Archive for May, 2010

An open letter published by Adobe co-founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke reveals their true position to Apple. They say Apple wants to "undermine the next chapter of the web". They also believe that the consumers must have a free access to the content regardless to their computers, browsers or any other stuff.

"No company - no matter how big or how creative - should dictate what you can create."

In answer to Jobs' saying that Flash is a closed system Adobe co-founders informed that specifications for Flash are published and available for free so anyone can make their own Flash player. What Apple does is creating walls for their applications and content, thus creating a threat to a future of free Internet, which actually cannot be controlled by anyone. The letter ends with these words:

"What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web."

It is interesting to notice that Adobe also started new advertising campaign on popular tech news sites and in newspapers. Their ads list technologies they "love". One of them even contains the tongue-in-cheek inscription "We [heart] Apple".

This time French site BeGeek.fr posted new photos of the the 4th-Generation Apple iPhone. As you see, it looks like the Vietnamese prototype (which photos were posted earlier here). The site didn't reveal any information on the source of the images.

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New information received by BusinessWeek from anonymous Apple employee reveals that Steve Jobs began to regularly visit Cupertino's office only in January, 2010, though he returned to work after liver transplant in June 2009.

BusinessWeek sought comments from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and he said that he frequently speaks with his friend Steve Jobs and he looks healthy.

"Every time I hear him, he's doing a lot of work and a lot of thinking that's involved in that work, and those things sort of go away if you're very worried about your health".

Jobs announced about his temporary leaving in June 2009. He explained that the reason was about private matter. In September Jobs appeared at Apple's annual music event to present new iPods. It was his first appearance that year and that time he especially underlined his gratitude to a liver donor, who died in a car crash in his mid-20s.

After that Jobs was focused on iPad, and it is reported that he was personally involved in its development.

At this moment he is back at work and experts from Creative Strategies consulting firm say it is good news:

"Except for the fact that he's lost a lot of weight, he's the Steve Jobs of old. At the visionary level, technology and design level, he seems to be working at the same level he was before he was sick."

Apple posted a new ad to its website today. The ad is called "What is iPad?". Take a look:

Hours before we posted photos of another iPhone 4G prototype that were obtained by someone from Vietnamese forum Taoviet. It was revealed that device has a SoC with Apple A4 processor and 256 Megabytes of Samsung DRAM. According to iFixit, the marking "APL0398 339S0084" indicates the A4 processor, and "K4X2G643GE" goes for 256 Mb Samsung RAM.

"Our engineers are not surprised by this finding. We were very impressed by the extraordinarily low power consumption of the iPad, and remarked at the time that its power consumption and board design was much more in line with handheld devices than laptop computers."

So now we're sure that new prototype has the same hardware as in Apple's iPad. By the way, iPhone 3GS has also 256 Mb of DRAM.

It is also examined that the leaked device has a 16 GB capacity instead of Gizmodo's "XXGB", and there are no visible screws on its sites. The new iPhone has a micro-SIM port on its side. A video reveals that new device was turned on but it wasn't running the iPhone OS.

More photos of iPhone 4G hardware are posted below and here.

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Recently The Wall Street Journal had reported that Verizon collaborates with Google to create new tablet device that will compete with the iPad. The information was confirmed by Lowell McAdam, who is a Verizon CEO, in his interview to the paper.

"What do we think the next big wave of opportunities are? We're working on tablets together, for example. We're looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience."

Still there were no information revealed about the device's hardware and its manufacturers. McAdam said that collaboration with Google has already led to success in company's efforts to combat the iPhone with Android-based handsets, so he's looking forward for the same result in creating new tablet device.

Verizon CEO also told that the company now will close the gap with AT&T which offers exclusive only 3G data plans for the iPad in the USA. In early 2011 Verizon will present 4G-capable device along with its new high-speed network, which by the end of 2010 will cover 25 to 30 cities. It is planned that there will be more price plans for every selling device, and it may be more expensive than current offers of other carriers who have 3G network.

AT&T seems to not support such policy (at least the company have been repeatedly denying such information), though its CEO Randall Stephenson thinks the industry will be proposing variable pricing once.

