the Wall Street Journal is also anticipating Sprint will be carrying the iPhone 5. Meanwhile, Best Buy is also expecting a new "Apple Fixture Installation" on Friday, October 21st.

To be clear, this isn’t a run-of-the-mill installation for the big box — our tipster tells us that the request that a manager be on-hand at 6AM is out of the ordinary (they usually show up at 7AM for inventory), and that a similar arrangement was scheduled for the iPhone 4 launch.

Recently 9to5Mac and AppleInsider have published new evidences showing Apple’s work on a "Find My Friends" service that was originally discovered in iOS 4.3. "Find My Friends" is a location-based friend-finding service like Loopt and Google Latitude. The strings (embedded above) seem to confirm those suspicions:

It includes references to standard social networking functions, like a list of people a user is "following," as well as "pending" and "accepted" follower requests. The code also mentions user statuses, updates, blocking of users and removing followers.

"Find My Friends" will allow you to find your friends who near you in real time by leveraging your mobile phone's GPS signal and using constant updates. This service will also allow you to "follow" or be followed by others.

Openware Systems has filed a lawsuit against Apple and RIM, accusing them in infringing of five of its patents. Three of them are related with mobile computing, while other two apply to cloud computing and fast page navigation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Google and Apple, two main parties on the smartphone market, are continuously fighting for consumers especially those who have not yet decided which OS they want to have in their next smartphone. According to Nielsen survey in July 2011, these ‘undecideds’ will be the customers which manufacturers will be hoping to win over. It is interesting that late adopters are least sure among likely smartphone upgraders about their next phone platform.

Read the rest of this entry »

Parallels launches version 7 of their well-known virtualization software allowing Mac users to run Mac OS X and Windows on a single machine. The version 7 reportedly includes 90 new enhancements. Among them:

Read the rest of this entry »

According to France-based Hardmac, Apple is preparing a remote testing tool for iOS devices that will be used by its service personnel. It will remotely check a device and send the obtained data, relatively anonymously, over the Internet. Apple technicians have already used a similar tool, but, according to Hardmac, this one works remotely. Actually, it will operate entirely online.

Read the rest of this entry »

The career of one of America’s most innovative businessmen has been more than just a string of moments, but these 10 peeks at Steve Jobs’s formidable presence will remind you of why his resignation is such a momentous event.

1. Steve Jobs demos Apple Macintosh, 1984

Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh to the world. Computing would never be the same.

Read the rest of this entry »

The founder of Jailbreakme.com Comex has said on Twitter that he is joining Apple as an intern. Site JailbreakMe.com greatly facilitates jailbreaking for users. He said about the hiring on Twitter:

“It's been really, really fun, but it's also been a while and I've been getting bored. So, the week after next I will be starting an internship with Apple”.

Read the rest of this entry »

At least one developer reportedly has found evidences confirming fact that Apple is testing the dual-mode iPhone 5, supporting both GSM and CDMA in one phone, against current App Store apps.

The logs show that the app has been briefly tested by a handful of people using what is almost certainly an iPhone 5, evidently running iOS 5, sporting two distinct sets of mobile network codes (MNC) / mobile country codes (MCC). Those codes can be used to uniquely identify mobile carriers.

Sure enough, some registrations for the app – which the developer also asked not to be named – were logged from a new Apple device, using the MNC/MCC codes from both Verizon and AT&T.

Research firm NPD has recently announced results of its Mobile Phone Track report for the second quarter of 2011. Android is still leading the U.S. smartphone with 52% of the market; Apple's iPhone has 29% while BlackBerry devices only 11% of the market. But the 14-month-old iPhone 4 is continuing to lead the market in sales, and the 8 GB 26-month-old iPhone 3GS takes the second place, perhaps, because its that price now dropped to $49.

Here are the top five best-selling phones during Q2, via NPD’s Mobile Phone Track service:

1. Apple iPhone 4
2. Apple iPhone 3GS
3. HTC EVO 4G
4. HTC Inspire 4G
5. Samsung INTENSITYII

Early last week there appeared some rumors that Apple has been testing a 4G LTE-enabled iPhone with carriers. In an "internal iOS test build" was found a property list file (.plist) for LTE. This might mean that Apple was already testing LTE hardware. This LTE.plist file, however, was found only in some of the builds (GSM iPhone 4, CDMA iPad 2) and it was related to Apple's internal "Fieldtest" application.

LTE is the term the next generation wireless broadband network that is currently being deployed by both Verizon and AT&T. Data speeds for LTE should be significantly faster than the iPhone's existing 3G network.

Other rumors suggest that it is unlikely that Apple will make the jump to LTE so early with the iPhone 5, because, as Apple's Tim Cook said, the first generation of LTE chipsets forced a lot of design compromises, and Apple was unwilling to make those compromises. Such compromises could include very short battery life for mobile phones.  But, as far as we know, AT&T had installed 4G LTE equipment in a major Apple retail store and Apple had put out a job listing for field test engineers with expertise in LTE.