"For the industry, we will progressively move towards more of what I call variable pricing. The heavy consumers will pay different than the lower consumers."

Yesterday we posted information about smartphone sales in the last quarter 2010, and as you remember Android-based phones become more popular than iPhones. Now it became known that Apple's spokespeople commented on this data.

In its research NPD group studied over 150,000 completed surveys, that were undertaken online every month in America. Apple's representative Natalie Harrison thinks it is not enough data to make precise conclusions:

"This is a very limited report on 150,000 U.S. consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide."

It is unknown why Harrison mentioned iPod touch when discussion was about smartphones market, but according to Reunters last week Harrison had referred to the IDC research. The latter also reveals that Apple losing its positions, but this time worldwide, with Nokia and BlackBerry sales ahead in first and second spots respectively.

Here is a video of future iPhone 4G in addition to recently published photos.

We've got some new photos of future iPhone 4G (iPhone HD) from Viet Nam. The device itself is claimed to have been made available by a foreign businessman who purchased it in the US.

Take a look:

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ADR Studio, which is an Italian design firm, recently tried to create another "Apple style product" and called it iWatch. As you see, it's a new kind of watch with aluminum casing, 16 Gb capacity and ability to connect to any mobile iDevice via Bluetooth or Wi-fi. The idea of iWatch is that it should answer calls coming to iPhone in your pocket, and internet access should allow reading RSS feeds and even viewing photos and weather. There is also a pico projector built-in to project images and videos.

More photos are given below.

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NPD Group had recently revealed their new study, which shows that iPhone OS became the second most selling OS last quarter in US. To be precise 28% of all handsets sold were Android phones, and iPhones made only 21%. Research In Motion's Blackberries hold 36 percent of market.

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Examiner reports that Apple made a deal with Lady Gaga under which she will appear in the commercials that will push the upcoming iPhone 4G.

Lady Gaga is 24-year old superstar who has already sold over 10 million albums worldwide. She is known for her unusual way of introducing herself.

9to5mac inquired Lady Gaga's representatives to confirm whether rumor is true or not, but they declined to comment saying "...It's a 'no comment' for us".

Recently UK Times published a report about Nintendo's current situation. The company's president Satoru Iwata said that he had already won the war with Sony and now it is Apple's turn. Satoru called it Nintendo's "enemy of the future".

The war with Sony was ended after last holiday season, when Wii had outsold Sony Playstation by almost double, though this year the sales of Nintendo's device in the first quarter were down 21% in compare to the first quarter of 2009.

So now the competition is held between Nintendo DS and Apple's iPod touch and iPhone platform. The latter has advantage of relatively low prices for games (moreover, some of them are even free). There are also studies, that reveal that people who like to play would rather carry an iPhone than a DS.

Those developers who study new beta-versions of iPhone OS 4.0 reveal that new firmware has features of suggested word replacement and spellcheck imported from the iPad to the iPod touch and iPhone. They were presented first in iPad which has iPhone OS 3.2.

Spelling system allows users to select a misspelled word with a touch and then choose «Replace...» instead of using copy/paste operations. The word that was misspelled is underlined in red like in Mac OS X or Microsoft Word. After that system offers replacement word suggestions that also can be chosen with only one touch.

Apple announced that iPhone OS 4 will also allow iPod touch and iPhone to support iPad's Bluetooth keyboard.

An unknown group of hackers work now on bringing current beta version of iPhone OS 4 to the iPhone 2G (that was released in 2007). As you remember, Steve Jobs mentioned on his iPhone OS 4 keynote that the system won't be supported by iPhone 2G due to its low memory and processing power. Hackers also explained what they are working on:

"We are rewriting the 4.0 beta firmware released by Apple to create a custom firmware that can run on devices iPhone 2G which is no longer available. To do this we studied the architecture of the firmware previously released by Apple on the device trying to understand how is it different from the released versions on other devices, in particular that of the iPhone 3G device, which is what most resembles the smartphones".

According to a shady photo above they've already reached success but still there is no relevant information revealed on their site.